I try to give each one a spin during the holiday season, but it's not always easy to do so, since I don't drink coffee or tea at home much anymore (only on weekends or days off, and usually only on Sundays). It's been especially challenging this year, since the holiday season has been so much shorter than usual--just 35 days from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.
Even with that compressed time frame, there are some traditions that must be observed--from putting up Grandma's Christmas tree to putting Angelique on display to finding spots for Rudy and Peppermint Kitty to hang out for the season.
And there is one more tradition I observe--the Christmas Cups.
The Christmas Cups are not like the other cups mentioned above. They are not remotely holiday themed. No snowflakes flutter across its glazed surface. No reindeer frolic. No Santas or snowmen smile back at you. No poinsettias or cardinals or angels aglow with heavenly light adorn it.
They are small, fragile, simple things Made in Japan sometime in the front half of the last century, with pink (maybe faded magenta) designs on it. Designs of Japanese houses, fishermen, streams, trees, hills. Each has a matching saucer.
And both cup and saucers have been in my family for decades.
Whenever we went to Grandma's little cottage on McLean Avenue, I drank coffee and tea out of this cup. After she died, Mom took all the china and silverware to our house and stored them in the basement. (Most of it is still down there, unmoved and untouched in the two decades plus since Grandma died.) When I moved into my own place, Mom let me have my pick of Grandma's china. I chose two of those Japanese cups and saucers.
During my move into the original La Casa del Terror, a friend told me that those cups were likely made with lead in either the clay for the china or the paint for the design. Either way, it wouldn't be safe to use those cups on a regular basis, especially since they all had chips and/or cracks--certainly not daily, nor even weekly. Once in a while, though, would be fine.
Thus, they became the Christmas Cups.
Confession: I sometimes use them at other times of the year--never, however, more than two or three times a year, and always, always on Christmas Day.
I took the two cups and saucers (instead of just one each) with the notion that someday, I'd have someone to drink coffee with (and not just on Christmas morning)--a girlfriend, a wife, maybe a young'un or two. Hell, even the occasional "friend with benefits."
Never happened. Scattered dates, occasional snogging and even more occasional sex (as in "I can remember exactly the last time I got some--because it's been that long"), in all this time, no one's lips have touched these cups but mine. And, at this point, no one else is likely to.
Come Christmas morning, though, I'll likely scramble some eggs with sausage, cheese and Serrano peppers thrown in--I'd call it an omelette, but I lack the pan-flipping coordination to make anything that pretty-- brew a pot of Eight O'Clock French Roast, fill one of those cups to damn near overflowing (the other cup will have to wait until next time, probably next Christmas) and watch a few holiday movies, Grandma's tree in the window behind me, Olivia curled up within arm's reach (never a lap kitty, she) and decorations here and there.
The warmth of the day, all swirling in one small, fragile, simple cup. For the sake of the day, it will be enough.
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