I know that several of my readers are wondering how the turducken we had for Christmas dinner turned out. So, how was it? Apart from the fact that the cooking directions on the box were different from those on the packaging (and actual cooking time was something different still), and the fact that $70 is still an awful lot for holiday poultry, no matter how boneless it is and how much meat you end up getting, it was pretty good. Turducken is, in fact, pretty fucking delicious — in no small part due to the heavy seasoning on the outside of the turkey and in the pork sausage stuffing and the fact that the ambrosia that is duck fat ends up pervading everything. Aaah. I know you’ll want a good look at it: here are my photos of the cooking and carving. Don’t know if we’d do it again — as I said, $70 is an awful lot, especially for just three people — but I’m very glad we did it this time.

So I felt like doing something other than a turkey for Christmas dinner this year. Maybe a ham, maybe a duck, maybe a goose. Or, if I’m feeling particularly indecisive, how about three things in one: a chicken stuffed inside a duck inside a turkey — a turducken?

I’d heard about turduckens, but, since I had never seen one in the stores, I assumed they weren’t available here. Well, they are, and we’ve picked one up. So it’s turducken for Christmas this year — an odd choice, even more so because they seem to be a Thanksgiving item in the U.S. — but odd is interesting in our books.

It’s a U.S. import, which I guess makes sense — and, I guess, also explains the $70 price tag. It also comes in a box, which I didn’t expect.

More anon. Operation Turducken is under way. The bird bundle has been acquired; cooking and eating to follow at the appropriate juncture.

As a genre, Christmas music is repetitive and nauseating. Even though we’re treated to it nonstop for nearly two months, its repertoire is surprisingly limited: we get endlessly insipid variations on very few songs — eighty bazillion versions of “Jingle Bell Rock” and “O Holy Night,” as Jennifer has discovered. I can’t recall a single original song in the past few decades that has entered the canon; most of the “popular” songs (read: snow and Santa rather than religious) are at least decades old.

Fortunately, the Christmas novelty songs provide some relief. Some of them are silly, some of them are filthy, and some are just as derivative as the latest forgettable pop star’s forgettable rendition of an old war-horse carol. But they’re the only things that keep me sane. And I’ve finally collected enough of them that I can offer you a playlist of them to keep you sane.

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