Tag: Christmas

Can you really love 100 holiday cookies?

Categories Memoir, Personal2 Comments on Can you really love 100 holiday cookies?

My recent quest for five great holiday cookie recipes surfaced lists like “Our favorite 100”, “Tbe 88 best”, “49 Christmas cookies you’ll love”. Can anyone really have 100 favorite varieties of Christmas cookies? I can barely name 100 varieties of cookies. Paul Hollywood may not be able to meet that challenge.

Since most already have their favorite recipes, you might wonder why I’m in the market for five new recipes. My quest has a back story.

I grew up baking Christmas cookies with an enthusiasm rivaling Buddy the Elf’s. My own kitchen years later looked like a full-on bakery at Christmastime. I’d mix up batches of my old standbys, and try one or two new flavors each season, as holiday carols fought to be heard over the mixer and bright lights twinkled indoors and out.

Tins with an assortment of five or six varieties shipped off to far-away friends and relatives. Small bags adorned with pretty ribbons and tags found their way into the hands of friends at work, something from my home to theirs. My cookies got rave reviews.

Then something sad happened. A few months after starting a new job, the holiday season rolled around and I baked and gifted my cookies as usual. The year hadn’t been my best and so maybe my batches hadn’t been the all-time best either. If so, I was unaware…until…

A friend among my coworkers told me – without any sugar-coating – that a) not only did my new co-workers not like my cookies, but b) they were the worst they’d ever had, and c) they were laughing at me behind my back about it.

There was nothing weird or unusual about my recipes. Most were traditional. I wasn’t reducing fats or sugars, or creating odd taste combinations. I understood they just thought they were bad. And they threw them out.

I still baked some cookies for a couple of years after, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t pass them out at work. I certainly didn’t box them and mail them to friends and family as I had in the past. I was literally ashamed of my cookies.

Many seasons passed, and when I did bake, I would make only a couple of batches, and not at the same time. Just some random batches during the season. In recent years, my holiday baking had dwindled to a batch or two of magic bars, pillsbury slice and bake sugar cookies with reindeers or Santas, and maybe some refrigerated chocolate chip cookies.

I’ve received plenty of cookies from others over the years, and I’ve always liked them. Did I just luck into having friends and neighbors who were outstanding cookie bakers? Could I have been that lucky? No.

It’s because gifted homemade holiday cookies are good. They convey that someone spent their time making something, and then cared enough about you to give it to you. Someone selected cookies they thought you’d like. They took the time to see that you got them. And after all, they’re cookies, and cookies are generally tasty.

Maybe people have 100 favorites – or 88 best, or 49 you should try – because cookies just make people happy. All kinds of cookies. Maybe you don’t have to win the Great British Bake Off to have cookies worth baking and sharing.

So this year I made the long-overdue decision to put whatever happened in my past to bed. I made a whole-hearted return to holiday baking…minus the distribution. I mean, one step at a time, friends!

I made 6 varieties, with only one failure. The dough had been too soft, it spread too thin, and I was a bit heavy-handed with the peppermint. I tossed them, deciding anything that made me feel bad about baking would not have a seat at the table.

I’m pleased to say I enjoyed my Christmas cookies breakfast this morning. This plate was 20 years in the making. It looked like heart-won effort. I breathed in top notes of determination. After the final bites, a taste of resilience lingered.

Getting Back to a Beatles Christmas

Categories PersonalLeave a Comment on Getting Back to a Beatles Christmas

My teenagers don’t like the Beatles and don’t even understand their attraction. It’s hard for me to bend my mind around, because my experience of the Beatles has been their timeless and global presence. They show up gloriously in so many memories.

Twist and Shout’s “Shake it up, Baby!” brings me back to a college luau with my besties. I sang along to Hey Jude as it played on repeat during car rides on winding roads in Europe. Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds played the first time I’d seen the Apple label spinning on a record player. I instantly loved the song, and begged my cousin to play it over and over while I danced around in the platform heels I’d taken from her two older brothers, both sporting the long hair look the Beatles inspired.

Perhaps I should have played the Beatles more for my own children, because at this point neither shows any interest, let alone the reverence the music deserves. It was with this reverence that I anticipated watching Get Back this holiday season. I expected to hear many of my favorites in the course of its seven plus hours. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy watching their creative process.

While I’ve been a fan of their music, I’ve never explored the history of the Beatles as a band. At the beginning of the documentary, I couldn’t figure out how – or even if – they would pull off anything resembling success. Having allowed themselves around 14 days to write more than as many songs, and entering the scene with dour looks and a constantly present Yoko, I had my doubts. It was a bit of a nail biter.

By part three, though, as they worked out the final versions of some songs and were just beginning the writing of other recognizable classics, I got a lump in my throat as the messiness resolved. Lennon’s early reminder that he did his best work when their backs were against the wall was a testament to their comfort with the chaos, and the payoff it would yield. Creation has to include a level of tension, a willingness to explore without perfection, and an ability to disassemble and reassemble to bring out the best in anything. It was an unexpected treat to watch all of that transpire on the screen.

It was also a treat to watch producer George Martin’s interaction with the group. I had been impressed by his 1998 release of In My Life, featuring a cadre of celebrities covering Beatles classics in unexpected but undeniable style. Sean Connery’s voice on the title track was about the only way I could imagine that song getting better. Get Back hints at Martin’s ability to do that, though. His understanding and appreciation for the music, and his commitment was obvious. You could imagine him having enough of a handle on the essence of it to give it a second life.

It was personally fitting for me to watch Get Back during the holiday season. Some of my earliest Christmas memories include decorating the tree while listening to the Hard Days Night soundtrack. We usually listened to Christmas music, but when this album surfaced among the LPs, I liked it too much to take it off. I played it over and over again, dancing around to it.

Perhaps the best encapsulation of how much the Beatles have meant to the world and its people shows up in the movie “Yesterday”, which I caught on the big screen with a dear friend before the pandemic drove us from theaters. In it, a phenomenon leaves the world with no memory of the Beatles. Main character, Jack, however, recalls and begins to recreate their music to wild worldwide enthusiasm. When Jack learns that several others with memories know what he’s doing, he expects to be turned in as a fraud. But no – they wouldn’t do that. They’re grateful that someone is able to fill the world with the Beatles again.

It’s a construct that wouldn’t work for most other bands, but it completely makes sense when it comes to the music of the Fab Four. A world without their music is a world less grand. Having a bird’s-eye view of how it came to be is Get Back, and it’s worth the time to watch.

Note: Get Back is streaming on Disney Plus at the time of this writing.

Let down by the promise of the pre-lit

Categories Personal2 Comments on Let down by the promise of the pre-lit

Am I alone in feeling betrayed by the promise of pre-lit Christmas decor? I once bought what I believed to be the perfect Christmas tree. Its stems wrapped in 500 lights promised to make my life oh-so-easy each year. By year two, only some of the lights lit, and we began stringing additional lights around them. It was the only solution, as they were hard to troubleshoot, wrapped as they were around branches. When year three arrived, I spent what seemed like hours carefully clipping the now-dark strings from boughs just to save the tree I’d come to love. And my hands were a mess!

The tree fared better than the pre-lit deer that’s been in storage for five years. It was glorious for the first year, but that’s as far as it went. Its lights also have to come off, and they’re not easily replaced. The glitter-covered metal wires aren’t easy to work around either, and so each year I just put it off a little longer.

Why did I expect anything different? Most of my holiday lights peter out somewhere towards the end of season two, regardless of how much I spend, what brand I buy, and whether they’re attached. The lost investment of time is as irritating as the hard dollar costs. I have a lot of opinions about lights, so purchasing isn’t a breeze. Are the multicolored strands pink enough, or would they be too blue? Are the white strands a warm white? Do they blink or do they twinkle? They should twinkle, as if fairy dust and Christmas magic created random sparkles in the night. You see how it is, right?

This year, I pulled out three strings of twinkling, colorful, high-end outdoor lighting to find that every strand had sections that wouldn’t light. “It must be me,” I thought. I simply lack the light maintenance skills needed. Well, “No more!” I vowed, This time would be different. I broke out the Lightkeeper Pro and went to work.

After about an hour testing bulbs and sockets, matters were worse. More segments had given up the ghost. The Lightkeeper Pro had just prolonged my suffering. I hadn’t even begun to move on to the white lights I string on trellises each year, which were also out of commission. This light maintenance business could be a legitimate job.

I had to ask myself: “Could this be the year to lower expectations?” “Yes,” I thought. Yes. I went online and bought 5 sets of brightly-colored $5 lights from Target, and decided to toss my 2019 investment. The new lights arrived in three days, and every light lit up. They twinkle, and the color is fine. I abandoned my trellises and decided I simply didn’t need them this year, so I would forego the white lights.

I survey the glow each night when I walk the big dog Cooper, and I have to admit that this year’s results aren’t quite what they’ve been in years past. But I’ve decided it is fine. I was able to make it all happen in a short amount of time, with little mental energy. That’s the beauty of not having pre-lit items. I can be flexible from year to year. I do think the front lawn needs another item, and maybe next year I’ll get around to rehabbing the deer. He also has an antler that needs soldering, but since metal shop was my favorite class in middle school, and I do own a soldering iron, I can’t wait to fix that part! Just as soon as those darn lights are off…

In the meantime, I’m appreciating some of the decor that doesn’t light. The dove in the picture above is my favorite this year. It opens, and has a small compartment inside. At the end of last season, I stowed away a small piece of paper with the year’s best Christmas memories. My life was so different then! Before hanging the ornament this year, I opened the paper and got to relive the joy of those memories of last season. If you’re looking for a new holiday tradition, this one is wonderful. And you never have to change the bulbs.