Monday, November 26, 2012

Tah Dah! (Yet) Another Holiday to Celebrate!

From my voracious reading, I'm familiar with English writers and their mentions of "Boxing Day."

You may not be, so to explain, it's the day in Great Britain set aside for giving servants and tradespeople a "Christmas box" of money, treats or goods.  It's a national holiday there and in many other countries, pretty much, just not America. 

It could be compared to our (loathsome) "Black Fridays."

We used to have a Christmas Eve Open House from 3 to 7 p.m. and the idea was that if you were going somewhere else, take time to pop into our house for a drink and a bite and be on your merry way.  If you didn't have anything else to do, well, come early and stay late!

Christmas day parties (and I only tried  it once) don't really work out.  Most people have set routines with family and/or friends.

But most of our friends are older and I don't like to think of them driving in the dark which now arrives around 4:30 p.m.

So I thought, what about a Boxing Day party from 1 to 4 p.m., same rules as for Christmas Eve?  Since none of us have servants, I thought it might be fun to trade off any White Elephants received for Christmas.  Some light-hearted horse trading would be tremendous fun!

For this kind of event, you need to offer substantial appetizers because it's not a sit-down dinner.  I bought a three-dish heating tray from Target last year ($27) and it works perfectly because the lids are clear, you can see what you're about to stumble onto and the hostess can pass the table and see at a glance what needs to be replenished.

And I can tell you now with no hesitation whatsoever that the food I'd serve would be as far away from "holiday food" as you can get!  We just pushed back from Thanksiving and a three day turkey-thon.  I'm good for a whole year of no more turkey and trimmings. 

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