We had an amazing Christmas this year… Boone’s family came to the Delta and we had a big Christmas Eve dinner party for our friends whose families were in town. It was a fun crowd of about fourteen people who had mostly just met. We had Christmas crackers with silly paper hats, lots of spaghetti and homemade meatballs, homemade french bread and (maybe a little too much) red wine. I’m prety sure the paper hats and wine went a long way to making everyone feel at home. 😉
My favorite part was after dinner when we pulled out these silly homemade songbooks and sang Christmas carols with Boone’s dad on the guitar. To make singing a little easier for everybody, I made coffee syllabubs (a super easy and amazing after dinner drink that southerners adopted from the British and adapted with brandy and bourbon.)
I didn’t come up with the singing idea on my own… For almost every Christmas Night from birth until age 24, my grandparent’s best friends the Gilchrists would throw a HUGE back tie soiree’ with a cocktail hour, a lovely meal, toasts, and then after dinner drinks and singing around a piano. I feel like those parties were some of my most formative experiences about what it meant to be a southern lady and a welcoming host….
