AN: Merry Christmas all!
Disclaimer:
I own nothing you recognise. This is all completely un-beta'd and totally fresh off the top of my brain!
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Michael Bublé croons over the speakers, just audible over the laughter in the house proper. Children shriek and duck under and around adults as they play a crazy game of 'tag'. Both sets of bay doors are thrown open, people spilling out onto the deck and onto a long table set up on the lawns.
"Not in the garden!" rings out as the children move suspiciously close to the lawn edges. Four white-blonde heads snap back to the house where the voice came from, then giggle and rush off.
The crack of an apparition rings out and Jo steps down from the 'designated' apparition pad.
"Little Jo!" her eldest cousin cries. The plate of chocolate fudge strawberry santa hats is taken from her hands and she's wrapped up in several sets of arms and joyful cries of "little Jo!" She laughs and kisses everyone's cheek.
This is the first time in almost a decade since they've done a proper Family Christmas, and this is the first time they've had it here in New Zealand. Last time the Family Christmas was held in England, and it had been the most fantastical White Christmas she ever could have wanted.
This time round, however, they are experiencing a real Kiwi Christmas. For once, Auckland weather isn't overcast, or raining, or hailing so hard it looks like snow. In an utterly abnormal show of cheer, the skies are brilliant blue with occasional white fluffy clouds meandering along. It's even expected to hit twenty seven degrees today (which, in Auckland terms, means bloody hot, because everyone forgets that's just the ambient temperature, and the strength of the sun adds another five to ten on top of that).
"Jo!" her mother calls. She hops up the stairs to the deck and winds her way around cousins and aunts and uncles – all who she greets with a grin and a hug, so it takes her quite some time – until she finally stands at the edge of the Powerhouse of Christmas. The Kitchen. She leans over the kitchen island and grabs her mum's arm. Sally's eyes crinkle as she looks at her daughter.
"Hi Mum," Jo says. "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," Sally replies. "Oh, come here and give me a hug, I need a hug from my daughter!" Jo laughs and squeezes her way into the tiny kitchen. Her mum wraps her up and kisses her on the cheek. Jo hugs her tightly back.
"It's so good to be here, mum," Jo says into her mum's shoulder.
"I'm so glad you could make it!" Sally punctuates her words with a tight squeeze and a laugh. "Everyone's here, have you met the wee ones yet?"
Jo pulls back but keeps her hand on her mum's arm. She hasn't been home in months. "Not yet, but I've no doubt I will soon. But before that, what needs doing?"
"Ah, the UV wards, please! Can't have everyone getting sunburned today," Sally replies. "Then you can get out everything we're going to need to set the table with, just don't set it yet. We should be eating at about four, so another hour to go yet. And don't let little fingers eat any dessert!" she says pointedly as she eyeballs one of the kids whose hand was creeping towards the punnet of strawberries. The child's eyes get wide and his hand skews off to the left to grab the paper towels instead.
"I can absolutely do that," Jo says, and nips back outside to strengthen the UV wards over the garden.
It actually takes another hour and a half to get all the food ready, the tables set, and the food out. The rosemary and sage stuffed turkey graces the centre of the large table on the lawn. Jo's little brother, Sam, carves up the whole cold ham and begins dishing it out to people as they ask. Huge salads piled high with rocket and cos lettuce and tomatoes and cucumber from the garden. Feta, avocado, olive oil, basil and capsicum are tossed in. There's garlic bread, breakfast sausages with tomato sauce for the kids, some kind of feta, tomato and basil pasta, and piles of roasted potato, kumara, onion and garlic. Gravy, cranberry, and apple sauce complete the condiments.
The roar of talk and laughter dulls to a murmur as everyone digs in. The quiet is broken by exclamations of delight and compliments to the chef. Sally takes it all with good grace.
"You know it's good food," she says to Jo, "when there's silence at the table." Jo laughs.
"It's very good food," Jo says, stuffing more kumara into her face.
"I had a lot of good help," Sally says.
Everyone lies around groaning for a while. Even the children are subdued. Everyone totters inside inside to lounge around the couches. The kids sit on their parents laps and doze while everyone chats. At least until the presents start getting poked and prodded, then they hop off laps and crowd around the tree, stamping their feet and flapping their arms in excitement. Sam sets himself up as the Present Distributor for the day.
There are a lot of presents under the tree from Santa for the kids. One or two for the cousins. One for mum, and a lot of presents from each other to each other. Jo ends up with more chocolate than she knows what to do with, and a beautiful little paua and silver angel tree decoration ("from 'Santa' - thanks mum"), as well as socks, undies, a Whitcoulls voucher ("hooray, more books!") and some new headphones.
The chatter dies down to a quiet murmur after that as people sleepily continue to digest the gratuitous amounts of food they've just ingested. It's nearly seven o'clock when the suggestion of 'desert' is put forward. It's seven thirty by the time there is enough enthusiasm from the adults to organise desert.
Then the table on the lawn is filled once more with delights – pavlova (a New Zealand creation, thank you very much, and no one dared say anything to the contrary), strawberries, kiwifruit, cream, blueberries, icecream (four different kinds, all of which were Kapiti) and a simply huge Christmas fruit cake. One of the cousins had brought a giant lemon-curd tart, while Uncle Rob had made his (highly alcoholic) trifle. Jo's santa hats were spread out on little plates amongst the lot. A small chocolate fudge base, with icing sticking an upside-down strawberry to it. Icing around the base of the strawberry and a small spodge on top made it look like a Christmas Hat. Stupidly easy to make (especially when the fudge were actually 'fudge bites' bought from the local hipster grocer around the corner) and suitably festive. The masses descend to pile their bowls high with everything and sit about eating in the sun. The children try to get access to the trifle, their sneaky movements easy to spot from a mile away and deflected onto the little fudge and strawberry Santa hats until the last of the trifle is served.
The desert has a soporific effect on everyone – children included. It's not long before everyone is mumbling about leaving and how nice it's been for it to be sunny and warm on a Christmas Day. Children are swaddled in coats and boots and scarves and hats. Parents slip on coats and gloves and scarves. Aunts and uncles kiss everyone goodbye, and portkeys begin to whip people away.
By the time the sun goes down at nearly eight thirty, there's just Sally, Jo and Sam standing on the lawn, waving as the last of the cousins disappear back to England. Jo sighs and begins to wrap up the leftovers, sending the dishes scurrying to the fridge. Sam gets all the dishes to the sink in a holding pattern, and Sally plucks them from the air to wash. The table is shrunk back to its normal size and chairs stacked neatly for stowing in the garage. It's the work of a few minutes to have the mess tidied up and tucked away.
"I hope you're coming back for lunch and dinner tomorrow," Sally says when she hugs Jo goodbye. "I have so much leftover food I'll be eating it for a month."
"I'll be over, but you can always invite Sam's friends over – they'll help." Sam grins and hugs her, bending down so his arms wrap around her neck and shoulders rather than her head. "I'm sure Sam will eat most of it."
"Well I'll send you home with some cake tomorrow, and some turkey and veggies." Sally pulls Jo into one more hug. "Apparate safe!"
"Bye!" Jo calls, waving, and disappears with a crack.
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