Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

Christmas Eve dinner at the Tollerson house was a low-key affair. My father had purchased one of those cooked rotisserie chickens, and the side dish was apples. Not baked, not fried, just whole apples sitting next to the chicken on a paper plate.

Such is the level of cuisine on this very special occasion from my normally culinarily triumphant father. Without anyone to impress, however (my mother was absent from the holiday, staying at her mother's house in California), he seemed to be off his game.

Early on in the night, I presented both Dad and Sarah with the Christmas mix (cover, liner notes, back) I made as stocking stuffers for a dozen or so people, and my father liked it so much that it was played about 27 times over the course of the next 48 hours. I was flattered. I also can't listen to it again for at least another year.

When not listening to Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)—also referred to at HQ in Winder as “The Tollerson Christmas Theme”—we intermittedly switched around channels in on the tele, me periodically harassing my father to stop on TBS's 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story. He keeps asking us to watch Dawn of the Dead with him. Sarah and I repeatedly refuse, retorting that it's not very Christmasy.

No tree, no stockings, no lights, and we had the audacity to claim that Dawn of the Dead wouldn't be Christmasy enough. But it worked.

At about 10:15 pm, Sarah suddenly shouts, without provocation, completely from nowhere,

“Eggnog!”

“What?” My father and I were appropriately dumbfounded.

“We forgot eggnog. We need eggnog!”

I agree. “Dad, let's go.”

“Well if we are going to get eggnog, we need booze. Let's go to a liquor store.”

What must be noted is that my ‘deddy’ is not really a big boozer, so his declaration of buying liquor, and furthermore, once we were in the store, insisting on whiskey, was foreign to me, in a hilarious way. I was delighted.

We were in our first liquor store, one of six stops, less than 5 minutes after Sarah made her initial random interjection. When it comes to partying, Tollersons are apparently your go-to guys.

We picked out a whiskey, and then inquired at the counter about eggnog. The cheerful family working pointed us to Old St. Nicks Alcoholic Eggnog in a Noel-decked bottle. My father bought the whiskey and the eggnog while ignoring my suggestions to add on a bottle of Jager. Then we were off to search other locales for a non-alcoholic version of holiday cheer to... add alcohol to.

We are a strange lot.

Another liquor store, three convenience stores and a trek out to Wal-mart later, and we learned some things:

• On a request for the 'nog, once convenience store clerk told my father that they “Only sell eggnog at Easter.” We were confused.
• The other bottle shop clerk regretted to inform my father that he had sold his last bottle of Old St. Nick's less than an hour ago. When my father asked about any non-alcoholic varieties that may be available, the clerk laughed good-naturedly at my father and schooled, “No, no sir. This is a liquor store.”
• Wal-mart is actually closed on Christmas Eve. This left me with mixed emotions.

So, we had to be content with only pre-boozified nog.

Arriving home we didn't even touch the eggnog until we were able to coax my sister, who was chained to her computer, down the stairs a great while later.

We watched some tv and sipped. St Nicks is like real nog, but thinner, and with a slightly cheap-tasting rum bite at the end. However, in terms of alcohol content it's comparable to DeKuyper's family of “Pucker” liquors, that is, to say, weak. My father, about halfway done with his cup, assured us that we didn't have to finish it all in one sitting, and he would think no lesser of us for setting it aside for tomorrow. When we assured him we were both fine (neither I nor Sarah ended up with any kind of buzz), he picked his glass back up and looked at it glumly, saying “I guess that means I have to finish all of mine then too.”

My father is not accustomed to drinking liquor.

Tollersons traditionally open gifts in the morning, but this year, seeing as we were only going along with the traditions we felt like following (i.e. boozing = yes; decorating = tiring, so no) we convinced ourselves and each other that we should just go ahead and open them. We could then sleep in, not to mention already having all the paper and boxes gone when our guests arrived the next day.

This is how we came to be drinking, dancing to Bollywood for the Skeptical (another stocking stuffer from me), and opening presents at nearly 4 am Christmas Day.

My sister presented Dad with a DVD of a late eighties Tollerson favorite, Earth Girls Are Easy, which she wrapped by hiding in the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt. We popped it in after the wrapping paper had been cleared (only about 5 am), and they fell asleep midmovie while I watched the whole thing. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, and I must say, I get so many more of the jokes now.

I also get why Geena Davis was so hot for Jeff Goldbulm here.

The rest of Christmas was standard fare: dinner with my extended family, second late dinner with my volunteer extended family. This event included rollin with the homies to a pay phone in order to call Christ, because according to the TV, his holiness had returned to us in a physical body.

One holiday familial fight, a few presents and an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force later, I returned to my Dad's house and in some burst of mania decided I needed to clean and reorganize the whole kitchen. I made a trip at 7 am to the now-open Wal-mart for supplies and cleaned the surfaces, washed the dishes, and hung a bulletin board. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment and I passed out happy at about 11, rising at 5 pm to socialize and prepare to go home.

Despite some serious mania involving cleaning and driving around everywhere on my effed-up tires, this was possibly the most relaxing, low-key Christmas I have ever had.

But I'm still glad it's over.

Happy New Year.

*The high wooden fence coupled with the even taller bamboo (12-16 feet-ish) growing right behind it makes it impossible to clearly see any part of my parent's house in Winder—besides the small facade facing the street. Despite being in the middle of a crowded neighborhood in the center of town, it actually feels very secluded, and I've been referring to the whole complex as the “Fortress of Solitude” for years. However, my mother had never heard this turn of phrase until just a few weeks ago. We didn't speak very much when I was in high school, I guess.