For the past two years I have driven myself and all of my friends crazy trying to recreate in Russia the Christmas of my dreams.
Now, at last, I am having it. I have visited Boston's gaily lit streets, shopped in lavishly decorated stores, and lifted a glass of eggnog at my parents' tall tree, bedecked with the ornaments I remember from my childhood.
It's all perfect, the way I've always thought Christmas should be.
But some perverse little voice inside whispers, "Something's missing." I'm afraid I have become so used to rough-and-tumble Moscow that I can't do without the aggravation. I keep thinking about one of my favorite Christmases, two years ago.
It started out drearily enough. The weather was bitterly cold and I was sick. But I trudged to the New Year's tree market where I paid an outrageous sum for a scraggly little tree that the salesman assured me was a "Kremlin blue spruce."
"You mean it was grown in the Kremlin?" I asked incredulously.
"Of course," he said, with a broad wink.
I dragged the thing home and stuck it on the balcony, awaiting Christmas Eve.
On the afternoon of the 24th I went to GUM, where I spent the equivalent of $3.00 on a full set of ornaments for my little yolochka. They were mostly gaudy glass balls in poisonous shades of blue, fuschia, and mustard, but they were all I could find.
I also bought something like a tree stand -- two strips of wood with a hole in the middle.
On Christmas Eve several friends came over. I brought the tree in, only to find that the trunk had frozen solid in the bitter cold, it was too big for the stand, and all we had to cut it with was a Swiss Army knife. We sat on the kitchen floor, taking turns, until our hands were blistered, the knife was broken, and we had had enough.
Eventually we gave up and propped the tree in a bucket filled with paperback books.
An unexpected guest had arrived, a young man named Robert whom I had met months earlier at a bar and detested on sight. My friends had invited him without telling me, which hardly improved my mood. I sent him and another fellow out on a kiosk crawl, with orders not to come back without red wine. They returned, cold and abashed, hours later, holding two bottles of red vermouth. "All we could find," they said sheepishly.
Let me tell you, hot spiced wine made with red vermouth is not a cheery thought.
But somehow the evening came together. We trimmed the tree and opened gifts -- an extravagant crop of kiosk presents, including playing cards with portraits of the tsars, a calendar of Lake Baikal pictures, and an entire box of Snickers. Someone had found Bailey's Irish cream for only 1,400 rubles, and everyone got a little bottle.
We drank champagne and toasted our beautiful little tree, and laughed and partied until the wee hours. Best of all, Robert and I became fast friends.
It was a perfect Moscow Christmas, full of laughter, love and cheer.
Merry Christmas, Moscow.
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Remind me later.