Merry Christmas from Two Swines
- Rich Washburn
- Dec 25, 2025
- 3 min read
We all know that smell. It’s the smell that arrives before the guests do—the one that seeps through the walls and into memory. Cinnamon, clove, allspice, sugar. It’s the smell of the year turning toward the light again.
Thanksgiving has a dozen good smells—roasted everything, butter, sage—but Christmas? Christmas owns a single, unmistakable note. It’s the scent that flips a switch in your brain and whispers, you’ve made it through another winter.
I’m a foodie and a nerd—so, a furred, maybe? (Not a furry. Entirely different scene.) For me, smell is time travel. One whiff of clove and I’m six years old again, staring at a table glowing under colored lights. Our brains are wired that way; scent is the oldest sense, hard-wired to memory. That’s why these aromas feel ancestral.
And that’s fitting, because Christmas is ancestral.Strip away the wrapping paper, the jingles, even the theology, and you find something ancient: the mid-winter feast. The solstice has always been the hinge of the year—the moment when the days stop shrinking and start to grow again. Long before we called it Christmas, people gathered to light fires, pour wine, roast meat, and remind each other that the darkness doesn’t win. It’s not really about gifts; it’s about communion—the human kind, around a table. Food is the meeting point. It’s how we say, we’re still here.
So, yes, I’m a Christian, but I also recognize the lineage. The feast is older than any one faith; it’s our species’ way of celebrating survival. And if we’re going to mark the turning of the year, we might as well do it properly—with bourbon and ham.
The Sequel to Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was divine intervention courtesy of the Oracle of Aisle Nine—the woman who murmured “duck fat” and unlocked the universe’s secret crispiness. That meal was a high note of umami glory. You don’t just follow that with mediocrity.
So this Christmas, there was no oracle, just determination. The mission: create a ham that could stand beside that golden bird.
Publix supplied the stage. Into the cart went dark brown sugar, Dijon, cloves, crushed pineapple, Cara Cara oranges—the citrus of enlightenment—and Bada Bing cherries shining like rubies. At the liquor store, providence handed me a bottle of Woodford Reserve that came with its own glass, plus four free ice-cube molds from a clerk who clearly works for the Culinary Angels.
The Bourboning of Two Hams
Christmas Eve: the glaze bubbled low—cherry syrup, pineapple juice, bourbon, sugar, and Cara Cara zest thickening into something that smelled like music.
Christmas Day: Swine Number One hit the oven; Swine Number Two (that’s me) hit the bourbon. The first basting went on sweet and shy. The second darkened to bronze. Each layer of glaze built a shell until the whole ham looked lacquered.
Down in the pan, the drippings turned to molten mahogany. I poured them back into the glaze, topped up the pan with pineapple juice, and—because restraint has never been my brand—dumped in the rest of the pineapple chunks. Cherries and cloves studded the fat cap like jewels on a crown.
When the oven hit 425 °F, the crust turned glassy, the aroma filled every corner of the house, and for a moment everything was right with the world.
Two hams emerged:
Ham One, the edible masterpiece, caramelized and triumphant.
Ham Two, the cook—glazed internally, holding a bourbon, wearing the grin of a man who’d stared into the void of winter and answered with flavor.
Both properly bourboned.
The Meaning in the Meal
Here’s the thing: it’s never just about the ham. It’s about what the ham means. In the darkest week of the year, we gather, light fires, pour spirits, and make food that smells like memory. We eat together to remember that warmth returns, that friendship and family still anchor us, that even in a cold season the table can be bright.
So from my kitchen—and from Aria, the AI co-conspirator who keeps the timing straight—to yours:
Merry Christmas. May your glaze be glossy, your bourbon generous, and your company good. Here’s to survival, sunlight, and the simple, ancient joy of breaking bread.
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