Christmas Memories, part 2

The month of December always seemed the longest. We never could fill the advent calendar fast enough for me. But after so many long, slow, wintery days, Christmas Eve finally arrived. And with it, so many traditions. It began with dinner. Our time-honored fare was spaghetti. Yup, this German/Dutch/Irish family rang in the holidays with a good ol’ Italian meal. Though I have had many good meat sauces over the years, nothing tops Mom’s homemade ‘bahsgetti’ sauce. I can still taste it. There was probably salad and garlic bread as well, but it was that delicious tomato and beef topping that has imprinted upon my mind. Growing up, we didn’t have ‘pop’ every day. It was something saved for special occasions like sleepovers and Christmas Eve. The only soda we drank that night was 7-up, festively colored either red or green and imbibed from stemware. And to end this delicious feast, dessert! We had this plastic display that was shaped like a Christmas tree. It held paper cones that were to be filled with green and red Jell-O. We anxious awaited this course, not because it was particularly tasty, but because the gelatin NEVER set! I may be mistaken, but I don’t remember a single year where we could use an actual spoon to eat our dessert. Most years, we just drank it.

          After dinner, the evening slowed down. We would gather in the living room, turn off the lights, and light all the candles. This included the lighting of the angel chimes I mentioned in the last post. In the darkness, we would watch the spinning reflections on the ceiling and collect our thoughts. I’m sure, like me, my sisters pondered the big issues: can we feed the hungry, will the coming year be peaceful, did I get that game I’ve been begging for all season? You know, the important things. Actually, I think this was an excellent ploy to get three excited girls with full bellies to become tired and go to bed. Little did our parents know this was the year it would finally happen. We tried every Christmas and always failed, but this year we would finally succeed in staying up until midnight. Why was this so important? Because at midnight every Christmas Eve the animals were given the gift of speech. We always wanted to stay up to hear the wise words they were sure to impart to us. Alas, it never was meant to be.

          Though we struggled to stay up, like many other children, we never needed an alarm to wake us. We were up long before the sun, eager to rush downstairs to see what wonders awaited us. But there were rules. We weren’t allowed to go downstairs until 7am. We would sit at the top of the stairs, holding a clock, watching its hands slowly turn. When the approved time arrived, we rushed down the stairs. We could only look in our stockings and at the toys left out by Santa. We had to wait until 8am before we could wake our parents and open the rest of our gifts. The reason for this was revealed to me years later. My parents had friends over who didn’t have children yet. They would stay up late putting presents together and playing cards. Hence the requisite time constraint. Once the approved time was reached, we rushed in and jumped on their bed to wake them up. Then came the LONG process of ‘getting up’. There was coffee to be made and then they both had to go through their stockings. Of course, they took their time, gushing over this little thing and that precious item. Meanwhile, there were three girls going crazy with anticipation. Eventually, our patience paid off and we tore into our gifts. It seemed that a season of expectancy and excitement was over in mere moments. A carpet of torn paper littered the floor while we played with our new toys. Soon my mother was busy in the kitchen making breakfast, yet another sacred staple. There was scrambled eggs with chopped chipped beef, but the cherished item were Paris Puffins. They are a simple cake muffin that is dipped in drawn butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar, yet that description does not do them justice. My mouth waters just thinking about them. I understand that they are still made on Christmas morning, though I have lost the tradition. My sister has altered the recipe just a bit by making them into mini muffins, thus creating a mouthful of savory, buttery, cinnamon and sugary delight! Perhaps I should start the tradition again.

          After breakfast was finished, we had to get dressed and ready to leave. On Thanksgiving, we went over the river and through the woods to my father’s parent’s house. On Christmas day we went into town to my mother’s parent’s place. We were allowed to bring one toy or game; however, we always found many more presents when we arrived. The rest of the day seems a blur to me, perhaps because it was no longer solely my mother’s doing. Others came into the picture and brought their own influences. Perhaps we had the same thing for dinner, but I don’t recall. I have few memories after walking in my grandparent’s door. It’s not because I had less fun there. It just wasn’t engraved on my memory as all the things that made up my Christmas at home. Over the years, things changed. My parents divorced and my mom remarried. With this change came new people and different traditions. First one sister left, then the other moved away. Eventually, I left as well. But my mom tried to keep as many of the traditions she had started for as long as she could.

          Unfortunately, I haven’t spent Christmas at home with my family in a very long time. I regret all the holidays and fun times I’ve missed. And I haven’t formed many strong traditions for my celebrations. But I have no regrets. What I have are a lifetime of memories, of good food, and laughter, and lots and lots of love. If I ever do make it home for the holidays again, I know it will be joyous. But it will never be as magical as the years I carry in my mind. Those will always be precious to me. I have my family to thank for all of those wonderful times, but I especially have my mother to thank. She made Christmas the most wonderful time of the year.

Christmas Memories

I often find myself in somewhat of a funk this time of year. And I blame my mother. Not because of her demands or expectations or memories of horrible past holidays. No, I blame her because she did such a wonderful job of filling my memories of Christmas’ past with tradition, ritual, and fun. So to help purge me of my blues, I thought I’d share these fond recollections with you.

Let us start where all of Christmas begins, the decorations. As far as I can remember, we never went to a Christmas tree lot. Instead, it was off to the ‘forest’ to find the perfect tree. And there is where the debate began. My sisters and I would always look for that perfectly triangular tree with lots of branches spiraling upwards to a precipice where the angel tree topper would perch. Our mother, on the other hand, always felt sorry for all the trees whose trunks were crooked and were lacking branches in certain key places. “But no one will choose this one if we don’t,” she would plead. Yeah, because it’s ugly. Please, Mom, can we please NOT have a Charlie Brown Christmas tree this year!!! I remember that she usually won the debate, begging for empathy toward the pathetic pine. And it always worked out as we could place that one bare side toward the wall (the statement she often used as the coup de grace.)

Decorating was done together and rarely with an argument, quite a feat for three young girls. The only debate I can recall was in the proper method of placing tinsel on the tree. Should one hang one strand at a time on preselected boughs? Or was it better to take a small handful and toss them onto the tree in a devil-may-care manner, letting tinsel strands fall where they may? In the end, the point became moot when our golden retriever, Maggie, would walk by the tree and transfer large amounts of the sparkly strands (along with several ornaments) onto her tail.

There were many other decorations to be placed around the house. There was a bobble-head Santa and a rubber Rudolph. There was a Christmas tree my middle sister made at school from a large pinecone and a tomten who stood beside it. If you haven’t heard of a tomten, you should google it right now. One of our favorite books growing up was about said tiny creature and the night he befriended a fox. There were Santa candle holders and a homemade advent calendar. There were elves made of pipe cleaners, pieces of felt, and a Styrofoam ball for a head. Mom would put these out while we were at school one day and we had to find them. There might be one hiding in a potted plant and one perched on a bookshelf and yet another hanging from the chain of the overhead lamp. We each had a wooden shoe with our names burnt on them. As Dutch tradition dictated, we placed them under the tree and, on Christmas Eve, would place a carrot inside for the reindeer. The next morning, the root was replaced with yummy candies. And there were the angel chimes, whose role in the festivities I will explain in the next installment. Last and most important were the stockings, hung with care, on the chairs around our dining room table because we didn't have a chimney. They were handmade by our mother. I still have mine, a picture of which opens this blog; however, I don't use it anymore. Let's face it, it is really quite old and has held some magical gifts over the decades. I think it has served its purpose well and can take Christmas off from now on. I do bring it out though, and I still have my wooden shoe which also takes its celebratory place under the tree. Unfortunately, the reindeer no longer stop by anymore.

Once decorating was finished, the baking began. And oh was there a lot for Mom to bake. She always put together gift boxes filled with delicious presents. There were teacakes, peanut brittle, fudge, and of course, there were cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. She made chocolate snowballs. These were simple chocolate cookies drenched in white frosting that hardened to the exact consistency of the crust that forms on snow. There were wedding cookies, another simple almond flavored dough formed into crescent shapes and dusted with powdered sugar. But the big part of making the cookies came with the gingerbread men and the sugar cookies. It was a virtual assembly line with colored frostings and sugars, red cinnamon drops, silver and assorted colored nonpareils. We stacked the cookies by shape and there were quite a few shapes: Christmas trees, tear-drop shaped ornaments, stars, reindeer, and even candlesticks. My sisters and I took decorating very seriously. At the start, we would dress the gingerbread men in pants and shirts with ties. We would adorn the trees with ornaments. I even recall using a toothpick to create melted wax on the candles. Oh yes, these were works of art only a fool would dare to consume. Atleast, that’s how it started. After the fifth or sixth DOZEN, things began to digress until we were just slapping some frosting on them and sprinkling them with nonpareils.

One of my most favorite traditions was in making the gingerbread house. When we were little, the edible abodes were simple cabins adorned with various candies. The frosting we used worked just as good as super glue, succeeding in cementing the pieces together; however, it prevented us from being able to eat any of the candy. Inevitably, it would wind up being placed outside for the birds (and the aforementioned dog, Maggie) to devour. As the years progressed and I grew older, my mom and I enjoyed finding houses that were more and more challenging. The pinnacle of our pursuit was a three story mansion with fieldstone walls. Unfortunately, the years of Maggie eating the abandoned houses led her to believe that they were made especially for her. This error in judgement led to her eating one whole wall that was on the table with the other pieces, laid there to dry before assembly. Fortunately, we were able to remake the piece and put together what I humbly believe was a pure masterpiece.

In my next blog, I will share all the wonderful traditions we had on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.