Advent Calendar - 59 Cent Santas & More

I don’t remember ever sending a letter to Santa.  I do remember looking through the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs for toys.  But we really didn’t expect to get any of those things we found.  

Our children visited Santa a couple of times.  About the time they started not believing in Santa, we had them “play” Santa to my sister and her husband.  We bought small gifts, put them in a stocking, and on Christmas Eve, hung the stocking on the door of their apartment.  We explained that Santa Claus was the spirit of giving.  They loved this and still remember doing it. 

Our children still hang stockings.  Our married daughter and son-in-law have cross-stitched stockings that they fill for each other, in secret.

Our five grandchildren have handmade stitched stockings with appliqued snowmen.   Some of them are still young enough to believe totally.  Two of them are teenagers but they still want stocking stuff.  Of course, one of them didn't go to sleep last Christmas Eve and didn't get her stocking filled.   

I have a Santa Claus collection.  Some were purchased in a set by mail; some were purchased in a set at a department store (Dillards).  I have some little special ones that I was given.  I have some large hand-carved Santas made by friends.  (He carves them and she paints them.)  I also still have 6 “international” Santas that I bought at Pic ‘n’ Sav, one of the predecessors to Big Lots.  There is still the 59 cent price tag on them.  I finally sold or gave away about 300
Santas because I ran out of room to display them and I wasn’t as attached to them as I am to those I kept.   

Tuesday Travels - Christmas Markets

For me traditions are something to cherish.  No, you don't have to be "stuck" in the past, but you may want to try a new experience. 

German Christmas markets are so unlike our Black Friday or any of the other sale days after Thanksgiving.  The couple of times I've been fortunate enough to be in Germany during December, I visited markets in both small and large towns.  Some open on December 1; some are just for a weekend (in the small villages). 

They all have great atmosphere.  There are lots of handmade items.  I've bought wood carved ornaments, ornaments made from walnut shells, ornaments made from blown glass, ornaments made from lace, ornaments made from something like paper mache, and much more.  I've found hand knit scarves and sweaters.  Of course there is candy and roasted nuts.  And, there is food.  Oh, what food.  And, to drink there is gluhwein which is a mulled wine.  However, there is also kinder gluhwein which doesn't have wine, but is based on a juice.  The first time you purchase a cup in a market, you pay a deposit on the ceramic cup.  (The cup may have the year on it, but definitely has the town.)  For refills, you pay a smaller fee.  Then, at the end of the market, if you wish to return the cup, you get your "deposit" back, or you can keep the cup as a souvenir.  I have cups from 9 or 10 markets.  What fond memories I have when I drink coffee, tea or apple cider from them during December. 

Chicago has a great Christmas market.  Phoenix has a one day market that was in Mesa for the first 3 years and has now moved to downtown Phoenix.  I'm certain other U.S. towns have the markets also.  If you can find one near, check it out.  You really get an idea of what shopping was like for our ancestors in the "old" country.  AND, for many of our "cousins" even now.

Advent Calendar - Lichtbogen, Peppermint Sticks & Decorations in March

Some years we decorate and some years we don’t.  Often, especially while the children were young, we would put lights on the house.  These were those BIG lights on strings, so that if one went out they all went out.  I know that Walt was happy when we finally bought some where the string stayed lit even though one light was out.

For a 3 or 4 years we made decorations that looked like peppermint sticks.  We scrounged the back of carpet stores for carpet tubes.  I wrapped the tubes with heavy duty aluminum foil and then put red outdoor ribbon in spirals around each tube.  They were placed along the driveway and the walk to the house by sticking a 16 inch piece of wood in the ground and placing the tube on top of it.  Then I strung gold garland between the “sticks”.  Those were fun and affordable.

Now, even when we don’t put up house lights, I put a German candle holder in the window.  It’s called a “Lichtbogen” or loosely translated “light arch”.  It’s really not an arch, but a triangular shape.  Since it is electric, I put it on a timer,  and it stays lit all night long.  Walt and I saw these in many German windows the couple of years we visited during December.  So now we have a two of them and we put them in our windows in Phoenix.

In Phoenix, and in Southern California, outside decorations always were removed around New Year’s Day.  It was quite a surprise when Walt and I moved to Montreal, to find Christmas decorations still up the middle of March.  Then, after living there for a couple of years we could understand the difficulty of removing some of these decorations when you have 4-6 feet of snow on the ground.  After all, how do you place a ladder securely to remove the lights; many on the second floor eaves?  How do you traipse through all of the snow to remove the snowmen and other figures that are in your yard?  (And they may be half covered with snow also.)  So that was a new event for us.   

When I was a child, and then when our children were young, we would walk around the neighborhood, or drive further distances, to see the lights.  There were some houses that had huge amounts of lights, but we didn’t really care.  We just enjoyed all of them.  And the oohs and aahs of children and adults is still a pleasant sound.  We don’t do it as much, but I still enjoy strolling the neighborhood the middle of December.  Of course, in Phoenix, it’s something you CAN do without being totally bundled up.

Advent Calendar - A Subtle Message of Peace with Cards

Trying to think of a subject for this post was a little difficult.  As you’ll read later, almost all of the cards I send now have some message of “peace” or international harmony, or some message similar to these. 

Now I purchase cards, and we send out about 80 or so.  I look for cards that say “Peace”, or have a holiday message in various languages, or that show international flags, country costumes, or other international symbols.  I still write notes in most of the cards.  This is the time I write notes to many friends that we don’t see regularly but like to know how they are doing.

We have sent cards every year since 1964.  In the 1970s I made cards by hand painting on felt.  Later Walt and I silk screened the cards, on paper, with a different design each year.  I learned how to actually make the screen.   The cards were laid out on the kitchen floor to dry, since we usually made about 150.  Even then on each card I would write a personal note, except for the cards sent to work associates that we saw regularly. 

Oh, yes.  We always have, and we still do, display all of the cards we receive.  We don’t just pile them in a basket.  They are taped to some cabinet doors in a hall so that we can see all of the fronts.  Since this hall connects the living room and kitchen to the bedrooms, we pass the display many times each day.  I just love the variety, color, and thought of each card.  What a wonderful way to easily think of others during this busy month!!

Advent Calendar - Ornaments Are Memories

Oh have we had a variety of Christmas ornaments.  We have some that the children made in preschool or elementary school.  These included yard dipped in white glue, curled on waxed paper and dried; some with a small photograph; bell cut from construction paper and colored. 

When I was young, Mother made some ornaments out of a flour, salt and water dough.  When my children were young, we also made some.  The dough was colored and then the ornaments were decorated with glitter or thin tinsel.  We still have some of these and they were made about 1983 or 1984.  Many of them broke and were thrown out, but I still have a few of these fragile ornaments.

We have some ornaments from other countries.  Some of them my mother gave us from her travels.  Some Walt and I bought on our travels.  We even have some leprechauns that were meant to be key chain holders.  (I just removed the chain part and key loop and attached an ornament hanger.) 

We also have some bubble lights.  I found some in a catalog a few years ago.  What great memories.  They are not the large ones of my childhood, but they still bubble and keep me entertained.  I still need to make sure that they stand up straight on the tree; otherwise they really don’t bubble well.

I made some tatted snowflakes that also hang on the tree.  My sister made some crocheted ones for me.  So, our tree has many memories of family and travels. 

Do any of you remember the metal key that used to be on the top of cans like coffee and shortening?  And you ended up with a strip of twisted metal?  My grandmother used some of these twists on her tree.  Some years later, in an antique store I actually found a small package of 10 of these, commercially made.  The original price says 10¢.  So they weren’t that expensive, but Grandmother still made her own. 

Because we have an artificial tree, I no longer use icicles made of light-weight foil.  Instead, I have some hand-blown ones that have colored liquid in them.  I also have some that are just decorative hand-blown ones that really look like the icicles hanging from the eaves.  And, because it is artificial, we can put it up early and keep it up until after New Year’s.  And NO dried tree needles stuck in the carpet months later.

Advent Calendar - Oh! The Breakfast (and More)

Christmas morning breakfast was special.  For as long as I can remember we had Merk’s Coffee Cake, a recipe Mother found in one of the Los Angeles newspapers.  It was made in an angel food cake pan;  then later in a Bundt pan.   Dad cooked the bacon and scrambled eggs. 

My grandparents would come for breakfast.  We children (all 5 of us) would open our stockings before breakfast and our one gift from Santa.  The rest of the gifts were opened after breakfast, after everyone went to the bathroom and after the adults had a fresh cup of coffee. 

Dinner was sometimes turkey and sometimes a roast.  We would also have dressing, potatoes gravy (my Grandmother always made the gravy), a vegetable, a green salad, and dinner rolls.  (Do you remember those soft, white ones you got from the store? And then browned in the oven?  Well, those.)

Pies would be served later.  Usually they were homemade, but later Mother would buy they frozen and then bake them. 

Advent Calendar - Fresh & Artificial Trees

When I was a child, we had a real tree and we always bought it from the tree lot run by the city fire department.  Since my dad worked for the water department, we knew many of the firemen.  This was part of our holiday traditions.  As you can imagine, with 5 children running in different directions looking for the “best” tree, getting a decision was a major project.

Once the tree was home Dad would put on the lights.  Struggling with the lights was more like it.  These were BIG lights, and we had aluminum reflectors to go behind them.  And, if one light went out or was bad, then the entire string of lights was off.  During the entire season we had to go back and switch bulbs to see which one(s) were not working this time. 

The 5 children in the family took turns putting on the ornaments.  The special ornaments were attached by my mother and, for years, they were always put up high.  Some of them were her grandmother’s small ornaments, and a few she acquired in other places. 

We also had bubble lights on the tree.  I loved watching them bubble.  Trying to get them to stay up straight, so that the bubbles would rise, was something else we worked on during the entire holiday season.  Again, think of 5 children, and a dog, walking past the tree many times each day. 

Usually my mother and I put on the tinsel: those thin strips of light-weight foil.  Of course, with a dog, some of them always were all over the house.

For some reason I don’t remember taking down the tree and packing up all of the ornaments.   

As an adult, when our children were small, my husband and I would apply for a tree-cutting permit.  Then we would drive (2-4 hours) to the designated national forest.  With 2 children bundled for cold and snow (we lived in Phoenix), we found a tree and cut it.  Most of the time we found out that the SMALL tree that we found in the forest needed at least 10 inches cut off of the bottom once we got the tree home.

Walt, my husband, put on the lights.  Then we all put on ornaments.  Many of them were made while the children were in preschool or they had other special memories.  Every year, I bought or made each child a special ornament. Those ornaments were given to them when they moved out so that they would have special ornaments for their first tree.

We began decorating the tree in the afternoon.  Since we never knew how long it would take, we usually had homemade New England style clam chowder and popcorn for dinner.  Sometimes we finished decorating after dinner.  Of course we listened to Christmas music while decorating the tree. 

Some years later, we bought an artificial tree because we were usually gone for a week.  With the “live” tree, we would return to dead needles that were difficult to clean up. An artificial tree made sense.  And now we can have the tree up for a couple of weeks before traveling, and it isn’t dead when we return.