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.
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