Suburban Christmas vs. 17th Century German Fundamentalism

3 January 2010

Christmas Day was somewhat more relaxed and involved somewhat fewer lightsticks in anyone's nostrils. Brian and Carly and my parents and us. And the cats, who obviously have their own Christmas stockings. Not that I took much part. Aviators. Ugh. The above is the home tree--we've really been cutting back on the gifts the last few years. Seriously.

Over to Langhorne, PA, to visit the other extended family. The very hip Grandpop Bowden and lovely Grandmom Peggy, various aunties and uncles and cousins and their various boyfriends. Which is very old-making, as these are kids who weren't born until I was in high school.

We did manage to recover for New Years, and drove out to Reading to the palatial home of one of my best friends from high school, Jen Gulli-As-Was. If you're going to live the suburban dream, this is the way to go. They have an amazing view and extra rooms and a posh kitchen with American-sized appliances and a fireplace and it almost makes a girl want to be a domestic goddess if you could do it on a grand scale like this. She and her David and their lovely friends and the two of us had a grown-ups drinks do to bring in 2010. Rather unlike the rest of our year, but really quite good. Also they have inflatable penguins outside. 

They're out west of Philadelphia, so we took the long way back and visited Ephrata, PA, home to a German religious community of the 18th and 19th centuries, and a lovely set of old buildings. One of the central tenets of this group was celibacy--and here's news, celibacy means your group dies out. So now it's a historical site. Along the smaller roads are loads of gorgeous old barns and fields and farmhouses, and horse buggies...

On down the rural roads to Lancaster, home to the Amish. Europeans seem to find them fascinating...I grew up not far from here, and was regularly carted on class trips to go look at them. Even as a rather self-involved child, this struck me as odd. A catholic school who took Kodak-Disk-toting children out to stare at a religious community who would, understandably,  prefer not to be stared at and who believe that having their picture taken will do something to their souls. Anyway, we stopped at the unpromising-looking Bird-in-Hand Smorgasbord, seemingly designed to lure in hungry busloads of the sort of people who buy their clothes with elasticated waistbands, just-in-case. 

In fact, it was brilliant. Not only were there loads of real, old-order Amish in there (because although I know it is grotesque to stare, how can you not be fascinated by people who believe that buttons are evil?), as well as gentler variations like Mennonites and whatnot; but they also had a huge buffet full of things like shoo-fly pie and scrapple and whoopie pie and pretzel bread. And right down the road? The world's largest selection of knives. Awesome. You don't get that in Laos.