Christmas dinner

The New Year deserves more, if only because it is the only day of the year when we expect a miracle. Just a little, but we are waiting. In childhood, in order to give dinner a Christmas (whatever that means) features, a Christmas tree was quite enough. A beautifully laid table with goodies plus a Christmas tree with toys – and here it is a holiday.

By the way, it seems to many that the feeling of a holiday, that very pre-New Year mood, which can then be warmed up for a very long time, somehow weakens over the years. Just think: gentlemen designers have gone off their feet, decorating cities and villages with light bulbs and sparkles, Santa Clauses and Santa Clauses, and there are still a lot of people with worried faces. Once I also caught myself on the fact that the New Year is already on the nose, and the mood is somehow ordinary. I had to immediately abandon all my affairs and completely immerse myself in pre-holiday chores. Helped!..

We actually went skiing. In the French Alps, in the last days of December. At first glance, nothing unusual: the New Year in the mountains is met by crowds of ski lovers. But we wanted to combine the freshness of sensations with the inviolability of tradition. That is, to supplement the skiing and mountain joys in general with the obligatory New Year’s pig.

Roasted pig, no doubt, belongs to the high culinary genre. And on the New Year’s table, it is especially appropriate and organic. In addition, the pig brings people together surprisingly, forming a new community of New Year’s pig lovers. It is recommended to lay the pig in the oven in the old year, and remove it in the new one. This is a kind of visual proof that new happiness in the new year is not just a figure of speech, but a real and achievable goal.

So, about happiness: we were looking for an apartment with an oven. The girl from the travel agency spoke softly and delicately. She said, “You are very strange.” She assured us that every apartment has a microwave. We resolutely brushed aside the barbaric hints that a pig can be cooked in a microwave oven. “Why do you need a pig there? – the girl did not let up. “Are you going skiing or roasting pork?”

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We could not get understanding from the girl, but she still found us housing with an oven. Then the search for the pig began at the location of the oven. After visiting several markets, we almost lost hope, and then someone smart came up with the idea to turn to restaurateurs for help. And they helped us. “I’ll call the herd,” said the head waiter of the second restaurant, “they’ll bring you a little pig.” I imagined herds of mountain pigs grazing on the steep alpine slopes, and my heart warmed.

The French pig turned out to be very graceful. On December 31, our whole company went to the market in the nearest village to buy snacks for the festive table, and I stayed at home to take care of the pig. In the morning the sun shone brightly and warmed hotly, the snow actively melted, and full-flowing streams ran along the mountain roads. And in the evening it froze, and the roads turned into almost bobsleigh tracks. My friends didn’t manage to drive up the steep mountain, on top of which our apartment with an oven was located: the taxi was hopelessly spinning its wheels, scraping on the ice, but it didn’t manage to move even a little bit forward and up.

The situation seemed hopeless, but … 15 minutes before the New Year, I greased the pig with oil and sent it to the oven. And almost at the same moment, a tractor appeared on the road, on the side of which my friends had a forced picnic. They met him as they meet liberators, that is, they yelled, jumped and climbed to kiss the driver. What brought this beautiful powerful car there on New Year’s Eve remained a mystery. A cheerful French tractor driver said that Santa Claus sent him, and I personally believe that it was so …

I think the festive mood is in direct proportion to both our desire to experience it and our efforts to please those we love. A holiday is an exquisite, tender phenomenon that requires care and warmth. In fact, in the atmosphere around us there is always joy, and inspiration, and hope. But the festive vibes are very picky and, as a rule, rush to where it is cozy and warm, where they are very much expected. And past the Christmas dinner, the central composition of which will be a roasted pig, they will never fly by.