A Second Chance at Happiness

Some things about Christmas don't change.

There's always a shared meal on Christmas eve starting with a pomegarante salad followed by multiple main courses to appease various tastes.

We began with a South African, always the way to get my attention, in this case the Star Tree Brut, a lovely wine, tasting of spicy pear and the promise of the holiday.

My favorite part of this year's meal (because I did not have to prepare it but got to enjoy anyway) was the hearty and savory dish of pork, sauerkraut, apples and potatoes, heightened by the honeysuckle notes of the rich Jean-Baptiste Adam Gewurztraminer we drank with it.

Others ate a chicken dish I did prepare from a chicken raised in Culpeper, a chicken whose throat had been cut by one of the guests, but at least a chicken who had lived a happy, farm life and not spent his numbered days in a tiny coop.

Dinner over, we gathered our forces to face the madding crowds at the Byrd theater for the annual viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life," a film guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of strong men and sentimental women.

The line was already around the Daily when our posse arrived, but we made it inside before the line was cut off and people's Christmas eve dreams were dashed.

We ended up way in the back- fourth row from the back- but with buttered popcorn and Milk Duds procured, it wasn't so bad.

The evening unexpectedly began with manager Todd doing a black and white slide show of the Byrd's history, showing the original smaller 1928 proscenium and non-existent concession stand.

How did people sit through movies without snackage?

The 1970s slide he showed had corrected both those issues but still looked vastly different than today.

We saw a picture of the days when the lobby included a pond with fish, which turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, so the fish soon exited, stage right.

There were shots of the enormous Byrd chandelier, which he said weighed 2 1/2 tons and contained over 5.100 pieces of Czechoslovakian crystal.

When it came time to clean it, he said it took fifteen minutes to crank it down to a reachable level but an hour and fifteen to crank it back up to its rightful place on the ceiling.

"So we hired strapping, young gentlemen to do the job for us," he said, showing a slide of said gentlemen.

After the history lesson, Bob Gulledge and the mighty Wurlitzer arose from the bowels of the building for the annual Christmas singalong.

Say what you will about cheesy songs belted out by the tone-deaf, but on Christmas eve, it's actually pretty endearing.

Then it was time for the reason for the evening, that 1946 classic, "It's a  Wonderful Life," the movie that reminds us how much of an effect each of us has on the lives of so many others.

True, I've watched this holiday classic at the Byrd for close to twenty years but I've yet to tire of the sweet story or of watching Jimmy Stewart as the man who gets nothing he thinks he wants but everything he truly does.

I happen to think that sometimes life works out that way for many of us.

Christmas morning dawned sunny but far too cold for me, although I took my daily walk anyway, but only after a hearty breakfast that left the apartment reeking of bacon, always a good thing.

Walking through nearby Carver was like strolling a ghost town with only a few cars on the road and absolutely no one, not even dog walkers, on the streets.

The only sign of life was coming from a non-descript house near the garage where I take my car; from it emanated the extremely loud sound of drums and bass, a Christmas day band practice it sounded like.

Given the solitude of the neighborhood, I paused and listened for a while, enjoying the energy and volume piercing the holiday morning emptiness.

My guests began arriving mid-afternoon, some who were part of last years' celebration and others who weren't and a few still hungover from their eve celebrating.

Ignoring that, we began by popping a bottle of Tendil & Lombardi blanc de noir champagne, an absolutely gorgeous creamy sparkler that was a Christmas gift in and of itself.

I was also gifted with books, including a cultural history called "New York by Gaslight," written by a Richmonder in 1850 about the seamier side of the growing city, and two perfectly lovely pieces of small sculpture made by VCU sculpture students.

Our soundtrack ranged from 1958's "Johnny Mathis Merry Christmas" to 1965's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to the Carpenters' 1978 "Christmas Portrait."

For a good decade now, my traditional Christmas dinner has been cheeseburgers and tonight was no different except that I got out of cooking  by ceding control of the kitchen to those who do it for a living, another Christmas gift.

Enjoying a bottle of beautifully balanced Bouchaine Carneras pinot noir with our bacon, cheese and fried onion-laden burgers, everyone seemed perfectly okay with my non-traditional Christmas supper.

It was during a dessert of Christmas cookies and an obscenely rich chocolate cake that I took advantage of a new-to-me Christmas gift CD, Nils Lofgren's "White Lies," a blast from the past I'd owned in college that got high marks from the guitarist at the table, who questioned what genre the album was considered.

Honestly, that's a tough call since music genres weren't nearly as specific in the '70s as they are now.

What I like most about the album is how side one is labeled "rocking" and side two "dreamy."

If you'd asked me in college, that's exactly how I'd have hoped my life would turn out - part rocking and part dreamy.

It has. Call it post-Christmas bliss, but I think I think I've got my wonderful life.