Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 9, 1993 TAG: 9312090383
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-17 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Then there is Christmas Dinner. It is as reliable as the season itself - and seems to mean as much to the children as the gifts.
Well, almost.
We don't eat breakfast until after gifts are opened, although coffee is allowed, first thing. We have a light breakfast; by late morning, everyone is involved with getting dinner started.
My job is the main course - leg of lamb.
The only problem with all the accompanying ceremony is that I like leg of lamb so much, I wish I could have it more often. The kids won't allow it to be served at any other time of the year, though. It is Christmas dinner, they say, and its status can't be tainted by consumption on lesser days of the year.
Probably no one who weighs as much as I do should admit this, but the preparation makes the leg. We pierce the meat with maybe 50 shallow cuts across the surface, then press slivers of garlic into each cut. The entire leg is covered with strips of bacon - held in place by toothpicks - before it goes into the oven.
The result is a delicious, juicy leg and deadly but wonderfully greasy drippings for gravy. (Kids, don't try this at home.)
My wife supervises the rest of the preparations, including a to-die-for cranberry-nut dessert and creamy mashed potatoes. Our 15-year-old daughter is in charge of bread - I'm praying for potato rolls this year. Our 10-year-old daughter helps out everywhere - except with her sister's rolls, since that's liable to lead to bloodshed, even on Christmas Day.
It's often the only day of the year that the "good" china and crystal come out of the cabinet.
It's not a time of stagnant traditions, though, since some new ones get added periodically. I suspect we're moving into a new phase now, as my younger daughter has decided on a more active role in the prayer over dinner.
She's taken on the responsibility of writing an original prayer of thanksgiving and gets the rest of the family to join in on the "God is great, God is good" rhyme and The Lord's Prayer.
For Thanksgiving dinner, she expressed the hope that God would enjoy the meal, too. Though I was a bit taken aback by that suggestion at first, I realized what a wonderful sentiment it was.
With our long biblical tradition of an emotional God, it is natural, really, to expect that our pleasures would be God's pleasures, too.
So, from now on, I expect in addition to the praise and thanks that have always been traditional in the blessing we seek for our meal, we'll add a prayer for God's joy in it, as well.
Cody Lowe reports on issues of religion and ethics for this newspaper and writes a weekly column, The Back Pew.
by CNB