Our Christmas Traditions by Roseanne Dowell

Dedicated to my loved ones who are no longer here to celebrate with us, but I'll always have the memories, Mom, Dad, Mickey, and Mary. We miss you.  This article was first published in Good Old Days Magazine in December 2004.


I love Christmas.  Always have. It's my favorite holiday and it begins with Thanksgiving.  I'm sure it comes from being raised in a family of Christmas lovers. My mother started baking for the Christmas season the day after Thanksgiving. I

swear she made every type of Christmas cookie available. 

Back then, during the holidays friends and relatives visited often and she always served a plate of cookies or other type of bakery. Every day we came home from school to delicious aroma of something baking. Poppy seed or nut rolls, kuchens of every kind. Mom was quite a baker. On Fridays, we helped make Christmas cookies.

I remember several big 3# potato chip cans full of cookies. When she went out for the evening, she usually called to see if we were behaving. Our reward - three cookies. Of course, we took three from each can. Even with six of us (I had three brothers and two sisters) we didn't make a dent, but I'm pretty sure she knew what we did.

Our Christmas tree went up December 6th, the feast of St. Nicholas. We put our stockings up the night before and in the morning we were rewarded with oranges, apples, and nuts. Sometimes a hair ribbon or clips, maybe a harmonica or other small toy. 

My mother went all out for Christmas with an elaborate village set up under our tree, complete with hills, caves, and houses - all lit and surrounding the nativity set. It took a whole day for her to set it up. I'll never forget watching her  crawl on the floor under the tree. After laying a bed of cotton, she carefully arranged the caves in the back corner, built hills and valleys and placed the houses. She even created streams and ponds with tinfoil and mirrors. Everything led to the nativity set. A cardboard stable held animals along with Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Every year one of us got the privilege of placing baby Jesus in the manger. Once they were in place, she set up the shepherds, wise men, and angels. 

For many years, she place a wooden fence around the whole scene. There was a light bulb in each fence post.  For some reason, she quit setting that up. I wish I had that fence. My older sister had it, but my younger sister got it after Mary passed away. 
I followed that tradition for years and even made a ceramic village. I've since given the village to my youngest daughter and just the nativity set goes under my tree now. 

I'll never forget how the neighbors complained that we put the tree up so early because, of course, their kids wanted their tree up also. Not that it made a difference, with all the work involved, my mom wanted to enjoy it for as long as possible.  One year, when my oldest brother was in the Air Force, he couldn't make it home for Christmas, but promised he'd join us in January. Our tree started to lose it's needles and reluctantly my mom took it down. My father surprised us one day shortly after with another tree in much better condition. We put it up and kept it watered well into February. My brother's leave kept getting changed. Sometime toward the end of February, it was hopeless and we had to take that tree down also. Good thing, because my brother didn't make it home until the end of March.

On Christmas Eve, we had a traditional supper. My aunt, uncle, and four cousins joined us and after dinner, we went to visit my grandparents.

Our dinner consisted of Oplatky with honey (holy bread wafers like you receive at communion) mushroom soup, balbaki - little bread balls covered in either poppy seed and honey or sauerkraut. At some point, we added periogis to the menu. 

Every year my mom told the story of  how my uncle put honey on his oplatky and hid it on his chair (so his sibling couldn't take it) while they stood to say grace.  They sat down and he looked around and yelled that someone stole his oplatky. Of course no one had. He suddenly remembered an stood. Yep, there it was stuck to his pants. To follow tradition, I tell the same story every year.

 One of my favorite memories is the year my uncle dressed as Santa Claus. He insisted on wearing the suit to my grandparents. My  older sister and I often rode with them, while some of my male cousins rode with my parents.  On the way, we stopped at a traffic light, a man came out of the bar on the corner. My uncle waved and yelled Merry Christmas. The man stopped, looked in the car, scratched his head, turned and went back into the bar. Guess he thought he needed a few more drinks. The look on his face made us all giggle. Not that it took much back then to make us giggle. Mary, my cousin, and I giggled at just about everything.

I have so many wonderful memories of Christmas. I often sit and reflect on them as Christmas Eve approaches. Time seems to have gone by so quickly. It seems only yesterday my husband and I stared our own family. I carry on many of the traditions passed on from my childhood. In the beginning we put our tree up just like my parent's did. I've since purchased an artificial tree and put it up before Thanksgiving because Christmas is always at one of my children's houses.  Neighbors used to laugh at me for putting it up so early, but I didn't mind. I love the lights and festive atmosphere. As we drive around now, I notice more and more trees up early. It warms my heart. 
Now I make the Christmas Eve dinner  the Saturday before Christmas since everyone can't be here Christmas Eve. My brothers, sister and I still get together Christmas Eve. Some of our children join us, but most visit their in-laws .  I hope I can carry this tradition on for many more years. As I look back on the many blessings I've received through the years, I can't help but feel thankful. 
It's funny, but thinking back through the years, I don't remember the gifts I received, but I remember the fellowship with my uncle, aunt, and cousins and years later with my siblings. My mom had a wonderful sense of humor and she passed it down to us kids. As we married and had children of our own (we blessed my parents with 23 grandchildren), we quit buying gifts for each other. It was just too much. I don't recall how it got started, but usually about a week before Christmas, my sisters, brothers in law, my husband, and I got together and started exchanging joke gifts. My mother joined in after a year or so and my brothers got wind of it and insisted on being included. We moved the gift exchange to Christmas Eve - that was our Christmas with our parents - Those are the gifts I remember. We decorated one of my mother's old white hats (we must have sneaked it out of her house) with flags and miniature Christmas balls. 
Mary was entered into the cash explosion lottery and hoped to have her name drawn - she didn't. Someone got her an outfit to wear for the event if her

name was picked. A pair of wading boots, a yellow raincoat, and hat. I wish I had that picture of her. There were some interesting outfits over the years and we continue the practice to this day. I made a suit for one of my brothers this year. He mentioned he didn't own a suit. A dangerous thing to confess to us, so we remedied the situation. I didn't take a picture of the pants, but I glued ruffles on them like the fancy rubber pants we used to get our children.  
My one brother is a great garbage picker. He found a plaster elephant on his walk with my sister in law one year. Of course he had to have it. That elephant's gotten around the family and I ended up with him last year. My sister glued those little fuzzy balls and feathers on him. I decided to bring him back to normal and pulled all those fancy balls off - not an easy chore mind you. I repainted him and dry brushed him. If I say so myself he looks pretty good and now has a prominent place in my living room. 

Wishing everyone a blessed and Merry Christmas.                                                                                                                                                               

Find all of  Roseanne's books at Amazon

A Colonial Christmas, Feast and Customs, by Diane Scott Lewis

For years I lived near the historic town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, named after the then Prince of Wales, Frederick Louis, father of George III. Poor Fred never did become king.

Fredericksburg was an important tobacco-shipping town on the Rappahannock River. I decided to write a Christmas story set during the dawn of the American Revolution, when Virginia, at the time of my story, was still part of England. Researching in the Virginiana Room at the local library, I came across many interesting Christmas customs from this time period—but I found that many originated from earlier eras before Christianity.

In the eighteenth century, the cooking would have been performed in a broad, deep hearth, with a wide chimney where meat could be smoked. Ham, an expensive cut of meat, was popular for a holiday feast.

On December 12th, the Yule Log would be put into the dining room fireplace. This log was kept burning until January sixth, with enough left over to kindle the following year’s Yule Log. The custom of burning the Yule Log dates back before medieval times and was originally a Nordic tradition left over from the pagan days of celebrating the Winter Solstice.

Mince pies were prepared, basically as they are today. But also a specialty called a "stack" cake would be served.

Sweetened, spiced dough was rolled into thin layers, and slices cut using a dinner plate to form a perfect circle. After baking, the cake rose but little. The colonials cooked dried apples and peaches separately, then spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg the fruit was mashed and spread like paste between the cake layers. The cake would be allowed to sit a few days to soak up the fruit.

Another cake would be prepared with a bean baked into one slice. The person who got that particular slice became the King of Misrule. He would rule from Christmas day to Twelfth Night, performing various trifling acts to ensure good weather for the next year. He’d also preside over celebrations, and sometimes cause mischief. This custom can be traced back to ancient Rome, when the King (or Lord) of Misrule was appointed for the feast of Saturnalia, and he represented the good god Saturn. During this time the ordinary rules of life were reversed as masters served their slaves.

Back to the eighteenth century, for holiday decoration, a Christmas Bush would be fashioned using two wooden rings. Binding the rings side by side, fresh cuttings of evergreen, boxwood and sweet William were added. Bright red apples, some rare lemons and pine cones were included for color.

On Christmas day, after dark, the bush was hung in the window with a candle at its center.

For a table centerpiece, a wooden cone adorned with headless nails was speared with apples. Boxwood was stuffed around the apples, and a pineapple put on the top.

On Christmas morning, the people attended church service. Returning to their residence, the home’s owner would enter the house with two sprigs of holly, thus ensuring he would remain master of his house for the coming year.

Then the meal would be laid out for family and friends who might drop by. A punchbowl filled with tea, sugar, pineapple juice and rum was placed next to the centerpiece. As well as the punch, another popular drink was "bumbo" made with rum and sweetened water.

Dried figs and nuts were available to snack on. The ham, smoking for hours, was brought out surrounded by sweet yams. Two roasted fowl would be added to the meat choices. The bread was usually cornbread, served with a hunk of butter.

Muskets and pistols would be fired outside to augment the Christmas festivity.

Celebrations and church attendance on specific days would last until Twelfth Night. This tradition marks the feast of Epiphany, when the three wise men brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

Sources: Wikipedia and the Virginiana Room at the Rappahannock Regional Library, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
And the Williamsburg Marketplace

For more information on my eighteenth-century novels, visit my website:

http://www.dianescottlewis.org

A Passion for Reading by Victoria Chatham

With Christmas just days away, I'm hoping that among my gifts, if I'm lucky enough to receive any, will be a book. A real book. 

Yes, I have a Kindle and a tablet and buy ebooks from Amazon, but I love the lure of real books, the flow of words, the feel and smell of old paper. As Helene Hanff says in 84 Charing Cross Road: ‘I’m almost afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and stiff cardboardy covers of American books, I never knew a book could be such a joy to touch’. I adore the sensory perception instilled by such writers as Anita Diamant (The Red Tent) who describes Rachel as ‘smelling like water’ and in Marek Halter’s Sarah, the first book in his Canaan Trilogy, ‘Abram smiled and the wings of his beautiful lips seemed to fly away’. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini describes how ‘suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge’.

Along with a passion for words comes a passion for dictionaries and Thesauri, books on writing and grammar. And, for those of you who may suspect otherwise, I do have a sense of humor! My favorite grammar book is a saucy little number by Laurie Rozakis, The Comma Sutra, whose first chapter on the vagaries of the English language is entitled ‘How We Got Into This Mess’.

There are books, books and more books and never enough time to read them all. But read I must. The authors I read and reread spill from my bookshelves onto piles on the floor beside the shelves, are stacked on and under my coffee tables and nightstand, beside me on my bed and tucked behind the cushion in my chair.

As children, my cousins and I all had the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic instilled in us before we marched up the steps of the school we all attended. Ahead of our time, we were separated in class because, bored mindless with the inanity of A is for Apple, we became recognized troublemakers. But books kept us quiet, and we were given books in plenty to read quietly to ourselves.

The first book I remember being given as a birthday present was Alison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit. Then along came Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. The children’s classics: Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass followed when I was five, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty when I was six and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island when I was seven. Am I blessed with a brilliant memory? Sometimes. But now, more years later than I care to admit, I still have these books with loving inscriptions from my parents.

When I turned eight years old there was a big jump in my reading material with titles that would probably be quite alien to eight year olds today. R.D Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, W.H Ainsworth’s Windsor Castle and Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! As a teenager my school reading included D.H. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Frank T. Bullen’s The Cruise of the Cachalot (about sperm whales) and, of course, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Following in my father’s footsteps I read Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories and The Jungle Book, also Stalky & Co and Soldiers Three and a personal favorite Thy Servant, A Dog.

Somewhere in my thirteenth year I discovered romance, particularly Regency historical romance and became a lifelong fan of Georgette Heyer. I still have my first edition copy of Frederica, which I read at least once a year and still find as fresh and as funny as the first time I read it. And there have been many, many first reads – too many to recount here. Books that I have loved and lost have come back to me via searches on www.alibris.com and www.abebooks.com. I’ll sometimes take a day and browse used bookstores – although this is dangerous territory for me as I’ll more likely not find what I am looking for but come home with new and exciting treasures.

There are books, books and more books and never enough time to read them all. But read I must. The authors I read and reread spill from my bookshelves onto piles on the floor beside the shelves, are stacked on and under my coffee tables and nightstand, beside me on my bed and tucked behind the cushion in my chair. My tastes these days are many and varied but this world, for all the technology available to us today, would be a much poorer place without the rich heritage we have of books, of the joy of language and the sheer pleasure to be found in the reading before we ever begin the writing.

To find out if Victoria receives a book for Christmas check out these links:

www.bookswelove.com/chatham.php
www.victoriachatham.webs.com
www.amazon.com/author/victoriachatham
www.facebook.com/AuthorVictoriaChatham