A Good Night for the Good China

Most years, we have or are company at Christmas and Christmas Eve feasts for which all the stops -- good china, good silver, family favorite recipes - are pulled out. This year, with Covid raging, 'company' is our little nuclear unit, and we were grateful to have it.We knew this year would be different. No grandparents and no cousin means a smaller meal. Our little unit is a good deal more casual than my parents' pod was, so we knew there would be no coats and ties, and I even thought I'd forgo the good china.Then a few weeks ago, Thing1, our twenty-year-old who has spent the fall quarantining in an apartment with his cousin, texted that he wanted to make Beef Wellington. He and the Big Guy, now retired and indulging his own love of cooking through the pandemic began texting back and forth with ideas for a casual, but culinarily adventurous Christmas.But, our four-person unit agreed, there would be no coats and ties. There would no fanfare.It's Christmas Eve as I write. Thing1 is assembling the Wellington, indulging in eighth-grade, low-brow jokes with his eighth-grader brother, Thing2 as they put together tonight's over-the-top entree. The Big Guy is making popovers, occasionally contributing an inappropriate joke or two to the cooking banter.We'll still be casual this Christmas, but none of us can remember a warmer one. Sweatpants still seem like appropriate dinner attire for this crowd. However, as the boys joke and putter in the kitchen, concocting what I know will be the best Christmas Eve feast of our lives, it has suddenly become a good night for the good china.