Time for a little Christmas vignette.
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In our house the Christmas baking cycle was a ritual. Gramma systematically stored ingredients prior to attacking her pre-holiday tasks. First came fruitcake, but not today's dry, tasteless doorstops. This moist, spiced, nut and candied fruit-filled masterpiece was to die for. Gramma mixed everything by hand, filling several loaf pans for gift-giving. After baking, brandy was lavishly poured over all, cheesecloth and a brown paper bag covered each pan and a dark corner shelf held the treasure for weeks. A second infusion of brandy insured that whoever partook of a slice late in December would feel the holiday spirit(s). Mincemeat came next. The aroma spiraling through the house while the lot was cooking promised a satisfying outcome. Again, Gramma made sure her mincemeat was spirited. A touch of rum joined the brandy. It would have survived in Tut's tomb. One of the filled mason jars went to Father Brady,our parish pastor of Irish persuasion. His housekeeper made a mincemeat pie for him every year, using Gramma's gift. He always visited us after Christmas to thank her, noting that he didn't need a Christmas toddy after eating the pie. Finally, pfeffernuse, lebkuchen, stollen and divinity fudge filled the kitchen with spicy odors and drifts of powdered sugar.
Every Christmas season Gramma's oldest friend, "Aint" Rose (as in Opie's Aint Bea) came to visit. She was a smallish version of Ma Kettle and claimed kinship with the feuding Hatfields. Her speech was earthy. Of course, we had to have mincemeat pie, too. Aint Rose was piecrust maker extraordinaire. It was a small weakness in Gramma's otherwise peerless cooking skills. For some reason, I was allowed only a very small piece of mincemeat pie or fruitcake. The mincemeat in particular produced a warm feeling from my mouth all the way down to my tummy.
Every winter, usually after Christmas, from the time I was six years old, Gramma and I packed up and went for a two or three month stay in the high desert. The damp air in Los Angeles had me gasping for breath with asthmatic bronchitis. I always took school work along. The nuns at nearby St. Boniface School for Indian children checked my homework and tested me. I never lost a grade. One particularly wet winter, we went to Banning early in December.
We rented an old furnished house. Ordinarily we stayed at a little motel with kitchen facilities, run by a dear old couple. I'll talk about them at another time. That year, however, I was to be ill for a longer stretch. We stayed in Banning for most of the year. I had a "spot" on one lung, had to rest often with long afternoon naps. More about that at another time, also. Cooking was accomplished on a wood stove in the kitchen. A Ben Franklin stove occupied the living room. My job was keeping wood in the stoves. The toilet in the cramped bathroom had a chain pull attached to a cabinet overhead. Since a chicken coop adjoined the woodshed, Gramma bought some chickens for fresh eggs and healthy eating.
I still believed in Santa Claus and fretted about his finding us. Gramma decided to tell me the facts, pointing out that each of us is Santa Claus in our hearts. His spirit is in our sharing and giving. She reminded me that we brought my small creche to celebrate the real reason for Christmas. I cried anyway - briefly.
We had taken mincemeat and fruitcake from home. Gramma baked cookies after we settled in. We forgot tree decorations. After picking out a six foot noble fir and a tree stand from the only tree lot in town, we set it up in a corner of the living room. That same evening Gramma popped a bunch of popcorn in a skillet on top of the kitchen stove. She emptied a sack of cranberries into one bowl and popcorn into another. This was my introduction to an old-fashioned Christmas. We alternated popcorn and cranberries on thick thread strung through a needle, then wound the garland around the tree. The dime store provided a string of lights and tinsel. We bought colored construction paper, cut it into strips and made chains to drape over branches. I loved that tree and my newly discovered decorating skills.
Grampa always had to remain in Los Angeles because of his job, and to take care of the house, the pets, and the backyard flock of chickens. Aint Rose came for an extended visit and to take care of Grampa. They both arrived from L.A. a few days before Christmas. Aint Rose drove her car. Grampa never learned to drive. They brought our tree-top star from home. Things were looking up. The smell of mincemeat and pumpkin pies baking in the cast iron stove's primitive oven was comforting. On Christmas day a goose roasted to a turn. Traditional trimmings crowded the table. Our Philco radio had broadcast Lionel Barrymore's yearly portrayal of Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol." Grampa chcukled at Jack Benny's annual holiday program. Gramma and Aint Rose shared memories of long-ago Christmases in Missouri.
My favorite present was a woodburning set. Gramma taught me pyrography, decorating a small wooden box with the burning tool. I helped her stain it and to paint the burned-in designs. Several years ago I gave that same kit to a grandson. The box still holds small treasures and memories of a very special Christmas.
12/19/11
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