Countdown to Christmas Calendar – Day 19

December 19, 2025 – 6 days to Christmas!

Theme: Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships

Today’s Story: Christmas Punch (Recipe Included)

For Penny.

Eleanor had been hunting for the nutmeg—surely she’d bought nutmeg at some point in the last two decades—when her hand touched a dusty cardboard box, wedged behind the huge punch bowl she never used and a fondue set she had used once and regretted buying ever since.

The recipe box smelled peculiar: of cheap perfume and Gauloises cigarettes and bitter wine, of the papeterie on Rue Gambetta, where she and Chloe bought notebooks so they could write secret notes to each other even though they saw each other every single day.

Outside, the wind rattled the shutters insistently. Biarritz, usually a sun-splashed seaside town where surfers, stylish retirees, and impeccably groomed dogs all share the same glamorous promenade. Not today.

Inside, the silence had a texture now, something thick enough to chew. Hers was an empty nest. Three days since she’d driven her son Mathis to the train station, his overstuffed duffel leaving a dent in her back seat that hadn’t popped back up yet. The house still smelled of his cologne in places—the hallway, the bathroom—but already those pockets of scent were dispersing.

Eleanor sat at the kitchen table, the recipe box between her hands. Her coffee had gone stale an hour ago. She’d been staring at the garden, where the hydrangeas were brown now and papery, their lacey big heads bowing under the weight of the morning’s rain.

She blew the dust off the box, sneezed violently and opened it.

Chloe’s handwriting seemed to jump off the paper: looping, chaotic, the ‘i’s’ never dotted, the ‘t’s’ crossed with aggressive slashes that sometimes tore through the paper. There were recipes, yes: a Clafoutis that wouldn’t (couldn’t) set, a Cassoulet that required three days’ patience and the temperament of a saint, a Marmitako that tasted like every fisherman in the Bay of Biscay had contributed an opinion, a Gâteau Basque whose cherry filling staged a quiet rebellion and escaped at the edges, a Merluza en Salsa Verde that refused to turn verde no matter how much parsley she used to bribe it—but more than that, there were notes. Eleanor, don’t you dare – if you make this without me, I’ll know. I’ll KNOW. And underneath a recipe for quiche: Remember the salt. REMEMBER THE SALT. They’d actually forgotten the salt once. More than once, actually.

She pulled out cards at random. Chloe’s mother’s Croustade, annotated with too much sugar, not enough Armagnac. A recipe for Bisque de Homard that included the instruction tell the fishmonger you’re Basque, so he’ll give you the decent stuff. And then, at the very bottom, creased and stained with something that might have been wine or might have been fruit juice or might have been a mix of both: The Christmas Punch.

Eleanor laughed out loud, the sound sharp and startling in the empty kitchen.

Le Punch Explosive de Noël, Chloe had written across the top in red pen, the letters getting progressively larger. For when you want your guests to either love you forever or never speak to you again.

The ingredients LOOKED innocent enough. Champagne, obviously, because they’d been twenty-four and thought champagne made everything awfully sophisticated. And Armagnac— smooth, dark and mysterious, preferably from Chateau de Ravignan, Chloe had underlined this three times. Lychee juice from a can, because there’d been a Chinese grocery near Chloe’s apartment and they’d been obsessed with it. Fresh ginger. Star anise. And then, in Chloe’s handwriting: Angostura bitters, but like, a LOT. More than you think. Keep going. MORE.

Underneath, in Eleanor’s own younger hand: We made this exactly TWICE, and both times people cried. Bitterly.

Her phone was in her hand before she’d decided to pick it up. Chloe’s number was still there, fifteenth in her contacts, untouched for—what? A year? More? They’d texted on birthdays. They’d sent the occasional article link, the kind of thing that said thinking of you without requiring a response.

Eleanor’s thumb hovered over the call button.

It rang four times. She was about to hang up when—

“Allô?” Chloe’s voice, rougher than Eleanor remembered, scratchy with what might have been a cold.

“I need to know,” Eleanor said, “whether the lychee juice in the Christmas punch was from a tin or a jar.”

Silence. Then: “Eleanor?”

“Because I’m looking at the recipe, and it says lychee juice, but I can’t remember if we used the stuff in the tin with the whole lychees or if there was some kind of juice situation—”

Chloe’s laugh was exactly the same, that bright, startled bark that always sounded like she’d surprised herself. “So. You found it. You found the box?”

“I found the box.”

“The punch. Eleanor. That punch sent three people home in taxis. One via the Accident and Emergency department, if I remember correctly.”

“Four,” Eleanor corrected. “Four people. You’re forgetting Marc’s roommate.”

“I’ve tried very hard to forget all about Marc’s roommate.”

They were both laughing now, and Eleanor realised her eyes were wet, which was stupid; it was just a punch recipe, but Chloe’s voice in her ear felt like slipping into a warm bath after standing too long in the cold.

“It was a tin,” Chloe said. “Definitely a tin.”

Outside, the light was changing, the grey lifting slightly as the clouds shifted. Eleanor got up and moved to the window, the phone pressed to her ear, the recipe card still in her other hand. The ocean was a line of darker grey against the lighter grey of the sky.

“So Mathis left,” Chloe said, not quite a question.

“Three days ago.”

“And you’re calling me about punch.”

“Et oui, en effet.“

Another pause. Eleanor could hear sounds on Chloe’s end now—a kettle whistling, the clink of a spoon against ceramic. Strasbourg, a storybook city where half-timbered houses lean over quiet canals, where you can wander medieval cobblestone streets and accidentally bump into a European Parliament official buying pretzels. Chloe was in Strasbourg, in her kitchen, probably looking out at the cathedral spires. Fifteen years in Alsace, selling artisanal soap and living with a German sculptor named Klaus and sending occasional photos of her balcony garden, where somehow, impossibly, she grew tomatoes that actually ripened.

“The bitters,” Chloe said. “Do you remember why we used so much?”

“Because you said it needed ‘complexity.'”

“I was such a pretentious git.”

“You were. You really were.”

“And you let me put star anise in champagne.”

“I did. I’m complicit.”

They talked about the punch. They talked about the other recipes in the box—the disastrous coq au vin that had somehow been both burnt and raw, the tarte tatin that stuck to the baking tray and had to be served as ‘deconstructed,’ which was not yet a trendy thing to say. They talked about the New Year’s Eve party where they’d served the punch in a ceramic bowl that Chloe had insisted was vintage but was actually from Monoprix.

“We were so sure we were sophisticated,” Chloe said.

“We wore hats indoors.”

“Decorative hats.”

“We discussed Sartre at bars.”

“Even though we’d never actually read Sartre.”

The sun came out, briefly, and Eleanor watched the light catch on the brown hydrangea petals, making them translucent.

“I miss you,” Eleanor said, and was surprised that she’d said it out loud.

Chloe was quiet for a moment. Then: “What are you doing Christmas Eve?”

“Mathis won’t be back until the 27th. Thomas is at his father’s until New Year’s.”

“So you’re alone.”

“I have a book. Several books. And I was thinking about reorganising the—”

“No,” Chloe said, with the same firmness she’d used to veto Eleanor’s terrible dating choices. “Absolutely not. We’re making the punch.”

“Chloe—”

“We’re making it. Both of us. Video call. I’ll get the ingredients in Strasbourg, you get them in Biarritz, and Christmas Eve at—what, eight? We’ll make it together.”

Eleanor looked at the recipe card, at the stains and the annotations and the exclamation points. At Chloe’s handwriting, which she’d recognise anywhere, in any decade.

“It’s a terrible recipe,” she said.

“It’s a catastrophic recipe.”

“People cried.”

“Klaus will hate it.”

“Klaus is spending Christmas with his mother in Stuttgart. It’ll be just us. Like old times, except with working plumbing and better wine.”

Eleanor’s throat was tight. The kitchen felt less empty now, less like a stage with all the actors gone and more like a room where something was about to happen.

“Eight o’clock,” she said.

“Christmas Eve.”

“Don’t forget the bitters.”

“Oh, I’m bringing so many bitters. An irresponsible amount of bitters.”

After they hung up, Eleanor stayed at the window. The sun had gone again, but somehow the garden looked different—expectant, maybe, or just more patient with its own bareness. She put the recipe card on the refrigerator, held up with a magnet shaped like a Basque cross that her mother had given her decades ago.

The silence in the house was still there, but it had shifted. It was the silence before a phone call, before a laugh, before the sound of ice cubes dropping into glasses and champagne fizzing and someone saying more bitters, keep going, MORE.

She picked up her coffee cup and dumped the cold remains down the sink. Then she put on her coat and grabbed her shopping bag and headed out into the December afternoon, where the wind tasted like salt, and the market would still be open, and somewhere—probably at the little Asian grocery near Les Halles—there would be lychees in a tin.

Punch de Noël recipe: Mix together in a large punch bowl: 1 Litre 100% cranberry juice, 2 bottles very dry sparkling wine (750 ml bottles) , ex Champagne or Prosecco, 500ml apple cider, 300ml lychee juice, 300ml Armagnac, 2 oranges and a star fruit, thinly sliced with rim attached, no Angostura bitters. Grated ginger, star anise to taste. Ice. Lots.

Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan

True friends reflect the best parts of us, even when we can’t see them ourselves. They remind us of our strengths, our potential, and our ability to overcome life’s challenges. In times of transition, this reflection can be a lifeline, helping us rediscover who we are.

Take a moment to think about a friend who sees your light even when you feel surrounded by darkness. What qualities do they notice in you that you sometimes forget? Their belief in you is a gift, one that can inspire you to step into your own power.

Friendships aren’t just about comfort—they’re about growth. When you let friends reflect your strengths back to you, you gain the courage to keep moving forward.

Today’s Intention: Call someone you’ve lost touch with. Not to catch up properly or have a deep conversation, but for something small and specific and possibly ridiculous. A recipe. A song lyric. The name of that restaurant. Whatever excuse gets you to dial. Worst case scenario: It’s awkward. The conversation stumbles. You remember why you drifted apart—not because of anything dramatic, just because life pulled you in different directions and neither of you fought it. You hang up feeling foolish for thinking fifteen years could be bridged by a punch recipe. The silence in your house gets louder. Best case: You remember why you loved them in the first place. The conversation goes on for hours. You laugh until your face hurts. You realise the friendship wasn’t dead, just dormant, waiting for someone to be brave enough to pick up the phone. You make plans—concrete plans, not the vague “we should get together sometime” kind. You build a new tradition that honours who you both were and makes space for who you’ve become. You discover that the people you need most in your life might already be in your phone, just waiting for you to remember they matter. You end up with a video call on Christmas Eve, both of you in your kitchens hundreds of kilometres apart, making a terrible punch and laughing so hard you can barely see the screen through tears, and somewhere in that chaos of star anise and too many bitters you find your way back to the person who knew you when you wore decorative hats and discussed philosophers you’d never read, and you realise that the best friendships don’t end—they just wait, patient as hydrangeas in December, for someone to notice they’re still there.

What’s one positive quality a friend has pointed out in you? How can you nurture that quality in yourself?

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