December 14 – Fruitcake – Friend or Foe?
Did you like fruitcake? Did your family receive fruitcakes? Have you ever re-gifted fruitcake? Have you ever devised creative uses for fruitcake?

This is a repost from 21 Dec 2007–it seemed to fit today’s prompt.

Anyway, this is where I remember our Christmas tree being every year that we lived in this house on the farm. (Just the year before, we’d been living in town–I was never sure of the reason for the moves, but we went back and forth several times.)  I’d forgotten that Mom pinned the Christmas cards to the curtains–I’m sure she made those curtains and I’m sure she flocked the tree with that terrific fake spray snow.   The bureau was borrowed from my bedroom and I know Mom painted it to match our wallpaper.  I wish I remembered what was in some of those packages.  When we lived in this house, this was always where the tree was.   We always had a real tree until after I was in college.   I don’t remember helping to decorate it until we got a little older–by high school, my dad and I usually did the decorating.  I do remember that about this time, when I was in the first grade, I had to take an ornament to school and Mom helped me make a Santa out of a blown egg.  The face I drew on was a little cross-eyed, and Mom made a red hat trimmed with fake fur.  I had that ornament for years until one of my brothers stepped on Santa and crushed him.  I like to think he got coal in his stocking that year.

I’m still hoping to find the picture of our tree the year Mom decorated a tumbleweed.  We lived in the Texas panhandle and they were plentiful.  We all thought it was some sort of sacrilege, but perhaps she was just a Southwest decorator ahead of her time.

written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2010

I thought about it for a while and wrote both sons telling them I had their maternal grandmother’s wedding rings, and while there was only one diamond, they were welcome to think about using the stone and/or rings if they and their beloveds agreed.

They talked and the rings were examined while everyone was here for Thanksgiving.

In the end, the oldest son agreed that since son #2 had firmer plans than did he, he should have first crack at the rings.

So #2 son brought his beloved over to check out the rings.  My mom had saved the original 1950′s Zale’s settings when she had her diamond reset into newer gold  rings about 1975.  When Ang viewed both the updated gold set and the old white gold, stoneless set with a break in the thinned, well-worn wedding band, she fell in love.

With the older set.

I predicted this as Ang wears clothes from vintage shops that look very much like what I wore to college 40 years ago.  Except they look much better on her.  She manages to make those double-knit a-line dresses look great.

The end of this story is that Ang received the old, repaired, restored engagement ring that my mother wore so many years ago for Christmas.

Mom would be tickled–in the sense that her grandson is marrying someone who values the history of that set of rings, but also because she (Ang) prefers what she (Mom) set aside almost 25 years ago.

Welcome to the family, Ang.

This is a repost from 21 Dec 2007–it seemed to fit today’s prompt.

I’m taking license with the prompt for today.  This is a Christmas present for this year rather than bringing up memories of Christmases past.

What happened at work yesterday is a large part of the reason I do what I do.  [NOTE:  ALL names and places have been changed for privacy.]

A gentleman came into our library with an application for the birth certificate for his wife’s adopted sister.  He’d been to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and they’d told him they couldn’t help him–they would not issue him a birth certificate nor would they issue one to his wife for her sister.  They suggested he come to the Historical Society.  We get these customers often–the state does not have any sort of public record index nor do they provide any sort of access for any vital records from any time period.

I began the reference interview to try to determine what we could do for this man.  We do have newspapers from across the state so sometimes those will provide birth information.  Through the years of being a librarian, a genealogist, and an all-around curious person, I’ve helped people with these sorts of research problems–it’s always a circuitous path with lots of unknowns.  And it usually takes a lot of time and effort.  He said he’d been working on this for 16 years.

When I started asking questions, he said the family had been very closed-mouth, not unusual in these situations.  But he thought she might have been adopted by the daughter of a friend of the family–that was the family story, maybe, if the below-the-surface talk could be believed.  And he knew that person’s name.  Let’s call her Roberta.

So we started looking.  We found the family in the 1920 census living in the community he remembered.  The potential adoptive mother was married to Marvin Morgan (name changed)–our customer didn’t know she’d been married.  But he was sure this was the person he’d heard might be the adoptive mother–he recognized her parents names as well as hers. The young married couple was living with her parents in the small town our customer knew as their home, and they had no children of their own listed on the census.   So we looked for them in 1930 to see if there was a child listed in the household, but we couldn’t find them listed–either the grandparents or the adoptive parents.  The husband had been listed as working in the oil fields, so they could have moved anywhere to find work in that time period–the depression and Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl.

We decided to take a look at the SSDI.  Marvin’s name was common but not exactly as common as, say, Bob Jones.  We found a “Marvin Morgan” listed who died in 1975 in Gotham City, Oklahoma, who was the right age and who had received his Social Security card in Oklahoma before 1951.  We thought he was a likely candidate based on that much info, and there were no other candidates with this munch potential.  It was at least an hypothesis to test, a lead to follow.

My colleague trotted back to get the city directories.  Listed in the Gotham City city directory was Mrs.  Robert Morgan, retired.  Was this Roberta or was it someone who was still using a husband’s name?  We kept looking until we found the year she was no longer listed in the directory.   HOWEVER, we went a step further,  looking up her address in the back of the first directory that she was not listed.

A person by a different name was living at that address, but the phone number had remained the same.

What did this mean?

Using the name listed at the address, we went back to the front of the directory and found the wife’s name matched the information the customer had for the sister’s name!  Woo-hoo!

Then, with trepidation, we put her name into the SSDI.  We found a death date for a person who matched  what we knew so far.   Sure enough, she’d died in September of this year.

We went on and found a death notice that included her funeral date and the funeral home.

It was bittersweet, but rewarding.  He was thrilled and so grateful.

It made my day.  We didn’t even charge him for the copies we’d made for him.  In about half an hour, we’d answered a question this family had sought for years.  The answer usually doesn’t come that quickly nor that easily.  We were aided by the fact that the sister’s name had not been changed and that much of the family whisperings turned out to be valid.

It wasn’t the hoped-for outcome, but it still felt like a  gift to both his family and to my coworker and to me.

My mother didn’t like to cook and she certainly didn’t like to bake.  And her mother, my grandmother, was her model.  So home-baked Christmas cookies are not among my memories.  We were more likely to make fudge, particularly after that recipe for using chocolate chips and marshmallow fluff came out–wasn’t it called “Fantasy Fudge?”  My mom did love sweets, but the easier the better.  We had lots of unbaked cookies, for example–the “boil the sugar, milk, cocoa and butter together, add the oatmeal, and drop onto waxed paper” version.  We didn’t usually add the peanut butter.

However, I had my great Aunt Lorene to come to the rescue.  Aunt Lorene was my maternal grandfather’s sister and she treated cooking like an art.  She let me cook with her, teaching me tricks like spraying ice water into the flour and shortening mixture to make a pie crust flaky (my mom’s approach won out–I usually buy Pillsbury pie crusts).  For my birthday in 1965, which is just 11 days after Christmas, she gave me this cooky book:

I’ve used this book a lot.  The cookie recipes are a bit convoluted, as were recipes from that time.  Just above Aunt Lorene’s inscription in this book, you can see that it refers to “teatime.”

Trust me, we didn’t really do teatime in the Texas panhandle, but the brownie and the butterscotch brownies got lots of use, as you can see from the smudged page that has the brownie recipe on it.  I think one of the things I like best about this recipe is that it uses cocoa rather than unsweetened chocolate.  We were much more likely to have cocoa in the pantry than unsweetened chocolate.

To be truthful, I never thought the Christmas cookie offerings in this cookbook looked all that appetizing.

With no-bake cookies as my reference point, making cookie dough that had to be chilled and rolled out seemed a little daunting.

As an adult, however, I have enjoyed making Christmas cookies.  We have family friends who usually have a cookie party a few weeks before Christmas.  It’s not the usual cookie exchange, but more of a time to get together and see who can make the most outre decorated cookie.  Home-baked cookies are provided, in the usual Christmas shapes, but also some sharks and chickens and other various non-traditional shapes.  Red and green and white icing is provided, but so is purple and yellow and orange.  Are you getting the picture?  It’s a fun evening and all ages participate and have a great time.

My oldest son and I have traditionally make the Christmas cookies at our house.  I labor over the choice of the recipe–you’d think I’d make notes on which ones I prefer.  I typically use recipes I find online–I think the Simply Recipes blog has the ones I’ve used the past couple of years.

Now that my son longer lives here, we still occasionally make and decorate cookies if he is at home for a few days before Christmas.  Making all the colors of icing and using the tubes and tips always takes longer than anticipated, but we get them done.  Then we deliver a plate of 6-8 to our neighbors.

Christmas cookies are especially delicious now that I know how much effort goes into them–a labor of love that we will probably make again this year.

Written for the 2009 Advent Calendar of  Christmas Memories

As I recall, we did send Christmas cards.  The one that survives is one my mom sent out the year (1967)  we moved into the house they lived in until her death in 1998.  Always the efficient one, she used the opportunity to let her Christmas card list know about our new address.  I found this one in my grandmother’s picture box–her mother.

This is the only time I know of that my folks used cards printed with their name.  And evidently my South Dakota grandparents were coming south for Christmas.  About this time they started spending winters in Texas and Oklahoma with my folks and with my aunt and uncle who lived in Oklahoma.  Avoiding South Dakota winters only made good sense as they got a little older.  Or maybe we were traveling up to visit them–I loved having Christmas in South Dakota because we could almost always be assured of having a white Christmas.

At home, when we displayed cards, we usually just set them under the tree or on another flat surface.  I don’t remember taping them up or hanging them.  But I do remember going through them and enjoying reading what friends had written.

A few years ago, one the librarians I worked with had a collection of Christmas cards from one of her aunts.  She said she didn’t know anyone else who would appreciate them so she gave them to me.  What a treasure.  They are from the 1910s and 1920s–they are wonderful.  They remind me a little bit of New Yorker cartoons.  I’ve enjoyed looking at these through the years and have tried to think of ways to use them.  I wish I could find them for this post–but they aren’t in any of the 6 boxes of Christmas stuff that’s migrated in from the garage.

Through the years, I’ve sent cards, I”ve made and sent cards, I’ve sent Christmas newsletters, and I’ve not sent cards.  I’m always happier with myself when I make the effort but sometimes it just isn’t possible.  And, by the way, I vote FOR newsletters–I love them!

So I’m late joining this exercise, but maybe it will serve the purpose of getting me started writing again.  And help take me away from the frantic-ness that is too often part of these holidays.

I’d love to say we have some heirloom or cherished ornaments.  I think we have some that are on their way to cherished status, but not a lot.  A few years ago, I purchased some retro ornament that reminded me of those smaller glass ornaments of my childhood (1950s)–there are lots of blues and purples and stripes and some sort of rough white glitter “snow.”  They aren’t circular like today’s bulbs–I’ve enjoyed putting them among our other ornaments the past few years.

My favorite ornament that I kept for many many years was a Santa Claus head I made as a first grader.  We were assigned to make or bring an ornament for our classroom tree.  As I recall, Mrs. Price put up some sort of painted twiggy looking tree at the back of the classroom on the counter next to the sink–as I recall, it got decorated for each season so it wasn’t a true Christmas tree in the sense that it was not evergreen.

To make my ornament, my mom blew out an egg and I drew on the face.  He was a little cross-eyed as I recall.   Mom helped me further by sewing a red hat–I remember we had a time making it big enough to fit over the egg–and I glued on some cotton for the white fur.  I loved putting this ornament on the tree for years–first at my parents’ home and then on my own tree.  However, egg-head Santa suffered a crushing blow–someone stepped on him.  I don’t even remember who now but I do remember it was a very sad day when I had to do away with my Santa.  I think his scruffy little red hat still fills one of the corners of the Christmas storage boxes.

But we do have another ornament that is taking on the “heirloom” mantle–it is already cherished.  Our oldest son made an ornament one year out of an even more unlikely household item than an egg–a toilet paper roll.  The ornament represents a man dressed as in Biblical times–or a young child’s idea of what that would be, anyway.   Construction paper was used to make a red undergarment with a blue outer robe.  Now-raveling burlap forms the headdress–glued over the top and partway down the back–and the face matches the artwork of my 1st grade Santa–but this one has a very dark beard colored on.  It’s just so primitive and representative of my son at that young age–I love it and love to tuck it into the tree each year.

I don’t remember ever stringing cranberries or popcorn, but one year I did decorate our family tree in the tradition of what I’d read and learned about our Germans from Russia ancestors.  Here in Oklahoma City, there is always a display of trees decorated by various groups who want to participate.  Persons can tour the display and the event earns money for a local charity.  The local Germans from Russia chapter had a beautiful tree up and it made me think about my own ancestors.   My family were Mennonites so I can imagine their choice of decorations as being practical.  I put unshelled walnuts and apples and candles on my tree that year.  I did spray paint the walnuts with gold paint, and the apples were not “real” fruit–the were smaller shiny apple ornaments, and my candles were lights.  It was beautiful to me but I remember my sons being a little puzzled.  It took me back to the year my mom “flocked” (with that spray snow that was available and a staple of 1950′s Christmases) a tumbleweed for our Christmas tree in the Texas panhandle.  Looking back on it, it seems appropriate but I really was embarrassed and thought it was weird at the time.

For this week’s blogging prompt, which I really like, by the way, I’m going to reprint an earlier post.  I’ve posted several times about holidays–sometimes after hosting Thanksgiving at my house and sometimes after going to my brother’s.  Other postings are related to honoring a great-uncle on Memorial Day and another posts a picture of “Christmases long, long ago…”

But here’s one of my favorite memories:  The July the 4 rodeo in South Dakota:

July 4 Rodeo

Happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln.