A Christmas Song Can't Be Wrong, Can It?

There is a side to New Hampshire that really is like what you see in the popular Yankee magazine or Yankee Candle and all that very romanticized, sentimental New England stuff. Christmas is a HUGE deal up here in New Hampshire, and New Hampshirites take their Christmas decorating very seriously. (Check out this video from the local news that made big headlines when someone swiped an inflatable Santa from a New Hampshirite's front lawn.) Imagine my surprise then, given all this, when my wife decides to roast some chestnuts and our neighbors looked at us like we offered them some nummy squirrel brains. Now, as a wee lad, my father used to get me a small white paper cup of roasted chestnuts from corner street vendors in the main town for our region of New York state, and I know years later you could still buy the same on the streets of New York City itself, although admittedly, there the chestnuts tended to have a carbon monoxide flavor, courtesy of the buses and yellow cabs. I mean, come on people, even Wayne Newton sang about roasted chestnuts by the fireside! Chestnut trees are native to New Hampshire, although a blight many years ago put a big dent in their numbers. A few weeks ago while in Portsmouth on the ocean, we watched a couple collecting their own scallops and shucking them by the dock; what's so strange about picking up chestnuts and roasting them? You'd think a tradition-crazed state like NH would be all over the roasted chestnuts thing, but no, I'm afraid roasted chestnuts in New Hampshire have been surpassed as a Christmas tradition by the likes of marshmellow peeps. In a futile attempt to restart a good old tradition, I offer this page for a recipe. Enjoy.

New Hampshire at Christmas

New Hampshire is definitely the place to be for Christmas, unless of course you have an allergy to snow and quaintness. This state was just made for Christmas, with its rural New England architecture, idyllic snow-covered evergreen trees, covered bridges that span the "over-the-river-and-through-the-woods" scenery, and a local obsession with antiques and folksy arts and crafts. Indeed, some local entrepreneurs have embraced this dyed-in-the-wool Christmas wonderland by making year-round businesses based on the holiday, like the Christmas Farm Inn, the entire indoor Christmas village at the Christmas Loft (in North Conway, NH), a year-round outdoor Christmas theme park at Santa's Village, and Jingles Christmas Shop. The point is that the American ideal of Christmas looks a lot like New Hampshire.

I think one of the things contributing to this Christmasy atmosphere here in NH is a lingering old English imprint on the local culture, which I've poked fun at before -- the fact that there are still lots of Smiths, Joneses and people with colors for names like Browns, Greens and Whites running around this state. Indeed, while nationally the U.S. is estimated in 2009 to have been 74.5% "white" (self-declared), in New Hampshire that number is 95.3%. Let's face it; there are reasons that neither Rap or Mambo music started in New Hampshire. However, the reality of course in late 2010 is that New Hampshire is a modern state, not some Norman Rockwell painting, and as such it is an increasingly complex and diverse population of people. My Norman Rockwell reference was apt; despite his famous paintings of sugary idyllic scenes for the Saturday Evening Post, he was a strong proponent of racial equality and included racial diversity in his paintings whenever he could get away with it in early 20th century America. I mention all this because we are reminded of the reality that even here in rustic, rural New England, a scene today can take place which reminds us that we are all indeed in this together. A mosque, a synagogue and a Hindu temple in Manchester,NH came together to man Christian soup kitchens today for the poor and homeless so that the Christian workers at these facilities could spend this most important Christian holiday with their families. If that isn't the true meaning of Christmas I don't know what is, and I wish Norman Rockwell were here to paint it.

The picture above was from here.