December 2008 -Merry Christmas to All: And to All A Good Night
Our House In Last Night's Snow.
Our town, Troy, New York, is the home of, "Night Before Christmas" author, Clement Moore. It is also a town full of wonderful Victorian homes that stir up Christmas fantasies. All it takes is one good snow storm! This year we are having one of those White Christmases people sing and dream about.
Last week-end was Cookie Day at our house. We draped the dining and living room with drop clothes. Kids and adults from the neigbhorhood (The kids were all between 2 and 5.) stirred batter, rolled dough, and cut cookies. Memories: Hannah Rose rolling cookie dough faithfully for hours, and delighting in the book Hannakah Gnomes, Gracie madly stirring gingerbread dough, Blue and Liliah hidding under the table munching cookie dough....all kinds of wonderful images and memories to hold us till next year.
The origins of Cookie Day are buried in our Maumee Christmases. When the holiday became too complex because of divorces in the family; and too fraught with material competition. we leapfrogged over all of that by designing a Christmas celebration based on the Louisa May Alcott Christmas in Little Women. The Warnock Cousins were all invited for a week-end before Christmas. We made cookies and popcorn balls, wrote plays, choreographed dance, created quintets and quartets, made puppets...and had a grand family Christmas pagent the last day of the week-end. The pleasure of that week-end was so much much more satisfying than Christmas Day that I pretty much forgot about December 25th. Now that we are facing the difficulties of multiple in-laws with their families, etc., I'm looking forward to my Louisa May Alcott Christmas once again.