Salutations Ben,
The emotional hangover of the holidays usually lasts not long past New Year’s for me, but this season was prolonged by late night flights and persistent jet lag. While the catching up from that is not already more than a week in the past, I have continued to think about the “Holiday Season” and what a unique time of year it is.
Alongside (and perhaps in spite of) how commercial the holidays, mostly Christmas, have become, they retain for many a certain special type of cultural je ne sais quoi. Nostalgia doesn’t seem to explain all of the feeling many seem to be infected with, and to which others become jaded as life goes on. It’s powerful.
To describe the feeling is impossible, like describing the colors to the sightless, and only ever seems somewhat accurately conveyed by the feeling of certain things associated with the season; sitting by a fire in a warm sweater; hot chocolate; the soft ambiance Christmas lights. So I’m going to add to this chorus with a of letter-within-a-letter: an Ode to Eggnog.
Dear Eggnog,
In my life, I can hardly name a drink with as much emotional and physical heft as you carry. Shrouded in mystery, you appear on the shelves in late fall as if from nowhere. To all the world, you could be from the leftover Christmas trees of last year, hand-wrung like a wet towels to drain off the last of their holiday cheer and distill it down to liquid form.
A drink so creamy and dense you feel it go all the way down and sit in your stomach, where, like an anchor, it keeps to attached to place; often a couch at a party. The lethargy and immobility prolongs conversation and connection.
The fine balancing act of deciding how much to drink is often the most difficult part of a night, the flavor and consistency being a constant wellspring of wanting more, but countered by the limited volume of a stomach. Alas, more than any other, imbibition of eggnog has led to the reversal of it’s consumption of any drink in my life.
And as I have changed, eggnog, so have you. Through the years I’ve discovered many great uses for eggnog, which basically means replacing milk with it in anything I make around the holidays, from hot chocolate to pancakes. But no change so great as the addition of spirits. They only enhance all the feelings eggnog brings. The looseness, the sense of warmth, and comfort. Not to mention the propensity to retreat the way it came.
So thank you, eggnog. Thank you for being so closely tied to a sense of season that the mere sight of your carton fills me with childish giddiness and glee.
See you next year,
Nate
Now Ben, you and I will both remember Freshman year of college was basically defined by a mutual love of eggnog. I remember that late night we both discovered the craving we both shared which quickly devolved into hours of planning Christmas decorations for the room. Not to mention that first college Halloween quest for the eggnog. You know the one: with the snowstorm, the car getting stuck in the ditch, the giant flash of blue light that lit up the sky, calling UNH police and a tow truck, and then walking to the store anyway through the snow? But we got the eggnog, and the matching skull goblets.
But I’m not sure I have much more to say, I think this was more about remembering than discussion. Anyway, I wish for you the warm eggnog feelings.
Cheers,
Nate
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