Childhood memories inform the traditions, meals of past and future Christmas fortunes.
When my brothers and sister and I were little, on the day after Thanksgiving, my mother would put a Christmas sham on the pillows on our beds. It was white with a red and green border, some red stars fading into the plain white background, and if I remember correctly, Santa and his sleigh bounding across the linen sky. Maybe there were mountains.
I don’t know how old we were when she got them, but in my memory, those pillowcases were the harbinger of Christmas. I think we slept on them until New Year’s when we took down the tree and packed the decorations away to await another year. I don’t know how long we continued to use them, probably until they were threadbare or lost somehow, maybe until we were grown and moved away for college or jobs. They are long gone now.
And then sometime on or around Dec. 1, each year, our mother put up a little advent calendar, or more precisely a “count-down to Santa” ribbon. I believe my aunt made it, but I’m not sure. It was simple, just a red velvet ribbon, maybe three inches wide, with 24
I’ve been thinking a lot about holiday traditions this past week and how transient they are but how they cling stubbornly to our memories.
buttons and a bell, one for each day of the Christmas season. The buttons and bell were held to the ribbon with little white bows, to be untied — one a day — until the big day arrived. At the top a poem was typed on a slip of white paper: “Untie a button every night / When the sandman casts his spell / And Christmas Day will be here / By the time you reach the bell.”
Yes, we did fight over who got to untie that day’s bow, and I suppose my mother had to keep in mind somehow who rang the bell the year before so that no one would get short Christmas shrift. I don’t know what happened to that jolly ribbon, although I suppose my mother gave it to my brother after the first of his three sons was born.
Those three little boys are men now and they’re having babies and starting new traditions, but I hope one of them still has the Christmas ribbon, pinned to the wall and awaiting the eager hands of a new child to ring the bell.
I’ve been thinking a lot about holiday traditions this past week, as I’m sure everyone has been, and how transient they are but how they cling stubbornly to our memories. Is it a tradition when you only do it once, twice, three times before another ritual or new activity takes its place? Is it a tradition if new generations forego the simple pleasures for something more modern, something more tailored to their unique circumstances? Is it a tradition if you can’t tell a story about it?
When we were little and lived in northern Colorado, we would go to the Y camp in Estes Park for Thanksgiving, arriving on Wednesday from our home in Fort Collins, just an hours’ drive into the mountains, and staying in a private family-sized cabin until Sunday. It was thrilling sleeping on a new bed and gathering around a new fireplace. My mother made a whole Thanksgiving dinner in that cabin, a big turkey roasted in an unfamiliar oven. I hope she made many of the side dishes in advance, but that’s not what my memory tells me.
There was always snow (a far cry from the near 70 degrees of this year’s holiday) — at least I think so — and we bundled up for chilly hikes in a winter wonderland. And the camp organized arts and crafts for the kids, which our parents always paid for and one of which — a little box with a mosaic tile top — still sits on the bookcase in my bedroom. And, without fail, the day after Thanksgiving all the men in the camp gathered around the TV in the lodge, the only one in the camp, to watch the Nebraska-Oklahoma game. I don’t know for sure; but in my heart, Nebraska always won those games.
I think we went there three times — or in a long life of unreliable Thanksgivings memories, every year.
When I was in fifth grade, we moved to Colorado Springs. Even then it was a big city (although obviously not as big as it is today), and we were exposed to things that weren’t part of our lives in smaller, more languid Fort Collins: school busing, people of color and “culture.” Our first Christmas in the big city, my mom took my sister and I to see “The Nutcracker” ballet. My mom was a big fan of film and musical theater, and the soundtracks to such shows as “Oklahoma” and “Sound of Music” were staples in our home, but we weren’t really knowledgeable about or enamored of classical music or dance. So tickets to “The Nutcracker” were entry into a new, maybe smarter, kind of classier world. We felt so fancy in our dress clothes, sitting only feet away from Klara and the Mouse King, imagining for ourselves a life on the stage, indulging in an expansive experience denied the boys.
After the last pirouette, we walked a few blocks down the downtown street to an iconic ice cream shop, where we met our dad and brothers for sundaes and then a ride home.
We repeated that magical afternoon a couple times, but when my sister left for college, it became too difficult to synchronize schedules. As far as I know, none of us ever saw it again, although each year, when I hear snippets of the music float out of the TV or car radio and see snowflakes waltz through an ad on their tippy-toes, I think this is the year we’ll go again.
One tradition we’ve been pretty good at maintaining is dinner out on Christmas Eve. It’s a pleasant respite from the holiday hurriedness, sometime after the last gift is wrapped and the final carol sung at an early Christmas Eve service. (Or sometimes before that joyous sound if we chose a midnight service that allows us to drive home in the still of the first sacred moments of Christmas morning.) Sometimes lots of people gather around a festive table, although fewer in recent years as family members make different choices for their holidays, and the restaurants have run the gamut: Old English pubs; seafood; steak, both fancy and familiar; fondue; even Olive Garden, which seemed surprisingly special and festive the year we went there.
Mostly I remember going to a fine dining eatery in a converted stone church tucked into a corner in downtown Colorado Springs. Of course, we were kids then and we didn’t go out to eat nearly as often as we do now, so just the experience of sitting at a restaurant table in our best clothes, ordering from a menu and immersing ourselves in “adult” conversation was exhilarating.
One year in that formerly holy spot — and this is a crazy memory — my dad told us a story about a guy in his Indiana hometown who got tongue and throat cancer from chewing tobacco and had to have half his jaw removed to stop the disease. He didn’t spare the details. Was it a cautionary tale for the benefit of my older brother who, by then, was beginning to run with a cowboy crowd that boasted Skoal rings on the back pockets of their Wranglers? Possibly. Probably. But if that was the intent, it wasn’t successful. (My brother did, for a while, as a rebellious teen, smoke and chew tobacco.) I do remember, however, that images of Santa weren’t the only thing that kept my younger brother awake that night.
We only went there a few times. Sometime in the ensuing years, I think, the little church burned down.
There’s no moral here. No lesson. No admonition to hold your loved ones close. Just a string of memories and the realization, as another Christmas approaches, that if we’re lucky the special times of our childhoods and those memories we try to create with loved ones stay vivid, lighting the way for the little ones who come after us and the new traditions that are built in the wake of holidays past.
Sometimes, I feel pretty lucky.
The Pie
Even though they are said to be a stable of an American Thanksgiving, cranberries have been an infrequent guest on our holiday table. Although I like cranberries in many forms — dried and sprinkled on a salad, in a pretty glass as cranapple juice or cranberry cider, as a zippy addition to an orange muffin for breakfast — we just never had cranberry sauce with our turkey drumsticks and mashed potatoes. But when I saw this recipe on my iPad newsfeed, I was intrigued. Of course, I was not willing to replace the traditional pumpkin pie, and I was sure no one else would want that either. So I decided to offer it as a pre-Thanksgiving treat on the day my sister came to town from far-flung Alaska. I made a few tweaks to the recipe to make it my own — orange crust, anyone? — and created something both beautiful and delicious.
And we celebrated with friends four days later with a traditional pumpkin pie.
(Either one would be a great addition to your Christmas table.)
The Recipe
Creamy
CRANBERRY-ORANGE PIE
Cranberry topping:
1½ to 2 pounds fresh cranberries
½ cup fresh orange juice
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Orange Cream Cheese filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
Zest of 2 medium oranges
½ cup powdered sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
Single orange zest crust (recipe below)
Prepare the pie dough.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees with rack in the lower third.
Roll out dough. Fit into a 9-inch pie plate, Trim and crimp the edge. Top with a square of parchment paper slightly larger than the pie plate, fill with pie weights. (Coins or dried beans can be used instead.) Bake 15-17 minutes or until edges appear to set and are beginning to lightly brown. Remove from oven, remove parchment and pie weights. Return to oven; bake 2-3 minutes or until bottom begins to set. Combine egg and 1 tablespoon water. Brush over bottom of crust. Cool completely.
To make the cranberry topping, in a medium-sized pot, mix the cranberries, orange juice, granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, finger, cloves and salt to combine. Cook over medium heat until the cranberries begin to soften and break down, 12 to 15 minutes. Reduce the heat and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the mixture has thickened, 6 to 8 minutes. (Some of the berries will break down and become jammy while others will remain whole or will break into pieces.) Stir in the vanilla. Cool completely.
To prepare the cream cheese filling, in a medium bowl, using a silicone spatula, stir the cream cheese until smooth. Add the orange zest and mix well. Add the powdered sugar and mix until fully incorporated. Add the egg, extract and salt and mix to combine.
Place the cooled pie crust on a baking sheet. Pour in the orange cream cheese filling and spread into an even layer. Freeze for 15 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees with the rack in the lower third.
Spoon the cooled cranberry filling on top of the chilled cream cheese filling and spread into an even layer. Bake until the crust is a deep golden brown and the filling has a kind of matte appearance, 35 to 40 minutes.
Cool completely before serving.
ORANGE ZEST CRUST
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
¾ sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) cold vegetable shortening
Zest from one orange
1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) cold vodka
1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) cold orange juice
1 tablespoon cold water, plus extra as needed
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, salt, sugar and orange zest until thoroughly combined. Add the butter and shortening and cut together with a pastry cutter until the mixture forms small pea-sized crumbs.
Pour the vodka over the mixture, a tablespoon at a time, using a rubber spatula. Add the orange juice and water and press the dough together to form one large ball. If the dough seems dry or does not hold together, add extra water a tablespoon at a time until all the ingredients come together. (Be careful not to work the dough too much to prevent the crust from being tough.)
Press the dough into a 1-inch disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour — or up to two days — before rolling out.
BONUS PIE
Tawny Pumpkin Pie
(from my mother’s Thanksgiving table and the 1959 Farm Journal Country Cookbook)
1¼ cup canned pumpkin
¾ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon flour
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup evaporated milk
2 tablespoons water
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust
Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices and flour in mixing bowl.
Add eggs; mix well. Add evaporated milk, water and vanilla. Mix.
Pour into unbaked pie shell (recipe below). Bake in 425-degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.
ONE-CRUST PIE CRUST
Mix together 1½ cup sifted flour and ¾ teaspoon salt. With a pastry blender, cut in ¼ cup shortening (about one tablespoon extra if using hydrogenated shortening) until mixture looks like meal. Cut in another ¼ cup shortening (and another tablespoon if needed) coarsely, until particles are the size of giant peas. Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons water, one tablespoon at a time. Gather dough together and press firmly into a ball. If dough doesn’t all come together, add more water, one tablespoon at a time, until all the flour is worked into the dough.
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