Friday, December 22, 2017

The Moveable Christmas Feast

It's that time of the year again when everything seems just a bit more magical. Over here on the other side of the Big Puddle, the lovely month of December finally heralds a sweet cool though sadly brief respite from the intense scorch of summer blaze.

Which is the time I usually plan for my annual Christmas FĂȘte in Netherfield. Unlike many of my more youthful noncontemporaries who blindly worship potluck parties for vague reasons unkenownst, I generally hire professional caterers - since I don't see how discomfiting my guests by forcing them to bring a dish could possibly be conducive to mischief and merrymaking. Isn't it easier to just focus on dressing up for a party?

Though clearly a stubborn handful would differ since they truly prefer slaving over a stove for the potluck; soon after appearing sadly tardy and inappropriately bedecked in salt, soot and scum. Ho, ho, ho, indeed.

Potluck! What a very quaint idea!

So cater please. After all it's a party for rational adults and it's time we left cold chicken wings and soggy crisps back in college where they belong.

That said, I've never actually prevented guests from bringing their own culinary delights if that's their wish. Which is what a potluck-obsessed millennial promised for the feast so I begrudgingly gave my consent and struck the item from my planned menu. After all, he did fervently promise that the fried chicken would be sizzling hot and crispy as the vaunted advertisements touted. At least that's what we all hoped.

Yet when he finally arrived with said parcel, we all looked into his Christmas bag with glee only to find something only a shade better than parsimonious coal.

Paul : There are only nine pieces of chicken here.
Friend : Yes.
Paul : Are you doing a sad reeneactment of the Christmas Carol?
Friend : No ah. Don't we all usually only eat one piece of chicken each? 
Paul : Maybe when I was three. 
Friend : Eh?
Paul : It's a feast. Not a fast. 

Really.

A piece of chicken each usually? Tis the season of dieting this Christmas?



In the midst of such parsimony, one would have thought we were in the midst of severe food rationing during wartime. Basically with the twenty or so starving guests, that would come up to half a piece each. Not sure what kinda thrifty household he came from but with that kinda generosity in a Fuzhou family, he would probably have been tossed out the backdoor with that measly box of chicken.

Thanks to age and maturity though, I at least managed a dismissive shrug with a light taunt about his baffling peculiarities.

Perhaps he thought it was a Christmas Fast.


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