Monica says:

My sister has had an annual “Teddy Bear Tea Party” with close friends and their children in mid-December for the past 20+ years. It’s a wonderful tradition where everyone wears a hat and brings a teddy bear to the tea.

Here is Daria on the right with several of her cousins back in 2011. My Claudia was in NYC and couldn’t attend.

My girls looked forward to it every year when they were young and it was always a great way to celebrate the Christmas season.

Well, all of our children have grown up, but some of my sisters still have their children in the area, and they in turn have children, so the tradition continues.

The party is wonderful and full of Christmas goodies and delights. A special Christmas tea highlights the day and everyone, young and old, drinks it out of beautiful bone china tea cups. The menu always includes little tea sandwiches filled with tuna and chicken salad, a special salad with pecans or walnuts, veggies and dip, and various other items brought to the celebration by the attendees.

Attending this party as the sole gluten-free person is difficult, at best.

As soon as you enter the house, the smell of pumpkin cinnamon rolls as well as the many other delights and confections, is so overwhelming, you can almost cry knowing full well that you will not be able to eat any of these food items.

Since my husband and I went to a late Mass at our church, we rushed to get to the party and I had not eaten anything before Mass. So I think I really had a hard time dealing with being gluten-free….yes, the oddball among the “regular” people.

And you would think after 12 long years of being gluten-free it gets easier….it does in many ways, but not always!

My sister did have some chicken salad set aside for me (couldn’t have tuna since I am allergic) and gluten-free crackers for which I am so grateful.

The night before I made a gluten-free sour cream coffee cake and had such a hard time removing it from the bundt pan, and when I finally did, the whole thing crumbled! Such a disaster!

What did I do? I pieced it together and brought it anyway….at least I had one calorie-ridden thing to eat when everyone else was munching on Christmas cookies, walnut roll, lemon fluff, etc. Of course, no one wanted to try the gluten-free cake…who would with all of the other goodies?

So, I suppose my best advice when attending a holiday celebration….eat before you go….just in case you are not able to indulge in much!

Enjoy the people, not the food necessarily, even though it’s hard to get past all of the wonderful aromas! All of that food will make you sick and miserable….albeit lovely to look at and sniff!

© 2014, Monica of glutenfreedoubletalk