Christmas Crackers

Crackers, sometimes called Christmas Poppers, are fun table decorations for the holiday season.  I’ve found them to be a hit with old and young.  A quick internet search tells me they originated in the United Kingdom many years ago.

My hastily made cracker, and why I generally buy mine

The nice thing is, you can create your own homemade version using paper towel or toilet paper rolls, gift wrap  and ribbon.  My grandmother’s women’s circle at church  created hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these over the years  to send to disadvantaged children. 

Creating Christmas crackers might  be a nice way to occupy older, crafty children in the long days after school is dismissed but before Christmas.

The good news is that if you’re not the crafty type or don’t have the time, nowadays you can purchase crackers almost anywhere.  I saw a package at CVS just last week.   You can even use a non-cracker for the same purpose.  This year, I bought these little treat boxes:

Okay, not really a cracker/popper but cute, right?


Last year, I used these. 

This one is also an ornament!

 Which opens, like this:

You can be really creative with the contents of your crackers.  I include slips of paper with a bit of Christmas trivia (which we all share aloud), but you can include a joke or Bible verse and don’t forget the holiday trinkets or toys, stickers and candy.  Exploring the contents inside is most of the fun.

Heirloom Ornaments

Like a lot of people, almost every year I purchase one ornament for each of my children.  An ornament that represents something significant that transpired for them that year.  

My hope is that this memento of the year gone by will some day jog their memory or remind them of a story  and allow them to walk ornament by ornament through portions of their childhood. 

I also  have a few treasured hand-me-down ornaments, including these which belonged to my great grandmother:

Pink and gold Christmas bells

My Brownie Troop leader helped me make this ornament when I was  6 using a photo taken in her front yard and a curtain ring:

This is a set of ornaments created from the Hey Diddle Diddle mobile hanging over my crib when I was a baby (and no, the Consumer Products Safety Commission didn’t exist then).

I love the homemade ornaments too - and am glad I had the forethought to place the date on the backs of  most of them.  These little wooden ornaments from my childhood were simple enough to recreate with my own children.

My own 3-D sheep painted in the 70s

Ornaments my children painted in 2000

I do love a Christmas tree with color coordinated lights, decorations and garland, the kind you see at the mall  or those beautiful monochromatic trees you see in magazines but for me the sentimental Christmas tree is incomparable.

The Christmas Letter

I know there’s a lot of ambivalence out there about Christmas letters, but I must admit, I love them.   I don’t enjoy finding that perfect photo or the time involved in crafting the letter, addressing, stamping, etc., and sure we all get those letters that make us say, "Really? Really?"   But I think Christmas letters have value, and not just for the recipient but for the sender as well. 

I couldn’t say it any better so I’ll just post what my husband wrote in our letter this year:

Perhaps in this era of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and texting, the annual Christmas letter is now irrelevant.  But on our living room coffee table is a  book containing a copy of  our annual Christmas photos and letters from the last 17 years. In a  quick flip of 17 pages, we can see our lives flash in front of us.  For our family, these letters to you serve as a permanent and written record of God’s faithfulness to us. The letters also remind us of a statement written in one of our first Christmas letters, “the days are long but the years are short."  While we have generally left out the “ugliness” of  life (because no one really wants to read about the disappointments, fears and challenges), it has been there.  And when we reread the letters, we are reminded of our many blessings through the years and the challenges that God has brought us through.  And we are further reminded of the fact that there are new blessings and challenges to come.

Our Christmas letter book

A peek inside: In 2002 each child created their own version of a card

Seeing Santa

Visits with the mall Santa, an adorable, charming one we saw annually for 15 years, were a big part of our family’s Christmas tradition.  I miss those days.  Even though the cumulative hours spent in line with restless children weren’t much  fun, I’d gladly turn back the clock.  

A fidgety 4 year old with her 11 month old brother waiting to see Santa

Remembering my son sharing his Christmas wish list with Santa, “I’d like some paints,”  he said, only to hear Santa reply, “Oh, that will make Mrs. Claus so happy.  She’s an artist too, you know” was priceless.   

I wish I had a videotape but I don’t (a lapse in judgement, I regret).  But I love all the photos and all for different reasons.  To me,  this one is irresistible.  

I miss smocked dresses and sweaters with Christmas bears!

I framed 14  years of  photos (I think only 1 year is missing) and every year in November, I take down the picture in our main floor powder room and replace it with this. 

Last year I left it up well into spring -- I couldn’t help myself.  Afterall, how could I resist this?

The Nutcracker Part Deux

Another of my Nutcracker books

Along with my love for the story of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, I  have also come to love The Nutcracker Ballet and, in particular, the Atlanta’s Ballet’s Nutcracker. 

Ballet program from  2004

My daughter and I attended our first performance when she was 5.  We then attended every other year (tickets can be expensive and her attention span was short) for several years.

She took 4 or 5 years of ballet lessons with her objective  to be cast as a party child in the performance's opening scene. 

Here she is at age 5, practicing her dance moves

 

And then she was 10,  and also 11,  she was cast in one of those roles.  (I am sad to say I didn't do a particularly good job of  photographically preserving those memories).

However, even with weeks of Saturday and Sunday practices, dress rehearsals, drives downtown from our suburban home and eventually 5 - 7 shows (most of which I attended) spread over a few hectic holiday weeks (perhaps explaining the dearth of photos), my love for the story and its theatrics only intensified.

The kindness of the professional dancers to the children and beauty of the costumes and sets only enhanced my adoration for the story and performance. 

Granted the location for the production, Atlanta’s Fox Theatre is, in itself, magnificent. This setting  for The Nutcracker is truly magical.

I don’t think we’ve missed a show in the last five years.  If counted, we’ve probably seen it more than 25 times.  Still,  my daughter and I enjoy anticipating our date to the ballet. We never tire of  Tchaikovsky’s beautiful compositions, the tale which draws us in and the dancers’ artistry. 

A Nutcracker Nut

 I love The Nutcracker.  There, I’ve said it. A woman in her 40s with an unconstrained passion for a children's book.

E.T.A. Hoffman’s, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, written almost 200 years ago, is a wonder.  It has fantasy and horror.  It has villains and heroes.  It is both scary and a love story.  It has all the elements of a good read.

I have a collection of these children’s books as well as themed ornaments (remember my post about not being a collector? Yeah, cancel that).   I now have an entire tree that is just The Nutcracker.

I try to add one or two ornaments each year.  Here are some of my favorites:

(l to r) Nutcracker book, a Christopher Radko Nutcracker and  godfather, toymaker, inventor  Drosselmeir.

This ornament has a battery-powered rotating mechanism that makes it turn.   Marya (sometimes called Marie or Clara) on the left, Mouse King on the right.

Now I know some people love the Nutcracker but, to my mind, there is an overabundance of nutcrackers out there.  Perhaps it's because I’m partial to the Mouse King and his antics.  

My lime green Mouse King tree-topper.  Even though (spoiler alert) he is  not victorious in the end, I love seeing him looking down on his tree kingdom

I want all the story’s characters represented on my tree, even the seemingly minor ones. That's why I bought this ornament, and several others like it, on eBay.

The Mother Ginger and her Polichinelles (little puppets)

If you haven't read The Nutcracker and the Mouse King to your children, you should. And don't be surprised if, like me, they love the Mouse King the most.

Past meets Present

 At Christmas (l to r) me with my special gift that year, Fluffy, my brother and my twin sister 

Flash forward 40+ years, our dog Brownie meets Fluffy for the first time.  As you can see, she is none to happy about it. But the resemblance is pretty remarkable, don't you think?

Christmas Cookies

Stars and trumpeting angel shortbread cookies

 

My Christmas cookie baking experiences have been innumerable. 

Over the years, I have baked multitudes of new and old cookie recipes and created countless assorted cookie trays (augmented by the occasional sleeve of saved and frozen/de-thawed Girl Scout Thin Mints - a pleasant surprise 9 months after they're delivered and often, to my chagrin, a crowd favorite).  

Girl Scout cookies in my freezer, just waiting to upstage my homemade cookies.

I’ve held neighborhood cookie exchanges or just attended one or two.

But regardless of my mood or the status of my dieting, I  make a least two or three different kinds of cookies every year. 

My good old standby, and what often seems to be a hit, is the shortbread cookie.  The simplest recipe ever:

2 sticks of (unsalted) butter, softened
10 tablespoons of sugar (I’m sure there is some measuring cup equivalent, but this is the way the recipe was shared with me and it keeps it easy to remember)
2.5 cups of flour (I use unbleached, all-purpose)

Mix together and then roll out, cut into shapes and bake in a 325 degree for just 6 to 8 minutes (but watch them carefully and just allow the edges to brown).  I often bake the cookies weeks in advance and keep them frozen between layers of parchment paper  in my freezer.

These cookies have such a simple and rich flavor that I never use a large cookie cutter to make them, almost always preferring a bite-size cookie, which is just sweet enough. 

My default cookie cutter is the star or some celestial-themed shape (more on that another day).  You can decorate or frost these cookies  (and I have) but I’ve come to prefer the simplicity of the pure, rich shortbread taste. 

I have these special cookie cutters (I have a heart-shaped one as well) that I use to create  cookies and place on the edge of the coffee or hot chocolate cup. 

How fun is that?!  This is just the right amount of sweet and a nice ending to a holiday dinner or just anytime.