Twelve Traditions of Christmas - Part 12

CHRISTMAS CARAMEL ROLLS.  We can't have Christmas without these rolls for breakfast.  That pretty much sums it up. This is actually a fairly easy recipe to make, but it's hard to have it ready right away in the morning, so one year I made monkey bread, which I thought would be faster to make and just as tasty. Well, I followed the instructions to the letter and instead of presenting a beautiful mound of perfectly baked rolls, I turned the rolls out and they were a gloopy, gloppy mess (and yes, I need BOTH of those adjectives!).  Groans of dismay echoed around the room and I scooped it all back in the bundt pan and put them back in the oven.  I'm afraid more time in the oven did not improve things much, and we resigned ourselves to eating the doughnuts that one of the boys had brought back from HyVee the night before.

I can't remember the first time I made these caramel rolls on Christmas morning and probably had no idea at the time that I was creating an enduring, beloved tradition.  But that's how it is: all traditions have to start somewhere, sometime. It's funny how we cling to our traditions and how important they are to our memories.  Although I chose to write about the twelve traditions of Christmas, I could easily have come up with more. Sometimes it seems our whole holiday season is a finely scripted event, and yet each year new memories are made and things are just a little bit different because the people enacting the traditions are growing older and changing.

Is it wrong to hold so tightly to our traditions?  Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish their traditions.  But Paul commended the Corinthians for maintaining the traditions that he had delivered to them.  He told the Thessalonians to stand firm and hold to the traditions that they were taught, either by spoken word or by letters written to them.  It's clear that our traditions must not supersede or reject the clear commands of God.  And there comes a time when old traditions must be let go and new ones started.  But from where I sit, all of these repetitions are part of our family dance and it's a dance I'm not in a hurry to change or quit.

Twelve Traditions of Christmas - Part 11

STOCKINGS.  I'd really like to know how and when the tradition of hanging Christmas stockings started. For most people, this is a Santa-intensive rite, i.e. we expect Mr. Santa Claus to come and fill our stockings. This is certainly what I thought was going on in my tender years.  I remember trying to stay awake at night so I could hear the sounds of Santa's sleigh on our rooftop, but I always seemed to drop off to sleep before he arrived.  We didn't leave cookies and milk for Santa.  Hey, I grew up in a large family - Santa was on his own for cookies, and frankly, he didn't look like he needed more sweets in his diet.  Nevertheless, he generously overlooked this omission on our part and produced the goods every year.  I wonder when the truth finally filtered into my wee little brain: that the parental units were responsible for all this mysterious stocking stuffing.  I hope that's not a major Spoiler for anyone reading this blog.

At any rate, I could hardly wait to begin this tradition with our children, but my husband and I felt a little reluctant to ascribe any sort of omnipresence or omniscience to old Saint Nick, so we just left it a complete mystery.  The stockings were hung and in the morning they were filled.  Nothing was said about who actually did the filling and we didn't take credit for it, nor did we point any specific fingers at Santa.  In due time, our children figured it all out and presumably this was not the kind of traumatic experience that will call for years of psychoanalysis in the future.  So why do we do it?  Just for fun! There's nothing terribly spiritual about it, although I imagine that we could put a spiritual face on it if we chose to.  Children (and adults) love mystery and surprises and we combine both those things with the tradition of the Christmas stockings.

Several years ago, our youngest two decided that it really wasn't fair that the parents got left out of this lovely  rite every year, so my daughter made a stocking for my husband and we dredged my childhood stocking out of the storeroom.  We hang our stockings up along with everyone else's and then "mysteriously" they get filled.  I love it!

Twelve Traditions of Christmas - Part 10

CHRISTMAS COOKIES.   I'd like to say that I started making loads of Christmas cookies way back in the beginning of our marriage, but I think it's more accurate to say that the tradition started when we started growing a bunch of cookie-eating children.  I've kept a list for over over 15 years now of the Sacred Cookie Selection for each year.  Certain cookies have reappeared every year; others have been tried and then were silently dropped from the list when they failed to perform as expected.



After all the gifts are under the tree, we adjourn to the dining room where we have cookies and tea (Constant Comment, to be exact).  I used to make a full meal on Christmas Eve, but at some point it dawned on me that we were ruining our cookie appetites with all that food, so now we always have a salad bar meal, just enough to take the edge off our hunger and leave plenty of room for the Main Event.

About five years ago, I wearied of always making the same cookies, year after year after year.  I wiped the whole slate clean and made all new cookies. This year is still referred to as "The Year of Heresy" by my children.   In spite of the fact that I've known these people all their lives, I somehow failed to foresee this reaction.  And I'll admit that I missed the old favorites as well.   In the end, I returned to the Sacred Cookie Selection, but always allow myself at least two new recipes to try each year.  Happy ending!

Twelve Traditions of Christmas - Part 9

THE HANGING OF THE GLOCKENSPIEL.   I'm pretty sure this tradition will not transcend the years through the next generation, but you never know.  When we moved out of New Ulm, dear friends gave us a beautiful hand-painted glass ornament that came in its own box.  Pretty schnazzy, if you ask me.  The paintings on the ornament depict the famous New Ulm glockenspiel and some random Christmassy people. It seemed so delicate and precious that we (some of the more controlling members of our little family group) decided that it would be DANGEROUS to put it on the tree too soon - after all, it wouldn't take much to knock it off the tree and break it.   The consensus was that we would keep it in its cushioned box until Christmas Eve, at which time, the Keeper of the Ornament, would ceremoniously put it on the tree.

Keeper of the Ornament

This all went rather well until a couple years ago when I decided that it was a shame to keep it under wraps until December 24th, so I bought an ornament hanging doo-hickey and put it on that as a place to display it until the proper time for its promotion to the tree.  Alas, someone else came along and wanting to look at it more closely, removed it from the hanger and promptly dropped it, breaking the bottom of the ornament into several pieces of various sizes.  All seemed lost at the moment and we started to go through the five stages of grieving.  However, we never got past denial.  Wait a minute - isn't this just the kind of thing that super glue was invented for?  We meticulously picked up every fragment and began the arduous task of putting Humpty Dumpty together again.  I am proud to tell you that today, we are still able to hang that fine and beautiful ornament on the tree where it brings glory to the branch on which it hangs. If you're looking at it head-on and the lights are low, it looks just as it should. If you get curious and pick the thing up, you'll see all the cracks and you may notice that it has a hole at the bottom where we were unable to make all the pieces fit.  Don't do that - it's better to have the illusion.