I’m hosting Christmas this year for my parents and sisters (my brother is unable to attend, though still welcome), and that means making plans in advance. Now, you may be saying, what, so soon? (If you are a super last minute person, nobody who has ever hosting Christmas is saying that). Or perhaps you are saying, but it’s Halloween season right now?

Let’s take a minute and be old people and grump about Halloween season anyway. What’s the deal with that? And do you have to do a new costume for each party/festive occasion? Does Trunk or Treat have the dumbest name or what? Back in my day, we had one costume and we wore it trick or treating around the neighborhood, and we were told just to watch out for apples with razor blades in them, as if we wouldn’t just toss an apple out rather than continue carrying it around! Who eats apples for Halloween anyway? And the walking we did around the neighborhood probably negated a lot of the candy calories anyway, but if not, eating too much candy and then throwing up would have done the same.

But I digress. Oh! In further digression, have I told you about Trunksgiving before? You get your cars, you meet your friends in a large parking lot somewhere and each person has one side dish for Thanksgiving in their trunk and you eat them outside, tailgate style.

In the spirit of a random blog post: we aren’t doing much for Thanksgiving. We need some time off and some days to catch up on house stuff and other related stuff, so we will do a small Thanksgiving with Louie’s family, possibly at the Whittemore House so we can save our cooking chops for Christmas. Last year was a big deal for Thanksgiving even if it got derailed by COVID, and I feel like it happened too recently to do it again. We had debated traveling for the holiday, but Louie vetoed and wanted to stay in instead.

So back to Christmas. As much as Leslie and I have been joking about making things in advance (such as salads, it’s a family joke about how in advance you can prepare things because my mother is the queen of advance preparation and is where we learned all of our planning skills), I did make some holiday things this past weekend.

First off, it’s important to note two things: I had the entire afternoon and evening off on Sunday. And Louie was out of town for a work thing. I work so many hours that an afternoon and evening off TO MYSELF looked like the most decadent thing I could even imagine, so what did I do? Well, after finishing my makeup lessons and a family zoom call, I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients to make Alton Brown’s Aged Eggnog and Food in Jars’s Pickled Cranberries. And made them both in a matter of a few hours. I had lost some of my canning skills but I brought them back quickly enough.

Some of those jars are just the brine, or really, shrub, from the recipe. I made the pickled cranberries a few years ago during my canning heyday, and while we didn’t actually love the cranberries (they are totally fine, but not amazing), Louie absolutely loved the brine in mixed drinks. I actually haven’t tried it, but I figured it would be great to offer people, as well as supposedly excellent to mix with sparkling water as well for a holiday drink.

And the eggnog, I also went through an eggnog phase a few years back, and I haven’t made aged eggnog since. I am only having it age about two months in this case, slightly less, but it should be a nice treat for the adults who wish to try it.

Other holiday plans: having some time off after Christmas. And Louie is teaching a winter term class so I have some days off where he is working. On the one hand, I’m sad he isn’t off too because we could do something fun. On the other hand, I could just lounge around and catch up on my reading. It’ll probably be somewhere in between and I am also looking at a short getaway for us after his class is over, maybe somewhere with a hot tub where we can just get away from it all for a few days before the semester starts again.

So that’s my random holiday thought dump! How about you, what are you doing for the holidays? And an important question: how far in advance do you and your family start planning events?