Christmas Eve Nostalgia

 I honestly don't know if it's a trend this year or if it's just me in my head, but I spend an awful lot of time there, so it is what it is.

The past few months have found me rather nostalgic for holiday memories.  Mind you, I'm usually a sucker for Christmas, but the pieces I am missing are never going to come back.

Some of my earliest Christmas memories center around Christmas stockings.  My parents moved into the home I remember when I was very young.  I do not remember houses before the one I think of as "First Home" which could be found in Rural Route 2, back that far, yes.  

It was a very traditional "ranch home" in what was then called "Kutzman's Addition" - yes, I know.  I didn't name it or create the sign that stood at the southern entry to a very broad-shaped U road.  Our house was at one end of a U that was, perhaps, a half-mile or so long.  We were on the south end, and my earliest memories are of an empty lot, then a house next to that to the north, an empty lot next to that, and another house going up just past it.  I don't much recall the rest of the neighborhood other than the lot immediately in front of us being an over-grown empty lot.  

That ranch house lacked a fireplace.  It was a simply made 3-bedroom home.  Nothing as exotic back then as "master suite" or anything unusual.  The front door was set just next to the driveway, next to the human door into the garage.  To the right of that, if you were facing the house, was a single-car garage.  Yes, it was a simple, straightforward ranch home.  But my father built a fireplace.

That's right.  Ingenuity and ... well, plastics.  And 2x2s.  I'm guessing it was the repeated reading of "T'was the night before Christmas" as a bedtime story which caused me to express a fair amount of concern.  I knew that the Grinch could also use a chimney, but I didn't see any furry green people in the neighborhood, so I wasn't too worried about that.  I must have been concerned because I had figured out our Chimney had no exit.  That is, none that did not connect directly to the furnace.

But my father was a pretty good problem-solver.  He laid his hands on some lumber and built a small fireplace with a mantle.  This thing stood probably two and a half to three feet tall.  The inner frame was made out of 2x2s, with 1/4" plywood over that.  On top of that was a layer of - that's right, take a moment - plastic brick.  Somewhere my father encountered this plastic brick sheet material.  The plastic was embossed and colored to look like bricks and mortar, and it was glued to the plywood base.  Around the fireplace opening and the top and bottom, my father had placed some plain old wooden baseboard material.  

The critical thing was that it had hooks across the top where we would hang our Christmas Stockings.  And those were, in a word, spectacular.  My mother was the sort of person who would, if she were still around and active today, have at the very least a podcast where she would show how she made a myriad of Christmas Ornaments.  But these stockings were simply overwhelming.

They started with my father's.  It was a vinyl boot, dark brown in color - and definitely not wearable.  Mom took an outline of a boot and cut out a front and back that were mirrored images of one another.  On this heavy vinyl, she stitched a red outline about an inch in from the edge to highlight the boot shape.  It was about two feet tall and included some red-stitched buckle outlines on the front.  

Mom's stocking was made of some gold satin fabric and looked like a high-heeled boot with a pointy toe.  It was also unadorned.

Then came the kid stockings.  Mom collected a whole lot of small items - I would guess they came from charm bracelets and other things, but my stocking, and that of the next two sisters in the family, were made of some red felt, with white tops that were cut with some irregular curves, probably to look like snow or something.  These were also about two feet tall, and I could get my arm all the way down to the toe, because these were not shoe-shaped, but just shaped like a sock.  On the front, various colored felt ornaments decorated it, but that wasn't enough for Mom.  She added sequins, small charms, and beads to make them truly spectacular.  The three older kids had these wonderful red socks, but then the fourth was a baby-blue smaller sock for the next girl.  Why blue?  I don't know.  My gut says Mom may not have been able to find the same fabric.  The last sock she made was another small-sized one, this was pink.  

I expect that the smaller socks probably did their part in making the youngest two of the family feel inferior to us older kids, and I'm not trained enough in psychology to figure out all of the other damage that did, but it is what it is. They are what they made themselves, and it is what it is.

But my stocking is now gone.  I'm sure my sister who has all of the remaining Christmas Ornaments from my mother's collection has done something with it to make sure it never sees the light of day again.  And that's her karma.  I'm just nostalgic for all of the other memories around a much easier time of life.

My mother was a baking nut.  I don't say that disrespectfully.  Mom loved the production aspect of Christmas Cookies.  And her favorite every year had to be peanut cakes.  Yes, I said peanut cakes.  A simple little cookie that was just about the greatest Christmas Memory I have.

It started with a heavy, dense chocolate cake.  Back in the 1960s and 1970s, we used things like cookbooks and word of mouth when it came to recipes.  And magazines and newspapers, too.  But Mom eventually settled on a recipe she called "Morrorocan Chocolate Cake".  It was a heavy cake she usually made in one of her rather special cake pans that was about 3" deep, and about the size of what I now know is a half-sheet baking pan.  The cake was usually about an inch and a half thick.  Once it fully cooled, it was removed from that pan and placed in the freezer.  Along with several others.  

Once we were ready (and this took a whole heck of a lot of prep), things got busy.  The cake was removed from the freezer, partially thawed, then cut into shape.  These were about an inch square by an inch and a half long.  Then they would be placed into a chocolate coating mixture she kept warm on the stove, then rolled into coarsely ground peanuts, and placed on a wire rack to dry/solidify.  Once they had dried and cooled, they were placed in re-purposed cereal boxes.  Mom was deeply affected by the Depression when she was young, and recycled a lot of things.  An empty cereal box would have the inner bag removed, wiped out to remove all of the cereal crumbs which were still there, then the bag was carefully dried.  Mom would then carefully pack two layers of peanut cakes into those cereal boxes, which would be closed and placed back into the freezer for holiday entertainment.  

Some of those chocolate-dipped chunks were also rolled in coconut for one of my favorites - my wife and kids do not like coconut, so I'll never have another one of those, but those two items are, to me, pieces of my childhood which are now far out of my reach.  It is what it is.  We've built our own traditions with our kids, and they seem to have turned out pretty good.  Further updates on that as events warrant.  If, I should probably add.

So Merry Christmas to you and yours.  Be safe, be careful, and enjoy.