As the hours and days click by, sometimes it is hard to find the peace in the Christmas season. We all have so much to do. It is fun to have parties, play the bells at special church services, make cookies, shop for presents, wrap and mail the presents, decorate the Christmas tree and make special dinners for company. But it seems to me that you have to work at finding the peace and joy in all of this activity. Stress creeps up so quickly. Without the joy, it is all so pointless.
My mother and I often talk together about people (we talk about people? us?) who go about their Christmas baking as if they are in a factory. They slam/dunk dozens of cookies from the same old recipes, and turn out cookies that are flat when they are supposed to be round, or tough and thick when they are supposed to be thin. They bake too early and frost too thick and the cookies are stale by Christmas Day. Cookie baking isn't a chore. It takes time, patience and care to make good cookies. In past years, I have made one batch of sugar cookies on Christmas morning, after breakfast is over, and the presents are unwrapped. We decorate them and eat them warm. It is a recent tradition, and I think it started because I had run out of time, Christmas was here, and I still had cookie dough in the refrigerator. But it is a good tradition and I'm keeping it.
Holiday baking should not be done in a hurry. When the mood is calm, the music is playing, the kitchen is warm, and the mixer is purring, cookies just come out better.
When I was a young girl, my mother and I used to wrap our packages together, and had a lot of fun coming up with all kinds of unique ways to tie bows, or add things to bows that no one would expect. We spent hours making our presents look special. We used glitter and glue and ribbon and greens cut from Daddy's favorite spruce tree. We made home made balls for the tree by covering a styrofoam ball with velvet fabric cut into sections (like an orange) and glued on gold trim. Using pins, we covered them with designs in beads cut from her old necklaces. They were elaborate and beautiful. I don't know where she found the time to sit with me for whole afternoons and do this, but she did. Our packages and our decorations were always unique, creative, and one of a kind. But the time we spent together laughing and talking while we worked is the best present of all. I will always remember my older brother joining us one afternoon. He made a ball covered in black velvet and put one lonely pearl right in the middle of it. It was so silly and we had such a good time. I don't even want to think how many years I have remembered that afternoon.
So, this Christmas, when I feel even the least bit stressed, I'm going to calm down and enjoy what I'm doing right then! It isn't the final product that is most important. It is the fun you have while you're creating it.
George and I are planning to make a gingerbread house this Christmas, something that he has never done, and something I want to share with him. I'm sure that we will enjoy doing it...it just means finding a spare afternoon somewhere. I'm sure as the engineer, he will like the baking, construction and assembly part. I like to work with the pastry bags of frosting to glue the pieces together and make icicles. (Roofs from Necco wafers, and a forest of sugar cookie trees is a specialty. Did you know that if you take two candy canes and turn them to face each other they make a heart?) Gingerbread houses from a kit just aren't the same. Planning your own with cardboard and cutting the pieces and seeing the final unique house is just too much fun! I am reminded of my mom's two favorite sayings: "something worth doing is worth doing well", and "haste makes waste". Funny I can hear her saying that now!
Having the patience to do something well and sharing the time with someone you love will bring the "joy" to Christmas, and leave the "hectic" out.
