As a young mother, I had this idea that Christmas day should have a certain perfection to it. That the house would be completely clean. The gifts would glow under the tree (I LOVED to wrap in plain brown paper with red velvet and double sided satin ribbon!). Cookies we only make at Christmas, would be overflowing on tiers of elegant antique cookie servers. Dinner would be unusual and spectacular. There'd be music and a fire in the fireplace...that wouldn't smoke or need to be fiddled with, all day long. The day would be cold and crystal, and would resonate as a cherished memory. My reality has been different than that...
I'd maybe, possibly get to bed the night before. My husband and I would be up all bleary and haggard, assembling a mountain of stuff that came with instructions in languages we weren't familiar with...The buckeye peanut butter balls that get dipped in chocolate...dear God. They'd slip right off of the toothpick and disappear into the chocolate dip. My brother-in-law stood by my side in the kitchen one Christmas morning, with his mouth hanging open. I was suffering this buckeye nightmare and there wasn't a thing he could think of as a solution. Neither could I! It did make a good ice cream sauce after Christmas, all that chocolate and peanut butter! The year we got a puppy for the kids...the puppy pooped in my sister's arms. Lucky her little bottom was hanging out over a good "drop site." I decorated the tree one year, with all edible candy. I tied strings of licorice in bows and candied slices of lemon, orange, and grapefruit to sparkle and shine light through as ornaments. Roddy had a rosy, sticky face all day as he frequently slipped behind the tree to suck on the licorice bows. The plumber came to visit nearly every year, as the garbage disposal would back up. One warm Christmas, we ate dinner on the patio and he conversed with us from the roof clean-out...shoosh. Just like a Norman Rockwell scene?!!
This went on year after year. I had my vision...and a houseful of drooling preschoolers. My vision was too elaborate. I read an article by two women who were helping people organize. Their advice was to make a list, in order, of the things that make the day and season dazzling, just for you. As you work your way down the list, things that aren't as important may or may not get done. Christmas is, after all, a very hard deadline. I've known other hard deadlines, like having to cajole a FedEx driver while the staff raced to finish packaging a proposal I'd just finished; like suffering a roast beef with an internal temperature of only 80 degrees (needs to be minumum 120) with all of the house full of paying customers waiting for that roast beef! Christmas is the ultimate hard deadline for me. I took the advice of the organized women. I made my list.
Number one on the list was cookies...and still is. Real greens and trees are number two. I like to buy a forest of different kinds and sizes of trees. I decorate with just white lights, in deference to the war in Iraq. I still wrap in brown paper with red ribbon. Music and time to visit, to really listen to the babies and hug them in the moments that I can catch one without a chase, are my munber four. That's it. My cookie situation though, has changed drastically.
I've been scrambling to fill cookie orders for two weeks. Instead of the leisurely experience I've enjoyed since making my priority list years ago, I've made and packaged hundreds of cookies (in brown paper boxes with red ribbon!). I've been feeling the stress of those old Christmases. I was up at 5am this morning, dropping large scoops of butter into multiple mixing bowls, bringing them all to room temperature. Crushed Vanilla Wafers! Flour! Sugar! Eggs! Vanilla! Fresh orange zest! Even with a hot latte, it was too early to be whizzing around, but the first cookie order was due at 9am. I was thinking that I don't want to do cookie orders ever again! Then, the power of Christmas swept over me. I felt my grandmothers and mother with me, as I sometimes do in the kitchen. I turned on Christmas music, slowed down, and enjoyed preparing each individual cookie as I would for my family. I frosted the last of the Swedish Sour Cream cookies and smiled to think that all of those Christmases, and this one too, are my dream come true. They all resonate as cherished memories!
Merry Christmas, dear ones.
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