Christmas traditions

Everybody has his or her own special Christmas traditions. They come in many forms, and they’re repeated in homes around the world. Others are more quirky.

Some don’t emerge to be recognized as traditions until somebody says, “We’ve been doing this for a long time. It must be a tradition.”

When I was a little boy, the tradition was that the tree didn’t go up until after my sister and I had gone to bed on Christmas Eve. “Santa brings the tree and decorates it,” my parents told us. (It was only later that I realized my parents, children of the Depression who made the most of every penny, knew that trees were discounted late on Christmas Eve.)

But Christmas morning was all the more exciting for us kids because of that tradition. We saw the tree for the first time on Christmas morning, beautifully decorated and lit -- and surrounded with presents.

After all the gifts had been opened and the wrapping and ribbons discarded (into the trash, not the fireplace, my mother insisted), we’d begin sniffing for the aroma of Christmas dinner. (I later learned that the first whiff of the feast to come was of celery and onion sautéing in butter for the stuffing.) The dinner was a set affair: roasted turkey, giblet gravy, cornbread and sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce, a relish tray, candied yams, green beans cooked to death with a chunk of country ham, a Waldorf salad (which was my father’s only creative contribution to the feast) and a choice of homemade pumpkin or pecan pie. Or even a slice of each.

As my sister and I grew to be teenagers, I got involved playing a Roman soldier in the city’s annual Christmas Eve pageant at the Carillon at Byrd Park. Afterwards, the family would have a special Christmas Eve dinner: oyster stew, ham biscuits, baked beans, cole slaw and potato salad. Then we’d open the presents. I took to going to midnight service with friends.

The next morning we’d sleep in and then have Christmas dinner.

The “new” tradition stayed the same until the early 2000s, when the only members of my immediate family who were left were my mother and me.

After she died in 2007, my niece and nephew began inviting me to holiday gatherings, mostly at my nephew’s house where Becky, my nephew’s wife, and Terry, my niece, both cooked for a gathering of about a dozen. Both women are amazing cooks, and I quickly grew to love this “new” (to me) tradition. Becky, like my mother, has a wizard way with homemade yeast rolls, which I dearly love.

In the late 1970s, still another tradition evolved, and I didn’t recognize it as one of my important and even cherished Christmas customs for many years.

A group of us, mostly friends I have known forever, began to celebrate the holiday with a Christmas-night dinner at a Chinese restaurant. If you’ve ever wanted to go out for dinner on Christmas night, you know that most of Richmond’s restaurants are closed -- except for Chinese restaurants. For more than three decades, my friend Jerry Williams has organized reservations for the 12 of us. (He even makes place cards to make sure we don’t sit next to the same people we sat next to last year. Thanks, Jerry!)

Chinese restaurants all over town are packed on Christmas night, and the service is always slow, but that’s become part of the charm.

This year was no exception.

And so this year I pay tribute to this tradition and these old friends, a few of whom I see only several times a year. But I know I’ll always see them Christmas night.

In the picture above (which was taken by the receptionist at Peking on West Broad Street), you can see most of them. From left to right, they are Robyn, me, Jill, Jim, Danielle, Jane, Alan, Jerry, Shenandoah, Mark, John, and Barry.

By the way, there is a reason why Barry looms large at the forefront. He was in the bathroom when the receptionist took the picture of the rest of us. Mark -- who is our photo archivist -- took a separate picture of Barry and then worked some digital magic.

Traditions.

Old or new, you’ve gotta love ’em. They make the holidays memorable.

My James Bond journey

In preparation for seeing "Skyfall," I have set myself the task of watching all 22 James Bond films to see how the series has morphed over the 50 years since "Dr. No" debuted.

That's not such a hard task when you subscribe to Netflix, although the vagaries of the system make it onerous to watch them in their exact order. There's what Netflix calls a "very long wait" for the first two films. ("From Russia with Love" was the second.)

The Bond series is the longest continually-running series in film history.

The British secret agent with a license to kill, created by spook-turned -novelist Ian Fleming, took the world by storm in 1962. I was in college, and we all thought that Bond was absolutely the coolest spy who ever was. We'd line up to see the latest film at one of the downtown movie "palaces." I seem to remember most of them played in those days at the Loew's Theatre on Grace Street, now Richmond's CenterStage.

In the past few days, I've seen "Thunderball," "You Only Live Twice," "Goldfinger" and "Diamonds Are Forever." ("Dr. No" was shipped to me today, and "From Russia With Love" is now at the top of my Netflix queue.)

At this point, "Diamonds Are Forever" is my clear favorite, followed closely by "Goldfinger."

Why?

First off, both have title songs sung by venerable Welsh recording artist Shirley Bassey. (She also sang the title song for "Moonraker," but that was yet to come.) Nobody can belt a Bond theme like Bassey.

Both feature Sean Connery as Bond -- although it must be said that Connery was the only actor to have played Bond at the time "Diamonds" was filmed.

Both feature strong, evil antagonists -- Auric Goldfinger in "Goldfinger" and Ernst Stavro Blofeld in "Diamonds."

And both films feature strong supporting casts.

In "Goldfinger," Toshiyuki Sakata created one of the series most memorable thugs, Oddjob, who famously used his sharpened, steel-brimmed bowler hat to gruesome effect before Bond used that same hat to turn the tables. Oddjob's final scene is one that those who have seen "Goldfinger" will not soon forget.

Both have strong and tenacious female characters whom Bond manages to seduce in one way or another. In "Goldfinger," it's Honor Blackman. In "Diamonds," it's Jill St. John.

But what's come to be so clear to me as I rewatch these old favorites is the punchiness, the naughtiness and the crispness of the dialogue.

In "Goldfinger," when Blackman's character introduces herself to Bond as "Pussy Galore," Bond says, almost as an aside, "I must be dreaming."

In "Diamonds," in which St. John plays a diamond thief, she pops in and out of her first scene in a blonde wig and then as a brunette before confessing that she is a redhead. "Which do you prefer?" she asks. Bond replies, "Well, as long as the collar and cuffs match...."

And when Bond meets a woman at a casino craps table, she introduces herself as "Plenty O'Toole." Bond's reply? "Named after your father perhaps?"

And it's not just the women who have the good lines. And the memorable lines are not all naughty. Some are chilling.

In "Goldfinger," as Bond is strapped to a table with a laser cutter moving toward the family jewels, Bond asks Goldfinger, "Do you expect me to talk?" Goldfinger says, "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."

But what makes "Diamonds" stand out for me is the two inseparable smugglers who might just be the oddest characters in the whole series. Putter Smith plays Mr. Kidd, and Bruce Glover plays Mr. Wint. Neither has ever had a better film role. They play dangerous and quirky bad guys who, from first frame to last, try their damnedest to kill Bond -- in fascinating ways. They meet their own ends at Bond's hands in the final setpiece, in which they try -- but fail -- to bomb Bond with a bombe glacée.

Yep, "Diamonds" and "Goldfinger" are my favorites -- so far.

But it's only four down, and 18 to go. It might be a while before I get to "Skyfall." And I might change my mind about my favorites.