Christmas Traditions

I love Christmas traditions. My favorite is the creche. It is always the first decoration to go up and the last to come down. The creche our children grew up with was a resin one that was impervious to being loved to death by children. Baby Jesus survived being dropped many times during our Christmas eve procession to place him in the manger and sing happy birthday. Somebody always carried the cake as we processed around the house singing carols. Mary and Joseph and all the other figures enjoyed many side-trips when little ones decided they needed adventures.

After my mom died in 2002 I passed our crib set on to our oldest child and replaced it with the one that had graced my parents' home for years. It too was not the original one I remembered from childhood. Perhaps it was my grandparents. At any rate, I'm sure my dad made the stable because he had rigged it up with artificial greens that attached to the back in an elaborate scheme with every branch coded to fit into its spot. Putting it together always reminds me of Daddy and his creative genius. He would not waste anything. (E.g, Old indvidual serving cans of juice were painted and crimped on one end to make building toys for the grandkids.)

One intermittent Christmas tradition at our house is making fruitcake. (Please spare me all the jokes about there being only one fruitcake in the world that just keeps getting passed around.) Larry and I think fruitcake is a real treat. I grew up with it. My mother always bought at least one Jane Parker cake from A &P and it didn't last long at our house. Larrry and I used to order ours from the famous Collin Street Bakery in Texas (A & P being long defunct) until I began making my own from a recipe in the Joy of Cooking cookbook. No citron in my fruitcake (yuck), but plenty of brown and gold raisins, candied pineapple and cherries, orange peel that I candy myself, dates, and lots and lots of pecans and walnuts. Sometimes I include dried apricots, but I forgot to buy them this year so I just added extra of the others. After the baking and cooling I warm up cream sherry, poke the cake with a skewer, and drizzle it on drop by drop until the cake is saturated. The last step is decorating with cherries and nuts to make it as appealing to the eye as to the taste. It is truly delicious and fit for the Christmas feast. One can forget the modern Scrooges for awhile and bask in the warmth of the Spirit of Christmas Present.

What are your favorite Christmas traditions?