A fun old-fashion family Christmas…in Berlin

For the life of me I can’t remember what time we would always be expected at my grandmother’s for Christmas Day dinner, but here I was slightly shivering in my Christmas outfit as we rode up the elevator to the 16^th floor. It was already dark, but that didn’t mean much, because the sun set at 3pm in Berlin during the winter months and wouldn’t really show its face until summer when it refused to set until after 10pm.

          The trip from our apartment to my grandmother’s was not long at all. It probably took a total of two minutes maximum, once the elevator decided to show up. I was (un)fortunate enough to have grown up in an apartment building that not only housed my own family, but also my mother’s mother and her stepfather, my father’s mother and father, and my father’s sister, her husband and her two children. So, these Christmas family get-togethers weren’t really all that special or rare, since we saw each other constantly. Whether we wanted to or not.

          German Christmases last a lot longer; there is Christmas Eve, which is a holiday and on which all the kiddies get their presents from a male relative dressed up as Santa Claus. That part always terrified me as a child. It was after coffee time, usually around 4:30pm, with all the relatives gathered in the living room, the air stifling hot from eight to ten warm bodies sitting in a tiny living room, with the heaters blasting because it was cold outside, and nobody dared to open a window for the fumes from the cigarette smoke to be aired out. All of them were watching as the children were being put in the proverbial hot seat and asked if they had been good all year and if they think they deserve this wrapped present, which could contain anything from a GameBoy to thick wool socks.

Then there is the first Christmas Holiday (that would be the 25^th of December) and usually the day the entire family is summoned to my paternal grandmother’s place for dinner. The 26^th of December is known as the second Christmas Holiday during which we mostly ate left overs and watched TV.

          So, here we were ready to make our mandatory appearance at my grandmother’s. She and my aunt and uncle lived on the same floor, they would open both front doors and everybody would go back and forth as they pleased, with the kids hanging out wherever they were allowed to sit on that occasion.

The hallway was filled with the smell of cooked bird – I can never remember if my grandmother made duck or goose, but part of me thinks goose, since it’s the bigger bird – mingling with the scent of boiled potatoes, red cabbage and something green and mushy I never dared to try. We said our hellos and settled in for the silently agreed upon order of things: the cousins were as far away from the adults as possible talking about teenage stuff and the adults were sitting in the living with 50% of them always smoking at any given time.

When one of us kids had to enter the living room to ask a parent a question or to grab something an uproar of laughter would erupt with some joke that was too random to be understood by anyone new to the party. We kids would always be thoroughly uncomfortable and aimed to stay away at all costs.

There was this big dinning room table that took up half of my grandmother’s living room and every time someone had to leave the living room to get something from the kitchen or to use the bathroom they had to shimmy through a small opening in the door, because chairs were blocking it.

I remember the smell of the food never really made me hungry or increased my appetite. It was a thick sort of smell and it smelled like all the other dishes she cooked during the rest of the year. They all sort of blended together, the only thing standing out was the smell of that green mush, which was very strong and seemed to guarantee a good healthy flow of digestion the next day. Plainly put: I never liked her cooking. The duck or goose or unidentifiable poultry tasted just like her beef roast, the gravy was too thick, and the potatoes overcooked, and everything tasted like it had an extra cup of butter mixed in it. A healthy, rich meal as it was known among family members. A few bites of each side dish made my stomach bloat and twist in agonizing pain.

The same thing happened with a batch of chicken soup my grandmother made once. It was already quite warm outside, nobody was sick, but my grandmother made this ridiculously large batch of chicken soup and gave each family enough to last at least 3 separate meals. Everyone made such a big deal about the fact that my grandmother had cooked this soup, except me. I don’t think I ate a proper meal as long as the soup lasted.

One might wonder why I didn’t just voice my dislike for my grandmother’s cooking. I did that once and was treated like I had just committed treason of the highest order. My grandmother’s voice rose dramatically as she brought her hand to her forehead in a woe-is-me sort of fashion, my father looked from me to her and back again, unsure what he had just witnessed, the expression on his face changing from horror to shock to disbelief. I think that was the moment I lost all chance to ever have any kind of relationship with my grandmother: it was the ultimate insult.

I was served the soup, which had a thick layer of chicken fat with chicken bits floating on top of egg noodles that tasted slightly burned. Both my parents kept urging me to eat up, it’s good strong soup that will keep us healthy. I ate a few spoons and then watched in amazement as my parents kept repeating the phrase “good strong soup” with each bite. I thought that perhaps the ritualistic chant while they forced the chicken fat with chicken bits down was helping them believe in the magic of the fat.

After the dishes of Christmas dinner were cleared it was time for dessert: chocolate pudding with thick vanilla sauce. My grandmother would bring in the bowl of pudding and jug of sauce and ceremoniously scrape off the thick hard layer of skin that had settled on both. She would stop, look around the table and with a quivering bottom lip say that my grandfather would always eat the skin, God rest his soul in peace. The pudding and the sauce had the same consistency and I asked for little and ate even less. Thank goodness for the sugary filling sensation of a can of Coke drunk very quickly.

Even though these family gatherings felt like they lasted forever, I always found myself in bed at the end of them at a reasonable time, looking forward to breakfast with a rumbling stomach.