Count your blessings
It is hard to believe that it is Christmastime again. There are always so many things that I plan to do, but as the day gets closer, I find myself having to make choices about which things I must do and which ones were a good idea, but will have to wait until next year.
The best place for me to start is by making sure I keep the traditions going that my family counts on. This means that Christmas cards must go out right after Thanksgiving. Finding the right picture on the front and the right message inside is important. I write a short message to everyone, but I steer clear of the “Year in Review” letter that some of my high school friends send every year. Even though sending out these holiday messages is important to me, we receive fewer and fewer cards every year, which is sad.
Trees are another tradition that families have. Artifi cial vs. real, small vs. huge, long vs. short needle, up for a week vs. up for two months, are all decisions that need to be made. As a kid, we would truck out on family land or go to a tree farm to pick our balsam tree. While we kids loved to put the tree up and decorate it early, my dad was the guy who felt the tree only needed to be up about two weeks at the most. Many of the ornaments were homemade and the lights were the big ones that people shy away from using now.
While I love the smell of a fresh cut tree, after I got married and had children of my own, we chose to go the artificial tree route. Now that my children are grown, I have different color schemes for my decorations. I would be okay with putting the tree up right after Thanksgiving, even though I usually wait until the first or second weekend in December. Then I can leave it up longer into January since I don’t have to worry about it drying out. My children always tease me about how particular I am about decorating our tree. To be honest, I have been known to move an ornament or two around if the placement or colors don’t seem right, and we won’t even start on icicle placement. Of course, they must go on one strand at a time instead of throwing handfuls at the tree like my husband likes to do. I figure if you spend this much time making the tree look nice, it must be up longer than two weeks — sorry, Dad.
The next tradition on the list is food. Part of that is cookies and candy. When I was a kid, we made sugar cookies, gingerbread men (people) and spritz cookies. In case you don’t know, spritz cookies are a lot of work. You start by making the dough and then you put it in a tube and screw a cap on both ends. Then there is a handle that you squeeze which makes the dough come out in a fancy shape. Sometimes this process would go well, but often the dough would stick and you would need to start over again. I can still see my mom and grandma struggling to get a consistently perfect cookie. Luckily for us kids, our job was to decorate all three kinds of cookies. Different colored sugar, chocolate chips, red hots and silver dragees were our choices. Dragees are small silver balls that are edible. You could always tell who decorated what cookies, by how much and what kinds of decorations were on the cookies.
Candy was the other treat that both my mom and grandma made. Here is where fancy tools and old wives’ tales both became important. There were certain pans that were used and the candy thermometer had to be accurate. There was always a clear cup of water around so that drops of the luscious treats could be tested to see if they were at the right stage. I even remember that fudge could only be made on a sunny day otherwise it wouldn’t turn out. My grandma on my mom’s side was a pro at candy making. She made delicacies like angel’s food, white fudge with coconut and my favorite — a brown sugar fudge called penuche. We have tried for years to get the fudge to turn out like Grandma’s, and still no luck.
The last food tradition is what you have for the Christmas meal. For some people, Christmas looks very similar to Thanksgiving. For others, ham is the main course rather than turkey. As a kid I remember having both, but my dad liked ham better than turkey so that is the tradition I have with my own kids. I love mashed potatoes and gravy, but one year I took the time to make twice-baked potatoes and now that is what my kids and grandkids expect each year.
It isn’t just what food you will have for Christmas, but when you get together to celebrate too. For some families it is Christmas Eve; for others it is all about Christmas Day. No matter when you celebrate, it all comes down to who is there. When I was young, my grandparents were always there Christmas Day. Part of that was because my maternal grandmother lived with us most of the year. Christmas Eve meant church, possibly a couple of services ending with “Silent Night” being sung by candlelight. For many years, the church we attended held one service in the barn with the animals. It made for a very special experience. Now that I have my own family and my children are grown, finding the time to be together has become more difficult. We change times or weekends so that we can get the most people together. I used to be able to say this was always a time I would see my siblings, but that doesn’t always happen anymore. I think a lot of families encounter this obstacle today. It isn’t that we don’t want to be together, there just isn’t enough time and our busy schedules don’t allow us time to do it anymore.
We have traditions for Christmas here in the building too. The teachers decorate their rooms to look festive. Some do projects or make gifts with their students as a surprise for their parents. We have fun dress-up days like “dress like a candy cane” or “ugliest holiday sweater.” There is even an activity day which allows the kiddos and staff time to enjoy a fun day or afternoon together before the long vacation. This year the kindergarten students are going to Huey’s Hideaway, a children’s museum in Medford. This establishment has many rooms set up so the children can play in places like a doctor’s office or a farm. This is a new trip this year, but I am sure the children will love it. The first graders will be going downtown to the rec center to enjoy an afternoon of games and activities that their teachers have prepared. Second graders will be going roller skating at Melody Gardens in Marshfi eld. Lastly, the third through fifth grade students will continue their tradition by going on a tubing trip to Bruce Mound. I think the staff enjoys this trip as much as the students do. Every year they all come back grinning from ear to ear with pictures galore.
The other tradition we have is the Holiday Concert. Making this happen this year took a lot of teamwork. Our vocal music teacher left at the end of last year and we have not been successful finding a replacement. When I met with the teachers, they felt that the experience of the concert was something that the children still needed to have, so we set about to make it happen. The 4K, 5K and first grade teachers chose songs and practiced them with their kiddos during the regular school day; however, we still needed a solution for the rest of the elementary grades. As we were getting down to the wire, Grace Genteman accepted the challenge and stepped in after Thanksgiving to help. Together with the teachers, we picked songs for the second grade students and then we decided to combine the third through fifth graders to make an intermediate choir. Grace worked with all the kiddos during their music classes and the classroom teachers gave the kiddos extra practice during the school day. The concert was supposed to be last Thursday, but we got some good Wisconsin winter weather and the concert was postponed until Friday. A huge thank you to all the 4K parents for bringing their kiddos in even though they aren’t normally here on Fridays. Also, thank you to all the other parents and relatives who took time out of their day to join us. Thank you to all the teachers and to Mrs. Genteman for the practice time they gave their kiddos. Thank you to all the people who helped behind the scenes like the maintenance staff, the tech team, the office staff and Terri Aumann. Finally, thank you to the kids who presented a wonderful concert. This is evidence of what can happen when everyone works together to complete a task.
This year has brought many challenges and it would be easy to let yourself get caught up in those difficulties, but I am going to challenge you to do the opposite. Look around you during this holiday season and find all the things that you are grateful for. The teachers and I did this for a week and when you really look, it is amazing to see how lucky we all are and how many wonderful people are in our lives. It is with this warmth and blessing that I leave you today. Have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
