Tag: baking

Christmas Spirit Contagion

Ten days until the BIG day. And I am utterly unprepared.

The true spirit of Christmas is weighed down by incessant messages of commercialism and self-interest. We may have to dig down a few layers to find Christmas spirit. I am personally convinced it is still out there. Opinions vary on how to access it.

A combination of worldly and picayune preoccupations can obscure the true message and meaning of the season.

Finding complete addresses and stamps to send Christmas cards or packages to friends and acquaintances. And before the mailing deadlines.

The mad rushing around to make sure every designated loved one has a gift under the tree. The laying in of food and baking supplies to create sweet seasonal offerings.

I am trying to do Christmas differently this year. I am doing this by not doing much of anything. If there is a key gift I wish to share with loved ones this year, it is me being calm and present.

Whatever other messages Jesus Christ was trying to convey, I am pretty sure running yourself ragged and inviting near bankruptcy wasn’t one of them. It all circles back to how we have been trained to express love and appreciation.

For my Dad, it was with money. You could tell how much he loved you or how good he felt about himself by the size of the Christmas check.

For my mother, it was the little elements that signified a “real” Christmas was underway: barley toys, and special Christmas baking. Bought not made. We’d lay in fruitcake (dark AND light) even if no one really liked it or ate it. Throwing out fruitcake after the New Year was another part of our regular holiday traditions.

And chicken bones – not actual chicken bones but a confection of chocolate and cinnamon produced by a homegrown candy shop back where I grew up in Canada.

This year, I hope to find my Christmas spirit in contemplation and prayer. Or at the very least, peace and quiet. There are Christmas traditions I enjoy but none more than having nothing to do and nowhere to go. And nowhere else I would rather be.

There will likely be a Christmas Eve church service we attend this year. The sheer beauty and enjoyment of singing old Christmas standards within a community of others has always been a surefire path to loving and peaceful feelings. A revival of the spirit at the very least.

These days, I am not in a place where I can lay my hands on chicken bones or barley toys. Just as well. No one should eat that much sugar.

This year, we will create our own Christmas. All of us always do but it varies from year to year.

The traditional Christmas fir tree is replaced by a tabletop rosemary tree with ribbons instead of ornaments.

I used to be hard on myself for not living up to all of the Christmas expectations. There is a flutter of guilt I recognize for deliberately abandoning traditions that feel more like obligations.

Choosing to celebrate Christmas quietly luxuriating in the peacefulness and joy of the season seems like a much more authentic response. 

And possibly what JC would advise. I mean, he just hung around being idolized on Christmas Day. And I bet he didn’t feel even a little bit guilty.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Crimping the Crust

This metaphor may be a stretch. However, I have lately started to compare my life to an apple pie. Not my absolute favorite pie but apple pie is among the top ten pies I love and easiest for most to identify with.

So let’s say our lives start out with your standard issue pie pan. Round and made out of glass or metal and in the case of one pan I have – cast iron. That one is a doozy.

The bottom crust is the environment you are poured into at birth: your family, your environment, the house you live in, whether you have or don’t have grandparents and extended family, and whether you have or don’t have money. All of these extraneous factors contribute to how you mature and grow.

Some elements are positive and support your growth. Like attentive grandparents or a kid-safe and friendly neighborhood with good schools and lots of activities to take part in. Your parents’ ability to pick and choose what you can experience is based on a lot of these things.

Other bottom crusts are not so nurturing. There not be enough money. The parents may have to work multiple jobs just to keep body and soul together. The kids’ needs get scanted or are simply not there. And add to that any afflictions: addiction, mental health issues, or a neighborhood awash in crime and violence.

Kids learn in this environment, too. But the lessons learned in this environment are usually more focused on survival and managing the negatives in their environment than striving for personal growth and maturity.

The filling is your life. As you get to adulthood, you begin to pick and choose what to put in your pie. Apples is an obvious choice. But you pick a career. A spouse. A home. A community. Your choices are more or less based on what the bottom crust of your life was.

People tend to stay in the same socio-economic group they were born into. Though the choices being made are shifting dramatically, people usually picked spouses from the same race or culture they came from and the opposite gender. That is all up for grabs and discussion these days. I am talking about a certain demographic.

As we mature and grow in our jobs, our marriages, and our communities, our choices may be challenged to conform more closely to who we are. Switching careers in mid-life. Choosing to end an unsatisfactory marriage. Maybe marriage to the wrong person and gender in line with who you really are.

As the filling is being made, there may be all kinds of additions and subtractions over the years like that which goes into any kind of baking or building. As we sift through life and get more certain about what stays and what goes, what works and what doesn’t – exclusively for us – our apple pie may be very different from someone else’s apple pie. Even though the basic ingredients are the same.

Eventually – if we’re lucky – we get to a point where we are comfortable putting on the upper crust and closing the pie to ready it for baking. We know who we are. The important choices have all been made. We allow into our lives who and what works for us. We kindly but firmly resist the intrusion of people, things, and experiences that we know will not serve us.

We get better at discriminating between what works and reinforces what is important to us and what doesn’t. Eventually, we learn we are satisfied enough and comfortable enough to stop striving and start fully enjoying our lives.

We crimp the crust of the pie – our lives – and contain what is important and reject what isn’t. Of course, this is not a perfect science. It is a crazy metaphor. The pie can fall and shatter. The crust might burn in spite of putting aluminum around the edges to protect it.

But lately, I have been thinking of it more and more about my life this way. I have put apples and raisins and walnuts and butter and brown sugar in the filling of my life. I am at the stage where I am ready to crimp the edges of the crust and enjoy the final product.

Crazy as the metaphor may be, I love apple pie. My mouth is watering at the thought. That suggests a life tolerably well-lived to me.