#27 - Christmas and Geese
I have long associated Christmas with geese. It is an association that has reinforced itself over the years in spite of the birds’ reptilian ancestry and very un-Christmassy beginnings.
When I was a boy, on the day before Christmas, my father and I would drive to the farm of a man who grew Christmas trees. I was fascinated with the place. Under tall, dark spruce trees was a barn with a cluster of outbuildings. All around, the ground was worn bare by animal traffic, and there was a small, ice-covered pond in the middle of the scene. Old wagons and farm implements stood idle, their iron wheels frozen in the ground, and yet there was no lack of activity as we got out of the car, for this man also raised geese.
Wonderful, tall white case they were, who trooped about the yard. Nearly as tall as I was, they coursed in unison after the man's barking dog, first advancing and then retreating between wagon wheels, and honking a great cacophony that filled the cold air. While my father and the man picked out a tree, I admired the geese and wished we could have such a lively barnyard at home. We had an old barn with horse stalls and chicken wire enclosures, but it had stood empty all the while I was growing up, devoid of all the animal warmth and commotion and organic smells I yearned for then. And thus began my connecting Christmastime with things of the earth like the smell of fir trees, barn yards and tall white geese.
Charles Dickens probably played no small part in all of this with his rich portrayal of the glorious Christmas spirit growing up out of the dingy but fertile ground of man's often messy domain, and old Scrooge himself, succumbing happily in the end as he called out to a small boy in the street to go down to the butcher’s and buy the biggest Christmas goose in the shop for the Cratchet family. What about a goose should make it such a fitting Christmas creature? I am not alone in singling it out for such a roll; historically, a fat goose, roasted to a golden brown, has been the crowning touch on the Christmas table.
Well, this year the Christmas and goose connection came home - literally. A friend came to call with little else on his mind than a friendly visit. We jawed for some time when I remembered I had some extra hens I was hoping to get rid of. So, I asked him how he'd like to have a few of my hens. "I'll tell you what," he said. " I'll make you a trade. I’ve got a couple of geese, Africans, a goose and a gander.”
I thought about it for a minute . . . and agreed. The timing was good; Christmas was coming; time to cut a tree; all that was needed to complete the picture was a fine pair of geese. We shook hands, and I was unexpectedly the proud owner of some geese. I felt positively silly.
A couple of days later we made the exchange: five good laying hens for the two handsome Africans, and there they were in my very own yard. They honked and bugled to one another and strutted about grandly while my dog barked her approval. My son, Lije, and I had only just cut a fine balsam fir Christmas tree, and we smiled at each other. I had told him the story of how I’d always wanted geese at Christmastime.
These two geese were not for the table though. We named them Peter and Holly.