It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

[osprey_archer]

It’s been a most Christmassy year here! The Nutcracker ballet on December 1st. Winterlights on December 6, with whole trees wrapped nearly to the tips of their branches in white lights, and the lawn in front of the Lilly House decorated in lights that danced to the Trepak and the Chinese Dance and the Waltz of the Flowers, and the Lilly House itself overflowing in paper decorations: great glorious paper chains cascading down the walls and bubbling out of the sink like soapsuds, and a tree covered in paper butterflies.

Also, firepits for s’mores - with real wood fires. My scarf smelled of woodsmoke for two days afterward.

Then this weekend, my friend Becky came up from Bloomington to go up to the Christkindlmarkt, where a bell choir performed on stage, and skaters glided (or often stumbled) around a rink in the middle of the booths, and I bought a tea that smells of eggnog. And beforehand, we decorated sugar cookies while listening to Bing Crosby croon carols: I try to decorate cookies every year and my dream is to have a cookie decorating party, as I did in the days of yore, but it gets harder each year to gather people for such things.

And anyway, one fellow decorator is all you really need. We both made Santa Clauses, and hers was a little bit better, but mine did have a very fine beard.

I meant to save the cookies for a tea party with Julie, but instead I began eating them that very evening as I watched the first episode of The Great British Baking Show holiday edition, which lit a fire under me: I want to make a buche de Noel! Much simpler than they make on the show, of course. The characters in anime always seem to have a buche de Noel for their Christmas parties and it always looks so festive and splendid and this year I’ll actually have time to make one, and who knows when that will happen again?

Must decide between ganache and chocolate buttercream. Ganache is more delicious, but also trickier. But then, if you’re going to make a buche de noel, you might as well go all out, don’t you think?

***

I do try, every year, to get into the Christmas spirit - trim the tree and listen to my favorite carols and decorate sugar cookies and so forth; I’d like to add a yearly gingerbread house to my repertoire, but at some point there is an issue of time. Indeed I like to have traditions for all the holidays: egg decorating for Easter and a berry decorated cake for the Fourth of July. I’d like to do a yearly Galentine’s Day party.

But it doesn’t always result in such a feeling of holiday cheer. Sometimes it doesn’t result in much cheer at all; but this year I’m feeling the glow far in excess of the preparations I’ve made. It feels like a gift - like grace, to feel so much happiness this year.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

Ballet AND cookies? That sounds so delightful. I'm glad this has been a good year!!

[osprey_archer]

Today there was a violin quartet playing a Christmas concert at work, too.

Admittedly I only got to listen to fifteen minutes of it - it's like I've got to do actual work while I'm at work, weird, right? - but still! Christmas concert! Delivered directly to me!

[agitatedmuffins]

A cookie decorating party, what a wonderful idea!!

[osprey_archer]

It's a great party theme! You've got the entertainment and the refreshments all set from the get-go, and while I usually do it for Christmas, there's no reason it wouldn't work for Valentine's Day or Easter or "I've got these great unicorn cookie-cutters! Party time!"

[thisbluespirit]

It feels like a gift - like grace, to feel so much happiness this year.

Aw, well, I'm glad - enjoy it!

[osprey_archer]

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!

[lucymonster]

Your Christmas traditions sound delicious. I'm feeling kind of a Laura Ingalls Wilder vibe: wholesome and homemade and pleasantly old-worldy.

If you do make a buche de Noel, you must post photos!

[osprey_archer]

One of my friends just texted me photos of the gingerbread ornaments on her tree - actual gingerbread cookies! hanging from a tree! which I feel is peak Little House vibes, even though I don't think Laura and Mary ever get a whole entire Christmas tree to themselves. The whole town has to band together on that one.

I have discovered that I don't have the right size pan, ALAS, but I will contemplate whether any of the pans that I own could be made to work. I bet Ma Ingalls never let the lack of a particular pan defeat her.

[lucymonster]

Maybe I've just been too long in small apartments, but a communal Christmas tree sounds kind of nice. More community spirit, less burden on one's own limited living room space!

Do you have a live tree or a plastic one? Gingerbread cookies would look equally lovely hanging off either.

[osprey_archer]

Plastic; my flatmate has a bunch of allergies so a live one would be a problem. But gingerbread cookies can look glorious anywhere. The bigger problem is that our combined ornament collections leave no room for cookies... but then again it would be almost as festive to make gingerbread and eat it rather than hang it on the tree.

[asakiyume]

I'm glad you're feeling it this year. I think for me what makes it happen is having people to share the preparations with (share with as opposed to create for)--but I understand what you mean by grace, too; I think that's true as well.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, definitely. It's much harder to get your Christmas spirit on when you're decorating cookies all by yourself.

I think a lot of "you need to learn how to enjoy your own company!" rhetoric is counterproductive. There are a few natural hermits in the world, but otherwise most people will want the company of other people at least sometimes and they can't learn not to want that because that's a basic natural human desire. It's like telling people that they just need to learn to live without food.