A few weeks back, in the aftermath of the holidays, I wrote about traditions that make the Christmas holiday special. I also invited people to share stories!
My dear friend Mandy at Twin Trials and Triumphs wrote this beautiful post for me to share here.
It's lovely.
The images and feelings it conjures make me tear up a little bit (in a good way).
It makes my mouth water.
Best of all---she shares of bit of her family's Christmas tradition with all of us!
Thank you, Mandy, for sharing a piece of your soul here.
_________________________________________________________________________________
When I think about the holiday traditions I grew up with, my mind goes right to my grandmother’s house. Our small family would congregate there for all the major holidays, and some minor ones, too…an opportunity to relax, enjoy each others' company, and there was always the most delicious food.
Green beans at Easter…slow-grilled ribs for the summer holidays, along with my aunt’s potato salad (always eaten on the patio, generations’ old quilts lining the swings)…butter beans at Thanksgiving…”knick knacks” at Christmas, including pastrami and mustard on pumpernickel and the world’s best Chex mix.
My heart swells and my mouth waters just thinking about it.
While it saddens me that my girls will never experience the joy of running up the walk to my grandmother’s house, knowing they’d be greeted by the biggest of bear hugs, I am thankful that I can at least pass along some of our family’s recipes to them. I think the senses of taste and smell are so incredibly powerful, and I hope to instill a sense of family in our girls’ hearts with some food traditions of our own.
In our girls’ three years, I have taken some family recipes, as well as some of my own, and have begun to associate certain dishes with particular holidays.
Valentine’s Day = strawberry cake with cream cheese icing.
St. Patrick’s Day = brownies with mint filling.
Easter = carrot cake.
Summer holidays = ribs, baked beans, potato salad, and banana split pie.
Thanksgiving = homemade cranberry sauce and Watergate salad.
Christmas = cinnamon pull-apart bread.
When the girls get a little older and are able to actually help in the kitchen, I have plans to make a photo book of our traditional recipes, complete with pictures of us cooking together. For now, I know they enjoy the yummy food, and I hope one day they’ll enjoy having that record of our own little family’s traditions.
As part of Julia’s Specially Christmas, I’m sharing my Christmas recipe. It’s nothing gourmet, but it’s quite yummy, and easy enough for the hustle and bustle of Christmas morning. And I hope one day that the smell of cinnamon wafting from the oven transports my girls back to the Christmas mornings of their youth.
Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
2 cans (7.5 oz. each) refrigerated buttermilk biscuits
½ cup butter, melted, divided
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut biscuit dough into quarters with scissors. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a large zipper seal bag. Add dough quarters to bag and shake to coat. Place half of coated pieces into greased 12-cup fluted tube pan. Drizzle with ¼ cup melted butter. Top with remaining biscuit quarters and melted butter. Top unbaked loaf with remaining cinnamon sugar mixture. Bake 40 - 45 minutes, or until golden. Let loaf stand 5 minutes and invert onto plate. Top with glaze.
Glaze
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
½ cup powdered sugar
1 - 2 Tbsp. milk
Beat cream cheese with powdered sugar with electric mixer until well blended. Add milk until desired consistency is reached. Spoon over warm loaf.
From our family to yours…I hope you had a fantastic holiday, filled with wonderful traditions and good eats, too!
Showing posts with label tradition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tradition. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Specially Christmas a.k.a. The one where I use the word "special" at least 62 times
On Christmas, my father-in-law plopped a brown paper bag in everyone's lap.
We opened them at the same time. Contents included:
He told us he wanted us to see what his treat was every Christmas when he was growing up 50+ years ago. This treat was so special, that he vividly remembered after all this time.
Before I go on, this is NOT a post poo-pooing giving gifts at Christmas, if that's what you're thinking. It blesses my heart to give and to receive thoughtful and intentional gifts. So, please read on, knowing that's not where I'm headed.
I do believe that sometimes we lose the special. There's so much, and the holidays can be so harried, stressful, overwhelming, _____________ (you fill in the blank), that nothing stands out as special.
This Christmas was so exciting for me and Brad. Our girls are old enough to get excited, and we were excited about their excited.
Along with excited, we want to make Christmas meaningful and special. I think we have to be intentional about making Christmas special, and that takes planning and work. I'm not sure we've quite landed on our unique special yet, but we're working on it.
I've read lots of great ideas about this via the blog world recently of Mamas who have embraced Christmas and lovingly included their children in fun activities to make Christmas special:
So, this is what I'm thinking:
(I know Christmas is over. Then New Years will be over. It will still be cold outside, but there won't be any Christmas lights to look at, which quite frankly, depresses me--especially when there's no snow on the ground, in which I can at least take cute pictures of our girls all bundled up.)
I'd love to read and share your Christmas stories---keep the spirit of Christmas alive a bit longer---at least until that groundhog does his thing. I'd love to read about how you make Christmas special in your family.
It can be:
I know there are lots of beautiful stories out there that can keep January sparkling (even if there's no snow on the ground).
If you're interested in guest posting, please email me pontifications (at) hotmail (dot) com
I look forward to hearing from you!!
(My husband thinks this is cheesy, "but that's okay," he says---so, you've got Papa's stamp of approval to guest post--sort of).
We opened them at the same time. Contents included:
- an orange
- some hard candy
- a candy cane
- an assortment of nuts
He told us he wanted us to see what his treat was every Christmas when he was growing up 50+ years ago. This treat was so special, that he vividly remembered after all this time.
Before I go on, this is NOT a post poo-pooing giving gifts at Christmas, if that's what you're thinking. It blesses my heart to give and to receive thoughtful and intentional gifts. So, please read on, knowing that's not where I'm headed.
I do believe that sometimes we lose the special. There's so much, and the holidays can be so harried, stressful, overwhelming, _____________ (you fill in the blank), that nothing stands out as special.
This Christmas was so exciting for me and Brad. Our girls are old enough to get excited, and we were excited about their excited.
Along with excited, we want to make Christmas meaningful and special. I think we have to be intentional about making Christmas special, and that takes planning and work. I'm not sure we've quite landed on our unique special yet, but we're working on it.
I've read lots of great ideas about this via the blog world recently of Mamas who have embraced Christmas and lovingly included their children in fun activities to make Christmas special:
- Helene included her children in baking cookies
- Mandy let her babes in the kitchen to make marshmallow snowmen and ice cream cone trees
- Lisa plays "Elf on the Shelf" with her three kiddos
- Melissa made some of her littles' Christmas gifts this year (Gotta love Pinterest!)
- Katie bundled up her twins and walked around looking at Christmas lights.
So, this is what I'm thinking:
(I know Christmas is over. Then New Years will be over. It will still be cold outside, but there won't be any Christmas lights to look at, which quite frankly, depresses me--especially when there's no snow on the ground, in which I can at least take cute pictures of our girls all bundled up.)
I'd love to read and share your Christmas stories---keep the spirit of Christmas alive a bit longer---at least until that groundhog does his thing. I'd love to read about how you make Christmas special in your family.
It can be:
- a tradition
- an activity
- a special book you read
- yummy food you eat
- games you play
- maybe something beautiful and wonderful happened this Christmas that you want to share?
I know there are lots of beautiful stories out there that can keep January sparkling (even if there's no snow on the ground).
If you're interested in guest posting, please email me pontifications (at) hotmail (dot) com
I look forward to hearing from you!!
(My husband thinks this is cheesy, "but that's okay," he says---so, you've got Papa's stamp of approval to guest post--sort of).
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
We're gonna have the hap hap happiest Christmas...
We're kicking off our fun old fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols. ~Clark Griswold
Holiday tradition. It's been on my mind a lot lately. Even though the girls are so young, and won't remember anything about this Christmas, we want to establish our own meaningful traditions now, so we can put them into practice. We're not looking for our home to be mistakenly thought to be ablaze due to mass quantities of Christmas lights, nor do we want our girls to be frozen from the waist down all for the sake of the experience of uprooting our Christmas tree from a forest--we just want the girls to have fond memories of our family Christmas that authentically celebrates the birth of Jesus, and isn't wrapped up in scoring loot.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Brad and I decided that, even though we will, most likely, always be out of town on Thanksgiving, we would prepare our own Thanksgiving feast for just our family. I love cooking, and trying out new recipes--this tradition is right up my alley. I very much look forward to when the girls can get in on the action! Check. We've got that holiday all wrapped up. Next up--Christmas.
This morning I was reading over here about memories. If you ask someone to remember a bad memory, it's almost always a specific instance. Contrarily, if you ask someone to recall a good memory, it is most often wrapped up in a tradition.
Thinking back to my childhood, I have so many wonderful Christmas memories wrapped up in the five senses, and many of them were indeed part of our family traditions--the cinnamon taste of my mama's warm, gooey bubble bread (monkey bread to many of you) on Christmas morning, the sparkle of the lights that we drove around to look at every Christmas eve, the feeling of swelling in my chest of pure joy at the wonder of this special time, the sound of my papa praying and reading from the Bible, and the smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, citrus, mint and chocolate swirling around in the air.
I love that my most vivid memories of Christmas are not about stuff. Yes, we did receive presents. Santa did come to our house. As the oldest of five kids, and my youngest sister 11 years my junior, Santa made appearances in our house for many years. I admit, I did get gleeful when I saw my bulging stocking hanging from our stair banister, even long after Santa morphed into my parents. But our Christmas wasn't all about the presents. We didn't mail letters to Santa. It was never about making a list of wants. Our Christmas was about family. It was about enjoying good food together. It was about spending time with my brother and sisters in our pajamas until well after noon. It was about bundling up and going outside to play in the snow. It was about worshiping our Father by loving one another and spending a good day together.
My prayer is that my daughters cherish the time we spend together as a family and the gift of that day, because of Jesus' birth. I pray that they learn the gift of charity, and have a heart for giving to others. I recently learned of an organization that would be perfect for kids to contribute to called The Dinner Garden. It buys seeds to give to families, so that they can plant gardens. You can feed a family for five dollars! That's completely doable for a kid with an allowance! Not the point of this, but I'm thrilled to know things like that are available.
When I started out writing this, my intention was to write about Christmas ornaments, and then I saw this lovely lady's post, and thought I'd link up my finished product there. I even took pictures of some of my Christmas ornaments. I might still have another post to write, but this is what I came up with for now. These are my meandering thoughts. How do you make Christmas special in your home? I'd love to hear your ideas!
Holiday tradition. It's been on my mind a lot lately. Even though the girls are so young, and won't remember anything about this Christmas, we want to establish our own meaningful traditions now, so we can put them into practice. We're not looking for our home to be mistakenly thought to be ablaze due to mass quantities of Christmas lights, nor do we want our girls to be frozen from the waist down all for the sake of the experience of uprooting our Christmas tree from a forest--we just want the girls to have fond memories of our family Christmas that authentically celebrates the birth of Jesus, and isn't wrapped up in scoring loot.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Brad and I decided that, even though we will, most likely, always be out of town on Thanksgiving, we would prepare our own Thanksgiving feast for just our family. I love cooking, and trying out new recipes--this tradition is right up my alley. I very much look forward to when the girls can get in on the action! Check. We've got that holiday all wrapped up. Next up--Christmas.
This morning I was reading over here about memories. If you ask someone to remember a bad memory, it's almost always a specific instance. Contrarily, if you ask someone to recall a good memory, it is most often wrapped up in a tradition.
Thinking back to my childhood, I have so many wonderful Christmas memories wrapped up in the five senses, and many of them were indeed part of our family traditions--the cinnamon taste of my mama's warm, gooey bubble bread (monkey bread to many of you) on Christmas morning, the sparkle of the lights that we drove around to look at every Christmas eve, the feeling of swelling in my chest of pure joy at the wonder of this special time, the sound of my papa praying and reading from the Bible, and the smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, citrus, mint and chocolate swirling around in the air.
I love that my most vivid memories of Christmas are not about stuff. Yes, we did receive presents. Santa did come to our house. As the oldest of five kids, and my youngest sister 11 years my junior, Santa made appearances in our house for many years. I admit, I did get gleeful when I saw my bulging stocking hanging from our stair banister, even long after Santa morphed into my parents. But our Christmas wasn't all about the presents. We didn't mail letters to Santa. It was never about making a list of wants. Our Christmas was about family. It was about enjoying good food together. It was about spending time with my brother and sisters in our pajamas until well after noon. It was about bundling up and going outside to play in the snow. It was about worshiping our Father by loving one another and spending a good day together.
My prayer is that my daughters cherish the time we spend together as a family and the gift of that day, because of Jesus' birth. I pray that they learn the gift of charity, and have a heart for giving to others. I recently learned of an organization that would be perfect for kids to contribute to called The Dinner Garden. It buys seeds to give to families, so that they can plant gardens. You can feed a family for five dollars! That's completely doable for a kid with an allowance! Not the point of this, but I'm thrilled to know things like that are available.
When I started out writing this, my intention was to write about Christmas ornaments, and then I saw this lovely lady's post, and thought I'd link up my finished product there. I even took pictures of some of my Christmas ornaments. I might still have another post to write, but this is what I came up with for now. These are my meandering thoughts. How do you make Christmas special in your home? I'd love to hear your ideas!
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