tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post8674628373373512623..comments2024-03-19T08:42:56.206-04:00Comments on Jungle Red Writers: ON HOLIDAY MEMORIESJungle Red Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16646429819267618412noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-72289892706439348362007-12-27T16:25:00.000-05:002007-12-27T16:25:00.000-05:00To get to Mo's blog, Momentary Lapses, go to:http:...To get to Mo's blog, Momentary Lapses, go to:<BR/><BR/>http://momentary-lapses.blogspot.com/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-32706955121543786612007-12-24T16:10:00.000-05:002007-12-24T16:10:00.000-05:00Sheila: I love the potato chip garlands. That woul...Sheila: I love the potato chip garlands. That would be hard to do, right? Wouldn't they keep breaking?<BR/><BR/>Susannah and Mo--You bring tears to my eyes. (And then laughter at elf bits.)<BR/><BR/>Please pay a visit to Mo's blog. She has honored us all in sharing her story.Hank Phillippi Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17420701704169428286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-7850076539889236882007-12-24T13:55:00.000-05:002007-12-24T13:55:00.000-05:00Mo -- I read Thrill of Hope and am grateful you ch...Mo -- I read <I>Thrill of Hope</I> and am grateful you chose to post it. Anything I could write other than 'thank you' would be inadequate.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-82689452862783951862007-12-24T13:49:00.000-05:002007-12-24T13:49:00.000-05:00I came from a family more likely to order takeout ...I came from a family more likely to order takeout than to cook, so I don't really have many Christmas memories associated with making food. I do remember lots of tinfoil pans, however. And the tunk-tunk-tunk sound of my grandmother's gas oven warming, the smell of it set to "reheat."<BR/><BR/>But I do remember that once we were here in the U.S., the tradition was to open presents Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day (and certainly rather than Boxing Day, which was our previous history), and my grandmother would take me out to look at Christmas lights <I>so that Santa could come</I>. If there is one thing that carries over from Christmases of my childhood, it's those lights -- and my grandmother's plastic, electrified waving Santa, who partially melted as he was exposed to the heat of his internal bulb over several years -- causing him to sag at the knees a little, giving him a kind of hooker's hip-cocked come-hither stance over time. It didn't help that my grandmother placed him beneath her lamp post. By 1968, her Santa looked like he'd tossed back a couple and was clearly a cooked and lonely guy on the make.<BR/><BR/>She also had these little funky elves -- the bodies were pipe cleaners and their faces were some kind of painted plastic. She would wrap them onto the branches of her aluminum Chistmas tree (the one with the wheel turning at the base of it, changing the tree from red to green to gold to blue), and by the end of Christmas Eve, all the elves had slid around and were dangling over the snapping jaws of my aunt's dachshund, Heidi, who liked to eat them. Heidi then spend the next day barfing up elf bits on the linoleum. My grandmother never learned to put the elves higher up, and Heidi never figured out that they were the reason for her bellyache the next day.<BR/><BR/>I also remember the toys: my Pat-a-Burp doll's dainty little belches, the EasyBake oven I got when I was six (same lightbulb wattage as debauched Santa). I was very proud of the little cake I baked in it, which rose prettily but tasted like cardboard -- qualities I carry forward to my baking today.<BR/><BR/>My grandmother died last year at age 94 -- a kick butt fate-wrangler, former nurse and early ferry pilot for Curtiss-Wright, who raised two pre-teen boys on her own after her husband took a bus south out of Edinburgh and never came back. I'd give anything to have her <I>Hey, Sailor</I> Santa.<BR/><BR/>But tonight I'll walk Puzzle and go look at the lights in her honor, then reheat cornbread dressing and green beans almondine, eschewing the microwave for the gas oven -- natch.<BR/><BR/>:-)<BR/><BR/>Happy holidays. Best love, health, and safety to all in 2008.<BR/><BR/>-=SusannahAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-91653802478243678342007-12-24T11:58:00.000-05:002007-12-24T11:58:00.000-05:00Mo: I'm picturing your memory as a an opening scen...Mo: I'm picturing your memory as a an opening scene of a movie -- with the priests coming to give out the gifts. (I'm off your blog now to read the alternate memory).<BR/><BR/>Edith: I still call it tin foil!<BR/><BR/>And Sheila: I'd give anything to see that tree!<BR/><BR/>I have one more Xmas memory to share, although it isn't mine.<BR/><BR/>It was sent to me by a friend from Rhode Island(where my books are set)when I was writing about gambling in ACS. It was a child's recollection of the annual visit from Bootsie, the family's favorite bookie. Bootsie came each year to dole out presents to the kids. They were stolen goods of course, but the kids never realized that until they grew up.<BR/>They loved Bootsie, all the same.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-87832091100596663502007-12-24T08:48:00.000-05:002007-12-24T08:48:00.000-05:00I have to thank Hank for starting this post. All o...I have to thank Hank for starting this post. All of my family is gone now (there was a lot of cigarette smoking going on in addition to all that eating)and I just reread my own post and got sappy!<BR/>Love reading everyone else's memories, too. So, Hallie, what did you do with the bottom of the tree?<BR/>BTW here is a link to Mario Batali's struffoli recipe...http://www.recipelink.com/ch/2000/december/marioholiday2.html<BR/>They're yummy!Rosemary Harrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08033747422699443024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-86328410058002219452007-12-24T08:42:00.000-05:002007-12-24T08:42:00.000-05:00The first year I was living in an apartment in Cam...The first year I was living in an apartment in Cambridge, with two roommates, we decided we would have a Christmas tree, and we would give a Christmas party and invite all our friends. Most of them actually came (hey, we were all starving students, and we were offering free food!).<BR/><BR/>We dutifully provided cranberries and popcorn to make decorations, and some people followed the script. But as the evening wore on (and the levels in the bottles sank), people started getting creative. I remember one guy very intently making a garland of potato chips, and the orthodontist who lived upstairs provided several extremely large plastic teeth for the tree. I don't think anyone could see straight enough by the end of the party to take a picture of the result.<BR/><BR/>Happy holidays to all!<BR/><BR/>SheilaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-76036409716293043592007-12-23T22:11:00.000-05:002007-12-23T22:11:00.000-05:00Hallie, I didn't know you also grew up in Los Ange...Hallie, I didn't know you also grew up in Los Angeles. I was born in Pasadena and grew up in Temple City. It seemed normal to me then that, although we had orange trees and snow only on distant mountaintops in the winter, all the children's books featured sledding, snowflakes, and apple trees. <BR/>I also remember seeing the flocked Christmas trees for sale on those vacant lots and feeling the same disdain for them. We had a very tall living room ceiling and always bought the tallest tree we could find, and then my very short father had to dig out the step ladder to decorate the top branches. The final touch was we three youngest kids hurling tinsel semirandomly at the branches (the old tinsel made of tin, not the flimsy aluminum kind that came in later, although no tinsel at all seems to have made it to the east coast, at least not since 1980), to the ire of the oldest sister who thought we should lay it on neatly, single strand by single strand. (Does anybody else still call aluminum foil tin foil?)Edith Maxwellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01388006370860482509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-39800359615612533762007-12-23T20:53:00.000-05:002007-12-23T20:53:00.000-05:00I'm going to be posting a piece on my blog about m...I'm going to be posting a piece on my blog about my family's worst Christmas and the special gift we were given--as soon as I can kick my son off my computer, where the files are saved. Meanwhile, here are some nice memories:<BR/><BR/>In the early years, my mother would go to 6 a.m. Mass, then wake us up when she came home and we'd open our presents. There was always something hand-knitted from Grandma Birchenough, a book from my mother's godmother, something special from Santa, and something--a costume or doll clothes--that my mother sewed herself. Those were the days when Catholics had to fast 3 hours before Communion, so we didn't eat before going off to 8:30 a.m. Mass with my dad. Mom had breakfast waiting when we got home.<BR/><BR/>The big Flynn clan came to our house Christmas night, so midday was spent writing Thank You notes and making potato chip dip and Pillsbury crescent rolls. After everyone had eaten, my two uncles who were priests played Santa to all 10 nieces and nephews, with boxes of candy for our mothers and a bottle of something for the men. One uncle had a parishioner who ran a wholesale food business, so he'd pass out jars of olives or cans of Hersheys syrup. Another worked in the post office and always had extra samples of Oil of Olay or cologne to distribute.<BR/><BR/>It was a shock to me to marry into a very small Boston family. In the beginning, it was my husband and me, his mother and grandmother, his aunt and great-aunt--and that was both sides of his family! Even stranger to me, we had Christmas dinner midday and everyone went home before dark. For several years when the kids were little, we had a single Jewish pediatrician from New York as a neighbor. He had no local family and always took the call duty for his practice on Christmas. We always had plenty of food left over, so he'd come over for a second dinner with us in the evening, admire the kids' toys and tell us about the odd calls he'd get--like the parents who couldn't wake their infant up after passing him around for four hours at a relative's house, then bundling him up in six layers of clothes and driving him home in a heated car.<BR/><BR/>We head for St. Louis after Christmas to spend a week with my family, so that extends the celebration for us. I really hate seeing Christmas trees out on the curb on December 26th. Ours stays up at least two weeks after Christmas. (Those 12 days start December 25th.)<BR/><BR/>Check my blog tomorrow at http://momentary-lapses.blogspot.com. I debated whether to post "Thrill of Hope," but somebody might need it. Hope you all enjoy your family holiday traditions or start some new ones! <BR/><BR/>MoAliasMohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02215864597874551595noreply@blogger.com