Before she even places the basket down, with its starched green and red, holly-trimmed linen nestled down like a blanket fit for a newborn baby king, my hand is inside with designs on robbing the cradle. Settle down, y’all. No babies — royal, biblical or otherwise — were snatched, stolen or eaten during the writing of this story. It’s just that, like my habit of waking up 5 minutes before the alarm buzzes to catch pre-dawn flights, my body clock demands that I grab a few dinner rolls while they’re still steamy hot, before the rest of the family has sauntered to their seats, before my dad begins to make an awkward speech about how wonderful it is to have the entire clan around the same table. It’s muscle memory at this point, not a choice I consciously make but a guttural instinct after 10,000 hours of experience. This is nothing short of a holiday eating master class. And then warm knife meets cold butter, and hark the herald angels they do sing.
These are Christmas traditions foolishly omitted from made-for-TV holiday movies: my dad will pull from his stocking and dutifully unwrap virgin tin foil to find both an [insert following year here] desk calendar refill and a new bottle of his classic Jovan Musk smell, and I, his most youthful child, will shove a stupid number of sweet cream butter lathered dinner rolls into my mouth hole. This is how we do. Think of the story arc possibilities here for a hack cable TV writer: an older man predictably receiving the things he needs to turn the page on another year of life while a younger one beats a path from where his family sits gathered around the hearth to the black porcelain thrown inside the first floor powder room. It’s small screen gold. If only the FitBit had been around years ago. To think of the opportunities missed to regale my friends and family with how many calories my overeating was responsible for burning.
There’s a kind of comfort to be had in my seasonal discomfort, in knowing that some things never change, in an old habit peeking its head out of the ground to act as the Ghost of Christmas past to show me the person I once was, and on these festive occasions, still very much am. Today, I’m a man who stands on the very edge of a plank staring down at 40 years of age and can often be heard saying things like “I’ll take a salad with some steamed edamame and lite dressing on the side, please” and “may I also have the plate of grilled asparagus with a spritz of Meyer lemon?” Polite as always, yet whatever eating evolution has happened to me over the past couple of decades, I’m right back to being a chubby kid hoarding warm rolls and cold butter at Christmastime. For this reason, there’s a slim canister of Pepto chewables tucked discretely into the side pocket of my camera bag. It’s there in case I run into a plate of bangers and mash at the Neck Deck Tavern while out photographing the city and for when I inevitably fall face first into a basket of dinner rolls placed on the dining room table of my boyhood home.
I was never a cub scout as a boy but I’m always prepared because I know my abilities and my shortcomings, and because I’m not the type of over-eater who preemptively pops some pill to mask bad habits. I try hard, ya know, but I rely on the Pepto-Bismol safety net for when I slip or when I instinctively indulge on December 25th. This holiday season, like most every holiday season that has come before it, I will attempt to say no to the 5th and 6th dinner roll, the 3rd and 4th cookie, and the slabs of cold butter but I will, in all likelihood, not find success in these noble pursuits, for these treats that come around only once or twice each year will be too tempting, the flavors and the enjoyment of them too engrained in my DNA to wave them away. And so when I feel that familiar strain of seasonal regret, I know that Pepto will have me covered on the inside like the shiny silver tin foil that ritually covers our family stocking stuffers.
*Pepto-Bismol compensated me for this Christmas story. All opinions are honest and unbiased, as always. If you’ve seen me in person, and especially if you’ve shared a meal with me, you know all about very honest love affair with bread, rolls and butter.
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