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Sandra Rodriguez Barron Stops by My Holiday Open House to Share her Many Beliefs of Faith

I’m very happy to welcome Sandra Rodriguez Barron, author of Stay With Me, to the latest installment of my Holiday Open House! Growing up in a family with multiple cultures and beliefs, Sandra often struggled to make sense of conflicting notions; however, the magic of believing is something she continues to celebrate. 

Believing

As a Salvadoran-Puerto-Rican kid growing up in New England, my holidays were populated with the presence of five distinct yuletide superheroes. There was Santa Clause, of course, who relied on magic reindeer for transportation. There were the Three Kings, who arrived upon the shores of Puerto Rico riding upon the backs of camels that apparently knew how to swim. And then there was the amazing, self-reliant Holy Infant, who managed to distribute gifts to Salvadoran children without any adult supervision or the help of harnessed animals. Believing in all three wasn’t easy, and I was constantly questioning the many failures of logic in these tales. Sometimes, the superheroes seemed to compete for my attention and faith (depending on which set of grandparents I was visiting). Looking back, my parents ought to have tried to weave these characters into a single, seamless narrative, because the overall effect was more Marvel Comics than New Testament or even Dickens. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any siblings to help me figure it all out, and with so many masters to obey, I had to figure out the pecking order. The good stuff (defined as anything manufactured by Mattel) always came from Santa.

When visiting my paternal grandparents in Puerto Rico, I had to wait almost two weeks for the second round of loot. The caped Three Kings couldn’t be rustled up until January 6, presumably because they were hung-over and spent from too much Christmas partying. The gifts they left for me were always mediocre: cookies in tin boxes, art supplies and an occasional doll, but never one requiring batteries or made by Mattel. One year, the Three Kings left me a boxed assortment of these beautiful embroidered panties with delicate lace trim. I eyed them with suspicion. Why had the kings concluded that I needed new underwear, of all things?  Didn’t anyone else find that creepy and inappropriate?

When I spent Christmas in El Salvador with my maternal grandparents, Baby Jesus always brought me the same kind of fussy, C grade gifts the Magi did. But  I had even more serious issues with this tradition. That Baby Jesus had to work alone to deliver gifts without assistance from elves, minions or beasts of burden was, in my opinion, abusive. Why, I wondered, didn’t the elderly Father, or for that matter, the strapping, grown-up Jesus do the schlepping? At the very least, the magical toddler deserved to travel in the belly of a pram that was harnessed to a team of amphibious poodles, lambs or angora cats. 

 As I became more and more aware of the devastating poverty outside of the walls of my grandparents' neighborhood in San Salvador, I began to question the very idea of Christmas. Why did kids like me get presents, I wondered, when so many others lacked food and clothes, or in some cases, parents. Baby Jesus, I told my bewildered abuela, ought to think about handing out money orders and assigning legal guardians instead.

One day, a precocious older cousin told me The Truth—that the superheroes were really just my parents and grandparents. Eventually, the sparkling white lights of my religious faith began to blink on and off, as they have continued to do all my life. So far anyway, I’ve always managed to repair the bulbs when they don’t work anymore. But in the process, in those brief moments that I’m left staring into the dark, I have discovered that my family’s cultural traditions only grow brighter with time. I have begun to treasure and embrace the things that connect my son to my parents and grandparents. It’s in the repetition of those traditions that I have always been able to conjure up the magic.

At the Puerto Rican holiday table, the pastel rules. Pasteles resemble tamales, but taste entirely different. They are a Christmas delicacy because they’re a) a huge pain in the neck to make, and b) are individually wrapped in a banana leaf and tied up with string, so that when you open one, it’s like unwrapping a gift. This year, I’m gathering with three Puerto Rican friends to make pasteles for the first time, a kind of passing of the torch from the previous generation. On Christmas Eve, my cousin will bring a guitar and a bag full of maracas and tambourines and my guests will join in to sing Santa’s carols and the old Puerto Rican aguinaldos. Baby Jesus will lie, warm and dry, under our tree, with those life-like glass eyes that in a certain light, appear to sparkle with life.

My son is full of the same questions that bugged me as a kid. The day after Thanksgiving he asked, “So what if Santa Claus and Baby Jesus and the Three Kings don’t agree if a kid has been good or bad? Who’s the bigger boss?” I tell him that making memories as a family is boss. My job is to show him the many ways he can repair the light bulbs of faith if ever they fail to illuminate this path. Celebrating our crazy mix of cultural traditions is one way. I’ve discovered that there’s an essential string of lights that span the length of the human spirit: giving, thanking, eating, laughing, singing, dancing, remembering. And despite all the inconsistencies and contradictions, the biggest, the brightest, is believing.

Browse inside Sandra Rodriguez Barron’s Stay With Me and visit her website for more information about her books, personal photographs from El Salvador, and more!

 

Book Club Girl Holiday Open House Welcomes Lorelle Marinello and her Favorite Holiday Tradition: The Toilet Roll Angel vs. The Star

I'm so pleased to welcome Lorelle Marinello, author of Salting Roses, to my Holiday Open House with her tale of the toilet roll angel. As the recipient of a toilet paper and paper towell roll candelabra, this post is especially meaningful to me. Read on.

Tis’ The Season of the Toilet Roll Angel vs. The Star

Long ago, in the tiny English village of Quorn, a humble Christmas angel was born. The year was 1980. My husband, an avid traveler, had decided to accept a teacher exchange in the Midlands of England. The American dollar was sadly lacking in muscle against the British pound. We had no readymade ornaments for our Christmas tree or the funds to buy them. But loving Christmas, as I do, and Christmas trees in particular, I decided to make the decorations with what we had on hand—empty toilet paper rolls, paint, and glitter. In those days, crafters’ dreamlands, such as Michaels, only existed in fairytales, not in quaint English villages.

Our smallish tree needed a grand ornament for the top. With limited resources, I set out to create an angel. I gave her a full skirt fit for a queen and magnificent wings to rival those of a fairy princess. I downplayed her Styrofoam head and plopped a royal crown on top. She was a beauty, considering her humble beginnings. She was only intended to reign on the top of the tree for one year. Little did I know she would become my future children’s favorite ornament and that I had set myself up for an annual battle.

Fast forward twelve years. I had given birth to three tree-decorating enthusiasts, two of them exacting Virgos like myself. All through my childhood and early adulthood I held the honored position of master decorator, mostly out of default. My mother and sister seemed to be lacking the Christmas tree-enthusiast gene.

By 1993, it was time for me to pass my esteemed position to my children. My job description shifted to chief purchaser of new ornaments. One year, I felt the need for something elegant to adorn our Christmas tree. I found a beautiful gold star to replace the toilet roll angel. Her fairy wings had become chipped here and there. The children had eagerly welcomed my other ornament purchases. Surely they would love the shiny new star . . . Sadly, they did not.

My pretty gold star was an interloper of the highest degree. I was put off with gentle promises such as, “Maybe next year, Mom.” I was out numbered. Over the years, I’ve learned that if I wanted my star on the tree, I would need to find a poorly pruned tree with two tops so the toilet roll angel and the star could reign side by side.

The children are growing up. In a few years, they will have their own homes and their own Christmas trees. Through the years, the toilet roll angel and I have made our peace. This year, on the eve of her thirtieth birthday, she will once again reign at the top of our tree. As to her future . . . She may have to get herself a passport and air miles because my children seemed to have inherited my husband’s love for foreign lands. I see a trip to her homeland in her future.

 

Browse inside Salting Roses, and visit Lorelle's website for more information about her and her novel!

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: My Holiday Traditions!

It has been so wonderful hearing from so many authors over the last few weeks about their Holiday memories, traditions and stories. I've gotten some great ideas about things to add to my holiday repertoire and have been reminded again and again about the true meaning of the season. After hearing from so many others, I thought today that I should share, as the hostess of this Open House, some of my own Christmas traditions. My mother is the Queen of Christmas and so many of the traditions I'm going to enumerate here come from her. I am so thankful for the care and work she put into our Christmases growing up - they were just perfect - and I strive to uphold her thoughful and just-right preparations and touches with my own family. Note: I wrote this post on Christmas Eve but then was overcome with preparations (cooking) and so am posting it now, on Christmas night, with some accompanying photos. All went according to the below plan, today's observations are in italics.

Like Adriana Trigiani and Katrina Kittle, the decorating for me is key. I have more boxes of ornaments and decorations (and have for years) than really makes sense and they're filled with treasures that I love. My mantlepiece is adorned with Shiny Brite houses, greenery, lights and brass stocking holders. I have a special fondness for snowmen, so there is a disprportionate number of them on my tree as well. A snowman garland is hung over the entry to the dining room, and a retro snowman candleabra sits atop the television. Carolers sit on top the china cabinet in the dining room, along with a ceramic Christmas tree that reminds me of the one my mother has.

There are mountains of presents underneath the tree already and tonight, after a dinner of lasagna and a candlelight service at church, we'll come home and the kids will each open one present -- new jammies that they'll immediately put on in the living room. Then they'll hang their stockings and leave cookies and eggnog for Santa. We have a split household of believers and non believers (having a 1 yo, 3 yo, 14 yo and 17 yo), so we'll get the little ones to bed and shoo the older ones away so that Daddy and I can stuff their stockings. We then haul out the "Santa" presents. These are unwrapped and go in front of the tree, each kid has a little section and pile of their own. My mother told me when I was older how difficult it was to determine which presents would be the Santa ones and I could never understand -- it seemed easy, they're presents you don't have to wrap! But now that I'm constructing the scene myself, I completely understand, and it's especially hard to determine Santa presents for the older girls. For the younger ones it will be dollies and trucks and toys that they''ll dive upon as they enter the living room.

And as for that -- we have a strict rule on Christmas morning. No one can go downstairs until we all go down. Daddy or I go down to turn on the heat, set out the coffee cake and the coffee, while the children wait impatiently at the top of the stairs. I love their faces as they come down the stairs, the anticipation is palpable. Upon entering the living room, chaos rules as they each claim their territory in front of the tree and unwrap to their hearts content. At some point Daddy is called up to tackle packaging, insert batteries, and generally get things to go. My husband and I will end up with a pile of gifts still to open, as we spend so much time observing others. This is another thing I never understood growing up, why my parents didn't open as feverishly as we did. Now, of course I understand completely the joy of watching your child's face as they open something they love. (and thus, on this Christmas night, our stockings are still hanging and we've yet to dive into them).

A Christmas quirk of mine is that I hate sunny Christmases. I think it stems partly from my desire for it to be snowing on Christmas. Also, I feel the day is so amazing anyway that sun always seems like overkill to me. (I may be partly English in this respect, as in general, I prefer an overcast day to a sunny one). So, because of this, in case of sun, I require the curtains in the living room be shut. This leads to low-level irritation on my husband's part that we don't have enough light for the photos. Luckily this Christmas turned out to have just the lack of light I require outside, so I did relent and allow the curtains to be opened at some point in the afternoon.

After the unwrapping (which goes so quickly!) we clean up and loll about, the kids playing with all their new treasures. At some point I'll haul myself to the kitchen to start cooking - butternut squash, mashed potatoes, turkey, cornbread stuffing (ok, I'm making that today). My in laws will bring the traditional Puerto Rican pernil and Spanish rice. At dinner we'll open Christmas crackers - a tradition that began after my sister and I each studied in England in college. We'll put on our crowns and tell each other the silly jokes and fortunes that come inside the crackers. My favorite part of the day, or maybe my second favorite, is the late afternoon or evening when there is nothing that I HAVE to do. We'll probably be visited by relatives at some point and do some catching up, munch on cookies, drink wine, enjoy some Stilton Watercress spread and, at some point, Skype with my parents in NH.

I hope that everyone had a very, very Merry Christmas!

 

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Ami McKay on the Memories We Find and that Christmas Brings

Christmas is almost here! My son is nearly apoplectic with excitement and I'm more than a little overwhelmed with everything that I have to get done in the next two days. And then I read an essay like this one today from Ami McKay, author of the novel, The Birth House, and I realize it's time to take a step back. This essay reminds me so much about what is important about Christmas, and how having a mother who embraces it (as I do as well), enriches it in so many ways. My mother also gave me the gift of Christmas, and it's one I want to thank her for every day.

This is my second Christmas without my mother.

She died suddenly on a January morning after one last holiday season with our family. It was a shock. It was too soon. I wasn’t ready. When I went home for her funeral, I stood in my sister’s arms, in the kitchen of our childhood and cried like I’ve never cried before. It was a stop all the clocks moment, where the familiar contents of that room - the shining chrome stovetop, the set of songbird coffee mugs, the scalloped copper hood on the exhaust fan circa 1973, the battered countertop caddy bursting with wooden spoons, wire whisks and rubber spatulas – all seemed to say that it couldn’t be true, that any moment now our mother was going to walk through the door, put her hands on her hips and teasingly say, “Snap out of it, girls. There’s work to be done.”

In the sadness of the days that followed, reminders of her came to me like messengers from the past - some easy and kind, others unexpected, yet still comforting. While searching for a mixing bowl in my parents’  pantry, I discovered a Tupperware tub half full of cookies that she’d tucked away (as she’d always done in Christmases past) so she and Dad could have a sweet or two with their morning coffee after the kids and grandchildren had cleared out after New Years. Fumbling through a cupboard for a bottle of Tylenol, my fingers found the butter spotted envelope where Mom kept her collection of Christmas recipes.

She was the Queen of Christmas. She adored the sparkle and hopefulness of the season, sewing sweet dresses for her girls from velvet and lace, trimming the tree from top to bottom, carrying armfuls of poinsettias into the house.

I opened the envelope and shuffled through the pile of index cards. Seeing her handwriting reduced me to tears yet again. Aunt Cleo’s Lemon Squares (with a note: “these don’t store well, so make them last.”) Butter Cookies for my grandmother’s old metal cookie press – “don’t let go too brown.” And the long, involved instructions for making Lebkuchen, a recipe that had been passed down from her beloved grandmother. Attached to the recipe for the Lebkuchen was a list of eleven tips, (equal to the number of cups of flour required to make the cookies.) Tip number five warned, “Don’t make this on a day that you just cleaned the kitchen.”

Grandma Tilly’s Lebkuchen had helped me battle the terrible bouts of morning sickness that had accompanied both my pregnancies. The second time around, I hadn’t even told Mom I was expecting when she showed up at my house on a hot July day with a tin of the magical cookies. “I thought you might be needing these,” she’d said with a knowing smile.

This year I bought all the ingredients to make Tilly’s Lebkuken, (a task I’ve never tackled without Mom by my side.) I brought everything home from the store- the molasses, the raisins, the sugar, the flour, the lemon peel – and put it away in the cupboard. Then I stood there thinking, “What are you doing? You’re no Queen of Christmas.”

It was true. I could never hope to make Christmas like my mother did. Despite her love of all things Yuletide, I always preferred the shadows of the season. I cared for the ghosts in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol far more than Tiny Tim. I relished the part in the nativity story where the angel made the shepherds sore afraid. Even my favourite Christmas carol, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” is in a minor key.

Mom knew this about me and never seemed to mind. She went on her merry way and simply said “to each her own.” I realize now, it was her joy in embracing the season that allowed me to revel in the dark.

As I look around my kitchen this morning I see it’s in no danger of having just been cleaned. It’s as good a day as any to give the Lebkuchen a try. Somehow Mom’s voice is pushing into my head, working to replace my doubts. “Snap out of it and roll up your sleeves. Bake the cookies or don’t – just make Christmas your own.”

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Meg Waite Clayton on her Book Club's Holiday Tradition

I'm so happy that Meg Waite Clayton, bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters, was able to stop by my Open House. And I'm so happy that she's sharing, so appropriately for this blog, her book club's holiday tradition. My book club does something somewhat similar, though up here in the Northeast we call it a Yankee Swap, and we haven't done it with books,and we argue every year about just how the swapping is supposed to happen. But I digress, read on for a great idea that your book group might want to adopt!

A Holiday (Book Club) Tradition

My book club first started meeting in January some years ago, so it was a year before we had to face the what-if-anything-to-do-for-the holidays thing. Like most clubs, we spend one evening a month discussing a book we’ve all read, and we do love that, but by the time our first holiday together rolled around it seemed not quite festive enough for what had evolved from a disjointed collection of neighbor acquaintances into a gathering of true friends.
 
There were more than a dozen of us that first year, though – we now count twenty-four members – and none of us wanted to add that many names to our must-buy-for list.
 
I'm sure there are lots of ways to have fun with a Book Club at the holidays, but we started a tradition that first year that has become our most-looked-forward-to gathering each year: dinner and a holiday book swap in lieu of a December read. I can’t begin to tell you why it’s so fun, but try it and you’ll see:

Everyone brings a book they enjoyed reading (not one we've ever read for the group), wrapped in swanky paper and bows. (Mine is always the pathetic-looking one; I flunked Fancy Wrapping 101!)

We pile the presents in the center of our circle, then draw numbers. No, wait! First, we pour some fancy, not-too-alcoholic drink that usually includes champagne, and we nosh a little. Then we draw numbers (nothing swanky, just numbered scraps of paper thrown into a bowl).

The person who holding #1 gets to choose a present. Feeling and shaking of unopened packages is permitted, and even encouraged. Sadly, different books don’t shake all that differently, so not much is to be learned.

Whoever brought the opened book tells us all a little about it.

The person holding #2 then gets to choose either to open another package or to steal #1's book. If she chooses to steal, #1 opens a second book.

#3 then gets to open or steal, and can steal any of the books that have been opened. If a book is stolen, the poor member left bookless gets to open or steal again – any book except the one just stolen from them or one that has already been stolen 3 times.

Once everyone has an opened book, #1 can put her book in the center and steal any book she wants, even the thrice stolen ones. At which point the stealing goes on until someone wants the book in the center. Which never does seem to happen before our spouses will all have gotten our children safely to bed and asleep.

It's really great fun, and we end up learning about new reading possibilities, even if we didn't get to take them home. And an added bonus: it gets us thinking about what we might read together in the new year.

Happy Holiday Reading! - Meg

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Pamela Redmond Satran on the Ultimate Gift, Books for Christmas

The latest guest to join my Open House is Pamela Redmond Satran, who this fall wrote the absolutely hilarious book entitled, How Not to Act Old: 185 Ways to Pass for Phat, Sick, Hot, Dope, Awesome, or At Least Not Totally Lame, which immediately became a New York Times bestseller, because, well, let's face it, there are a lot of us struggling to not act old these days. I love the image she paints of a young girl surveying a tower of books on Christmas morning. And on the theory that most book sales happen in the last week of the holidays, if you're not snowed in, or even if you are, go out and buy books today!

When I was a kid, way back in the days before ebooks and ar (augmented reality – duh!), reading meant going to the library.  Our town library was like something they build on a Hollywood back lot: The former one-room schoolhouse, it had varnished pine floors and dusty stacks and rolling ladders and maybe even a pot-bellied stove, though I’m may be making that last detail up.  I remember lying on my belly on the floor between the stacks, lost in Anne of Green Gables or Bed-Knobs and Broomstick or, going with the magic and witches theme, Macbeth.

My parents both read copiously – my dad liked Michener, and Mom favored True Confessions magazine – but we never bought books.  I don’t remember ever going to a bookstore.  I don’t think I was aware that books were something you could buy instead of borrow, that you could have for your very own, and keep forever and ever.

Until the Christmas when, beneath the tree, there was the strangest-shaped package I had ever seen.  It was tall, maybe three or four feet, up to my chest, in any case.  And it was rectangular, but small given its height.  It looked like a wrapped-up chimney, or upended railroad tie.  Most definitely not like a doll, or bicycle, or board game, or anything I had seen under the Christmas tree ever before.

I remember vividly my awe and amazement when I unwrapped the strange package, to find the tallest stack of books I had ever seen.  New books, unread – untouched! – by anyone else, bought for me alone.

Well, not exactly bought, as my parents hastened to tell me.  Actually, these books had fallen off the back of a truck heading across the George Washington Bridge.  Literally.  My dad worked as a cop on the bridge, and flotsam that found its way onto the pavement was divvied up in the station house.  A box of kids’ books?  Hey, didn’t Joe Redmond have a daughter who liked to read?

I don’t think my parents told me this because they wanted to undercut the value of the gift, and it didn’t have that effect.  Rather, I think they wanted me not to feel guilty about them having blown so much money on such an outrageous bounty.  Money was always tight in our house, a fact underscored by the facts that we were allowed only two cookies after meals and Coke only on Saturdays, and I was old enough to be aware how much things cost, and what was worth the money.  And books, which could after all be had for free from the library, obviously weren’t worth the money.

Plus, these books weren’t especially ones I wanted to read.  Some were for boys, some were for younger kids, some were just dumb.

But it was the having that was the thrill.  The crispness of the pages, the unthumbed glossiness of the covers.  Even if I didn’t care much about what the words said, I fell in love with owning those books.

More than in love with: hooked.  I know I’m supposed to support libraries and champion libraries, and I do, in theory.  I know it would make sense for my family budget to use the excellent one in our town rather than trolling the aisles of our two independent bookstores or heading to the nearby Barnes & Noble or clicking on the Amazon link.  But I just don’t want to.

That first thrill of owning a book might be why, even though I buy myself every single book I want, I still ask for books for Christmas. I love the look of that hospital-cornered package, the heft of it, the inevitable surprise on unwrapping, even though you know all along what’s inside.  It might not be the most expensive gift under the tree; it might have even come for free.  But it’s the one I’m going to remember the longest.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Kristina Riggle on Family Holiday Traditions

As the snow approaches, Kristina Riggle, author of Real Life and Liars and the forthcoming, The Life You've Imagined, has stopped by my Open House to share her Christmas traditions, both old and new. As I've been building my new family, I have also enjoyed folding my family's tradtions in with those of my husband's and the new ones we're creating together. The candlelight service at our church is a new tradition for all of us that is such a wonderful way to start Christmas Eve.

I write novels about families, which is another way of saying I sit around and make stuff up, which is great fun and the fact that I do it for a living is a never-ending source of wonder for me.
 
As a mother of young children, I'm also making up new holiday traditions by borrowing from my family, from my husband's family, and then improvising our own.
 
The tradition I cherish most from my family was the candlelight Christmas Eve service at our church. We would file in for the service and pick up small thin candles with a cardboard ring around the base for catching wax. At the end of the service, the choir members would light their candles, then walk down the outside aisles, lighting the end candles. Then you tipped your wick into your neighbor's flame, and so on, the overhead lights gradually dimming. All the while, the congregation would be signing "Silent Night," a cappella. No matter the beauty of any individual voice: together, our song was so beautiful it hurt. By the last verses, only our candles would be lighting us.
 
My kids being little, and bedtimes being what they are, we haven't been to a Christmas Eve service in a while. This year, though, we're going to try. My new church is contemporary, and big, so I doubt there will be candles. In any case, I do look forward to reminding my children that the presents aren't the only reason to look forward to Christmas.
 
From my husband's family we've borrowed the tradition of each person watching each other person open a gift, so every present is admired, discussed and exclaimed over before moving on. This means Christmas morning present unwrapping might approach midday by the end, but so what? It only happens once a year and takes so long to prepare and organize. I'm always about savoring the fun – I'm the kind of person who eats her favorite flavor of Skittles last – so this tradition suits me fine.
 
In my husband's family, each family member also takes a turn playing "Santa", complete with hat, handing out presents from the tree. There's even a list somewhere, so every year we know whose turn it is. It felt like a milestone indeed when I first wore that hat, after marrying into the family. This year at our house, my son – who, in first grade, is learning to read – has gotten dibs on the Santa job. Maybe it's time to start our own list. After all, we even have a hat.
 
My favorite tradition is something new with our generation. When we had our first child, we were living in different cities than each set of parents. This meant, essentially, three Christmases – my side, his side, our own home where Santa would visit. By the time actual Christmas rolled up, we were exhausted from sleeping in other beds and white-knuckle driving on snowy Michigan roads. Plus, we'd already gorged ourselves on two traditional holiday meals with all the trimmings.
 
Myself, I'm no Betty Crocker on the best of days. And if you think about it, if kids could choose a favorite meal, would they pick roast turkey? Glazed ham and mashed potatoes? Nah, they'd go for macaroni and cheese or pizza.
 
The first year of the triple Christmas with a kid in tow, our son had just turned one and was mostly still eating puree or soft food cut into teensy weensy bits. I don't remember what he ate, but my husband and I had fajitas and beer for Christmas dinner. Lately we've done make-your-own mini pizzas, which has been a hit with the kids.
 
It's a perfect ending to the hectic holiday: no linen tablecloth, no pressure to rise to some Martha Stewart standard of perfection (in my kitchen, that would only end in tears, let's be honest). On a day when we might stay in our pajamas 'til noon -- and throw out any rules about what constitutes too much Wii time -- mini pizzas or fajitas are a much better fit than a shiny ham.
 
Happy holidays. Enjoy those Christmas fajitas, everyone.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: John Grogan's Santa Claus

I'm thrilled to welcome bestselling author John Grogan, author of the hilarious and heartfelt memoirs Marley and Me and The Longest Trip Home to my Open House! Just like those books, his post is simultaneously hysterically funny and very poignant. My mother is also great wrap re-user as well, and I save bows like nobody's business. But I don't think either one of us approaches the thriftiness of John's Santa growing up. And I love how Santa inspired John and his siblings to re-use not just paper, but the actual gifts themselves in years of regifting. Read on and prepare to be seriously entertained.

I don’t know about the Santa who dropped down your chimney when you were a kid, but mine was definitely a cheapskate.

It’s not that Santa did not bring my brothers and sister and me lots of nice toys, but he clearly was looking to save a nickel wherever he could. The most obvious place was in the wrapping-paper department. The other kids in the neighborhood reported their gifts arriving in brand-new, crisp, shiny paper. Ours came wrapped in paper salvaged from holidays past. Not one holiday past but several. Some of it looked like it had come from the first Roosevelt administration. The paper was as soft and supple as well-worn sheepskin, creased and crinkled and mottled by a myriad of old tape tears.

Same story with the bows, which had long ago lost their ability to stick to packages, and many of which had gradually been crushed flat. Santa didn’t care. He’d use them anyway, taping them in place. Year after year, the same paper, bows and ribbons resurfaced like some yuletide magic act.

Another place Santa found savings was in his gift tags. No store-bought cards for our Santa. He was way cleverer than that. Santa would use pinking sheers to artistically cut up the previous year’s holiday cards, repurposing them into fancy little tags on which he would write our names and sign it “From Santa.” Some years, I would find one of Santa’s tags from an earlier year with one of my sibling’s names crossed out and mine written in. Santa recycled everything!
 
The Santa who visited our house each Christmas morning was definitely a penny pincher, but perhaps he was something more – an early eco-warrior with a generous heart matched only by his desire to cut down on the vast amount of resources wasted each holiday after one brief use. With a ho ho ho, he reused, reduced, and recycled his merry little heart out. 

It goes without saying that Santa’s behavior did not strike Mom and Dad as odd at all. They grew up in the Great Depression, my mother one of nine children being raised by a widow, and were famous for their ability to squeeze one more use out of all manner of consumables. Mom dried her teabags on the windowsill for a second brew; dad hung paper towels for repeat wipe-ups and could always find a second use for a bucket of soapy water. My parents saved mayonnaise jars and margarine tubs, and tied stubs
of string together until they had a piece long enough to be of use.

And into this household of full utility came a Santa of like sensibility, following the same frugal protocol. What were the chances of that? Honestly, it seemed a little fishy to me, but being a boy of limited intellectual curiosity, and worrying that if I asked too many questions the whole bloody gifts-down-the-chimney gravy train could come to a screeching halt, I never pursued it.

We kids got into the cheapskate holiday spirit, too. Early on, my sister discovered a trove of long-forgotten wedding presents gathering dust in the attic. Martini glasses, pottery, carving sets, appliances. It was like Macy’s without the price tags. When it came time to shop for Mom and Dad, we enterprising kids simply headed up the attic ladder to pick out whatever struck our fancy. I swear Mom got the same waffle iron six years in a row. No matter, she’d greet each re-gifting with the same fanfare. “Just what I wanted!” she’d exclaim, holding it up. “How did you know?” A few days later, back up in the attic it would go for another year.

Despite his cost-cutting habits, Santa always came through on what mattered: the gifts. Every year beneath our tree, which we cut ourselves from a local farm, would be piles of books and model airplanes and robots and globes and cowboy gear and official NASA space helmets and beginner microscopes. And every year, Santa would always gulp down the snack we left him: a selection of Mom’s homemade butter cookies and a bottle of Coke. (No boring glass of milk at the Grogan house!)

My two brothers, sister and I would come barreling down the stairs at an ungodly hour before dawn. Mom would get up with us, click on the tree lights, and exclaim in amazement: “Kids, look! He came! Santa really came!” She was as crazy about Santa Claus as we were. Then, as we descended on our piles, she couldn’t resist adding: “Now careful not to rip the paper. It still has a lot of good life in it.”

Part of Dad’s Christmas gift was sleeping in, which we all agreed he deserved considering Santa drafted him into late-night elf service in the dreaded “Assembly Required” department. When Dad finally came down to join us, we would open our gifts to each other, careful not to tear the paper – “Ah, a waffle iron!” – and then head off to morning Mass where the highlight was peeking into the manger to see the little plastic baby Jesus with sheep and mules sleeping around him. If we were lucky, there would be snow on the ground. If not, that was okay, too. It was Christmas and we were together, a family warm and happy and imbued with the magic of the season. Upon our return, the house would be filled with our gifts and the wondrous smells of Mom’s roasted turkey. Also with lots of laughter and, mostly, lots of love. Recycled wrapping paper or not, that is where the true meaning lies.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Brooke Morgan Tells How It's a Wonderful Life Saved Her Psyche

Yesterday Rachael Herron reminded us how powerful the gift of a book can be, and today Brooke Morgan, author of the new novel Tainted, does the same for the beloved holiday classic film, It's a Wonderful Life. I remember when you could see this movie (which I LOVE) several times a day on tv, before NBC bought the rights and then made us all wait to watch it once a year. Luckily we all had VHS tapes or DVDs by that time, but I have never been able to watch it in a theater and I'm so jealous that Brooke is able to find a local theater that shows it every year! Clearly I need to be a bit more intrepid like her and search out a showing near me. I hope that this tradition, like Robin Antalek's, is one that she continues to share with her daughter.

 

I’m a sucker for schmaltz. On the run up to Christmas every year, I find a movie theatre  playing It’s A Wonderful Life and go see it. This isn’t easy. It’s an old black and white movie, filmed in 1946.  No Brad and Angelina , no vampires. It’s available on DVD , but watching it at home on a small screen doesn’t cut it, so I rely on the fact that other people out there are as sentimental as I am and some smart movie theatre owner understands the value of a great message movie, however old. After a lot of Googling, when I finally discover the rogue It’s A Wonderful Life screening, I’m absurdly relieved.

I know the dialogue by heart, and I admit there are times, usually about half-way through, when I think "Not again… and can we please speed this up," but there is no way I’d miss it.

Jimmy Stewart, who plays the hero, George Bailey, says things like “Hot Dog!” and dances the Charleston. But the story of It’s A Wonderful Life, like A Christmas Carol, is timeless.

All George Bailey wants to do is leave his hometown, Bedford Falls, go travel the world and explore. But a series of moral choices presents itself in such a way that in order to be a good person, to help his family and help the town,  he has to stay and lead a seemingly ordinary, uneventful life.

At the beginning of the movie George is about to throw himself off a bridge. Despite all his sacrifices and good deeds, he is facing bankruptcy and disgrace – because his uncle has foolishly misplaced company money.

Clarence, an angel  sent from heaven to stop George from killing himself, shows him what life in Bedford Falls would have been like if he’d never been born. Without George Bailey, one good human being, Bedford Falls would be a sorry place indeed, and all the people he loves would be sad shadows of themselves.

It’s such a brilliantly simple concept that each time I see it, I wish I’d been the genius who wrote it.

Five years ago, It’s a Wonderful Life saved my psyche. I’d just finished chemotherapy. I was exhausted, bald and depressed. But a tradition is a tradition and I dragged myself off to the movie theatre and watched as Clarence did his angel thing and George Bailey did his good guy thing. I almost fell asleep.  But at the end, when George  realizes he’s been given another chance in life and how much he has to live for; when he runs down the snowy streets of Bedford Falls, shouting “Merry Christmas” with joyful abandon, the message kicked in and I felt my own spirits soar along with his.
 

The power of a great story to transform our lives still amazes me. I walked out of that movie theatre on a high – one which continued. I’d seen such sadness in chemo and radiotherapy rooms. But what It’s a Wonderful Life is telling us is that every single person’s life counts, both in small and big ways. And that we shouldn’t give up, whatever the circumstances we find ourselves in.

There’s one particulary harrowing scene that gets me every time: After a series of sacrifices, George is finally  about to realize his dream and leave Bedford Falls. But his brother, who has just come back from college and is going to take over the family business, arrives home with a surprise wife in tow. At the train station, the new wife tells George that her father has offered his brother a great job in a different town which will make their future secure.

George immediately  understands all the implications of this – if he leaves and makes his brother stay in Bedford Falls, his brother will lose out on his chance of a lifetime. The agony on Jimmy Stewart’s face is wrenchingly intense, and in that one moment, the spirit of what Christmas is all about hangs in the balance.

This isn’t about whether to give an IPhone or a Wii, or how much we should spend on whom, it’s a core human dilemma. 

Do we give, even when that giving goes against our own desire or needs? Wouldn’t any therapist in 2009 tell George he’d done enough, that it was his right to follow his dreams? Even I find myself thinking: “Go for it , George. Forget your brother. Go on, be selfish. Stop this crazy sacrificing.” But George Bailey is always George Bailey and the true spirit of Christmas always prevails. 

For the past four years, I’ve brought my daughter along with me. She loves it just as much as I do, and now she brings her friends too. I have this fantasy that there will always be a movie theatre playing It’s A Wonderful Life at Christmas time, that my daughter will take her  children to it and that they’ll take theirs, and that ninety minutes in a darkened movie theater remembering what Christmas should be about will be a tradition that will continue for generations.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Rachael Herron on the Book that Santa Brought

Yesterday we heard from Robin Antalek about a book that started a family tradition and today Rachael Herron, author of the forthcoming novel How to Knit a Love Song, and blogger/knitter extraordinaire at YarnAGoGo, shares with us the book she received one year from Santa that meant more than anything, and then changed everything. There are books I still remember opening on Christmas morning, and diving into later in the day, well sated with food and presents.

Little Women was the first book to both break my heart and fix it at the same time. I was eleven years old when I first received my very own copy from Santa. I’d already read it many times as a borrowed book from the library, and I’d written a plea to the North Pole for my very own copy. I loved the book, identifying with each character in turn. But while I knew that I’d probably grow up to be able to draw as beautifully as Amy, and to be as sensible as Meg, and to be as musically talented as poor, doomed Beth, I knew that most importantly, just like Jo, I’d scribble away until I published words that I could be proud of, never letting an idea as silly as love get in my way.

Now, of course, I’m an adult. My stick figures look like indecipherable runes. I’m not very sensible, especially when it comes to eating vegetables. While I can carry a tune, I’ve been trying to learn the ukulele for years, and I’m still not very good at it. But I can, and do, write, just like Jo March. But instead of writing with a fountain pen, eating apples in my garret with rats at my feet, I use my Mac laptop, drinking soy lattes in my office with cats on my lap.

I wonder how many authors would claim Jo March as their first inspiration. How many of us, as little girls, huddled under our covers, thinking, “Yes. That’s what I want.” We wanted to be her, to make those mistakes, and cut off our hair, and yell too loudly, and fall over in the snow. Okay, I was a romantic even then, and I wanted Laurie for myself, and I thought Jo was ridiculous to let him get away, but that was my own private criticism, and I was glad she got her own man in the end. (And oh, when Jo exclaimed, “John Brooke is acting dreadfully and Meg likes it!” what more thrilling words were there? Jo might have been horrified, but we were not. We loved that John had stolen that glove and Meg’s heart.)

I was old enough to crave that romance, but young enough to be desperately clinging to the idea of Santa Claus. I was the eldest of three girls, and I knew that if Santa wasn’t real, then there was no magic at all. And then I’d have to shield my sisters from that ugly truth, and that would be too hard. So at eleven (old enough to know better, perhaps), I still doggedly believed.

And when I unwrapped my present from Santa Claus, a gorgeous, illustrated copy of Little Women with full-color plates, I almost wept with happiness. Here, then, was proof that he existed. He’d answered my request! I turned the book over, and there, on the back, was the green price sticker from Magic Carpet Books, our local bookstore.

My heart plummeted. I felt ill. I peeled the sticker off in private. Maybe Santa just needed help, I told myself. Maybe he’d been really busy. Maybe Santa shopped locally.

It wasn’t until several weeks later that I got the courage to ask my mother outright if there was a Santa Claus, and even until that last moment, I wanted her to lie. Standing in the public library next to the adult periodicals, our voices low so that my sisters over in the kids’ section couldn’t hear us, she said kindly, “What do you think?”

“I think there’s no such thing.” I was bluffing. Come on, Mom. Tell me I’m wrong.

“I think you’re right.”

I nodded and said something like, “That’s what I thought. I won’t tell Christy and Bethany, though.”

It turned out both my sisters knew about the Santa-ruse at a much younger age. They were smarter than I was, and they still are. But that moment in the public library, surrounded by books, was the moment I threw myself into believing in a different kind of magic, instead. I chose to believe in romance. In writing. In making my own dreams come true.

And today love and books and laughter fill my life, and I don’t need a white-bearded guy in a red suit on a sleigh to fulfill my fantasies. I know how to fulfill my own. But I still like to reread Little Women every once in a while, just to remember what it felt like to learn that love comes packaged in the shape of a family, and Marmee always knows best.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Robin Antalek on Her Family's Holiday Tradition Inspired by a Well-Loved Children's Book

This post seems the perfect follow up to Todd Johnson's essay on going home for the holidays. Robin Antalek, author of the forthcoming family novel The Summer We Fell Apart, talks about the holiday tradition that started when her daughters were quite small, and that was inspired by a beloved chidren's book. I just love this story and what it says about our childrens' capacity for love and giving. I think I shall be picking this book up this week to read with my son. The book links lead back to Robin's local bookstore, Red Fox Books in Glens Falls, NY, where you can see her read from The Summer We Fell Apart on February 11th.

The Animals’ Christmas

From the moment my daughters were born, it was important that their Christmases were filled with traditions big and small.  Every year, we trek out to the farm and cut down a tree; I hide twenty-four little advent packages, one to open each morning; we make trays and trays of cookies from my grandmother’s stained and faded recipe cards and colossal gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, pretzels, candy and way too much frosting. We’ve caroled, attended numerous Nutcrackers, read Christmas books from the classic Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree to the contemporary Auntie Claus; we collected ornaments, some homemade, some purchased, and hung every one of them on the tree until the branches swept the floor from the weight.  Each year, it seems we add to our list of Holiday must-haves so that the countdown to December 25th begins to look like a path strewn with crushed candy canes.

These traditions mattered, but nothing as much as when we stumbled upon the most glorious book: Night Tree by the beloved children’s author Eve Bunting. Night Tree tells the story of a family venturing out on Christmas Eve, bundled together in the cab of their father’s truck, as they head out into the woods to find the perfect Christmas tree.  Not for cutting down, but for decorating with popcorn and fruit for the animals of the forest to have for Christmas.  The book has wonderful watercolor illustrations by Ted Rand that lend a dreamy, serene quality to the story that caused each of my daughters to linger long and hard over every page as they took in the quiet winter scenes.

Soon after that very first reading, my youngest daughter, a sensitive lover of all creatures, came home from preschool with a peanut butter smeared pinecone crusted in birdseed. 
Her teacher had suggested she hang it in a backyard tree but my girl had something grander in mind.  She wanted to fill a tree with these pinecone treats and not in our city backyard where our lab mutts would scare off any potential animals, but in the forest.  She and her sister quickly set about collecting a box full of pinecones and making a list of the necessary ingredients: birdseed, carrots, cranberries, peanut butter and popcorn.    With their father and me, they formed an assembly line at the kitchen table smearing and slathering the cones in peanut butter before rolling in birdseed and looping a twist of twine around the stem and packing them neatly in a big brown box.

On the edge of our town lies a vast State Park, so on Christmas Eve day, loaded down with our box of supplies, we left behind a stove bubbling with preparations for dinner, a house that needed to be cleaned for the company we were awaiting, a table that needed to be decorated, and set off in the car. 

Once there, the girls climbed onto the sled, the box between them as we traversed the path through the woods made by snowmobiles and cross country skis until we found the perfect spot, down a short hill to a ravine where a stream threaded water over rocks and tree roots and where my husband pointed out the tracks of rabbits and deer who were drawn to the cool, clean water.

The girls quickly got busy hanging the pinecone treats in the bare low branches and sprinkling the remaining seed along the snowy paths down to the water.  They made piles of cranberries, popcorn and carrots and then stood back and waited, I know, hoping that an animal would venture forth.  It didn’t matter that their feet were frozen despite their thick boots or that they could no longer feel their fingers through their mittens.  We drank the hot cocoa from the thermos and wished the animals a Merry Christmas before we convinced the girls to set off for home.

It has been many years since that very first animals’ Christmas.  My daughters are teenagers now, one just starting college, and the other high school, and yet this simple gesture continues to bring us together.  They still collect pinecones and make that assembly line with their father just like they have since they were four and seven.  Whatever may be going on in their increasingly busy lives – lives, I know, that will very soon take them away from our home – they wouldn’t dream of forgoing our Christmas Eve tradition that started all because of one very special book.  

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Todd Johnson on the Meaning of Home

I'm thrilled to welcome Todd Johnson, author of the novel The Sweet By and By to my Holiday Open House! Todd talks about the meaning of going home for the holidays (a meaning I do share, no matter how many Christmases I've spent in my own home) and he shares his family's Christmas morning and day ritual. I think I would like to meet his mother as I found myself swearing tonight that I'd weed out some ornaments this year and set them aside (as I do every year), but....well, we'll see how it goes. Read on about the Johnson family's Christmas!

I have spent every single Christmas I can remember in North Carolina except for one. That was when my brother wasn’t able to take any time off from his Broadway show, and so the family came to New York City. It was fun. But also odd. Not to be home, that is, meaning of course my parents’ home, not mine. Every Southerner knows that regardless of one’s wishes, in the eyes of those who make the rules, “home” is never where you live; it’s always where you’re from. I love my home in Connecticut, just as I did my (tiny) one before that in New York City, but I’m afraid my compass will always be oriented South when it comes to holiday traditions.

One of my favorite things is to take a drive through the country east of Raleigh on Christmas Eve. I’ll take anyone who wants to come with me, but most of the time it seems like I end up doing it alone. Everyone else has either eaten too much or is still involved in eleventh hour clandestine gift-wrapping, or, God forbid, shopping. I always make it a point to go through Benson, the nearby small town where my dad grew up. Ever since I was a kid visiting my grandparents, all the houses on Main Street (and increasingly on other streets as well) have had glass storm doors in front. So at Christmastime, all the front doors are flung open to reveal grandly decorated trees centered in all the foyers, behind the glass. Perfectly positioned white spotlights flood each tree, intensifying the dazzling gift box effect. A Tony-winning lighting designer couldn’t do it any better. I poke down the street at about 10 mph, turn around at the gas station and drive back, repeating my circuit over and over, just so I can take it all in.

Christmas Day is heralded by the smell of waffles at the crack of dawn -- or even earlier, and I’m not kidding. My dad is always the first one up; we suspect he is a vampire and never really sleeps, which could actually turn out to be profitable for him. I wonder if he could get a book or movie deal. In any event, everyone stumbles to the kitchen table while it’s still dark outside, groping for coffee and acquiescing to that other Southern imperative, being force-fed by the people who love you. Afterward, it’s a short trip to the living room tree, taking care not to become entangled in greenery or ribbons or poinsettias. There’s a lot of stuff, very pretty, but also just plain “very.” When I die, I certainly don’t want it to be because of tripping over a topiary reindeer. My mom has been known to say that she is planning to scale back her decorations, but she always backpedals. She says she’s too superstitious to eliminate anything. So, every year, it all comes out of the boxes. A visit to my parents’ Christmas tree is like a trip down memory lane, with relics from every church craft fair and school project since 1963.

We always tend to pass out all the gifts before opening them one at a time, opting to savor each moment of delight or surprise (or bewilderment) rather than engaging in a full-on Filene’s Basement scramble. My dad, just like his own father before him, never ever tears his wrapping paper. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a tiny pocket knife which he uses to painstakingly slit each bit of tape, unfolding the paper as carefully as if the package contained a bomb. By now, we’re all used to the waiting, although sometimes it’s tempting just to snatch the gift out of his hands and rip into it. I think it’s part jealousy, however, for the rest of us, sort of like having finished all of our candy while someone else still has a brand new lollipop. There’s usually a break in the action for another round of coffee, then once presents are finished, it’s soon time to eat. Again.

This time it’s a fairly traditional Christmas dinner, with the essential Southern standbys like sweet potatoes and pound cake. There are seconds, and too often thirds, and finally we waddle, now slightly less capable of dodging precarious ornaments, to our respective chairs or sofas. There’s often talk of taking a little walk, getting some fresh air, but it rarely happens, as though mentioning it is almost as good as doing it. Then the chatter really kicks in. If you don’t like to talk, you have no place in my parent’s home at Christmas. The parade of relatives is endless. Stories, jokes, gossip, coffee. More stories. Then more coffee. No one bats an eye if you need to “go lie down,” that ubiquitous Southern phrase that allows us to excuse ourselves at any time whatsoever with no questions asked. And so it goes until everyone finally winds down, one by one, batteries drained, reticent to end the day. I know it will be exactly the same this year. And I also know I’ll be exhausted, relieved, giddy, impatient, gregarious, and full. Home.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Katrina Kittle on that Most Important Aspect of the Holidays -- Ornaments!

The next guest at my Holiday Open House is Katrina Kittle, author of The Kindness of Strangers, Two Truths and a Lieand Traveling Light, and next summer, a brand-new novel (more about that later). Now I thought I was an ornament, junkie, but I think that Katrina's mother trumps me, by far. Read on to hear about the meaning on every branch of her Christmas tree and how Katrina has incorporated that tradition into her own tree.

My mother is the Queen of Christmas Tree Decorations. Seriously, her tree strikes people dumb. When guests see it for the first time, I can count on approximately ten minutes of awe and examination before any other conversation continues. The seven foot, artificial tree itself is no big deal—what's extraordinary is the 1,027 ornaments adorning it.

And, yes, that's an exact figure, not an estimate. That number was accurate when the ornaments were boxed up and stuck back in the closet on January 6th, 2009. 

The quantity alone is enough to make your eyes widen—the ornaments literally cover every available inch of the tree, going four and five deep all the way to the trunk. Getting all 1,027 of those ornaments on the tree is a three day process that leaves my parents' living room looking like a cardboard box and tissue-paper bomb exploded (and which my dad, a bit of a Scrooge, endures with much grumbling). But it's the quality that really grabs you. There are no generic round bulbs here, no color scheme, no trendy theme. No, every ornament is individual, some unusual (how many people have spiders and garlic cloves hanging on their trees?)—many of them handmade—and all tell a story. Her tree is a veritable scrapbook of memories.

See, my mom started a great tradition when my sister and I were babies. Every Christmas, she bought us a new tree ornament. She always tried for the ornament to commemorate something important or memorable from that year in our life. From as early as I can remember, she told us that when we moved away and had our own homes, we could take our ornaments with us, so our Christmas trees would be personal and meaningful. When Monica and I were old enough to have a clue, we started buying our mother an ornament each year as well so that we wouldn't wipe out her tree when we moved away.
 
The memory is far more important that the appearance when selecting an ornament. It matters not one iota to my mother if the ornament doesn't look “traditionally” Christmas-y, as long as there is a good story. Among the decorations on her tree are a blue hot-air balloon (commemorating the year we sent her up in one for her 50th birthday), a pink elephant (for the year my niece and father created an elaborate story about Zamboni, an invisible elephant who lived in our basement), and a gingerbread house (for the year she and I attempted to make one ourselves...only to have it turn into a gingerbread “ghetto” whose roof kept collapsing).
 
My own tree displays such oddities as a hoof-pick painted red for the year I bought my first horse, a pair of eyeglasses for the year I had Lasik surgery, a small set of paddles for the year I almost drowned in a rafting accident on the Gauley River, and a little log cabin for the year I won a residency at the Hedgebrook Retreat for Women Writers. There are ornaments to represent every pet I've ever had, as well as ornaments representing some of the fictional animal characters in my books. These all hang along with the ugly pink plastic angel with white Barbie doll hair that I begged her to buy for me when I was five.

When my creative mother can't find the item she's looking for, she'll make it herself—my favorite being one she gave me the year of my divorce. To commemorate my new home and its every wall that I painted in bright colors, she crafted a miniature paint bucket and brush with the label: “New Beginnings Paint.”

A longtime Girl Scout leader and preschool teacher, my mother has been given hundreds of ornaments from former students and Scouts. She keeps a notebook in which she draws a small picture of the ornament and a description of who gave it to her, what year it was given, and any special significance it has. Her tree is a testament to how many lives she has touched.

I'm so grateful for the tradition she's begun. It's funny how the actual gifts will blur together and be forgotten, but I can always remember the ornament I received the previous Christmas. I look forward to unpacking my ornaments each year and the memories that come with them.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Jacqueline Sheehan Reminds Us What Giving of Yourself Really Means

The next author to join my Holiday Open House wrote the bestselling novel Lost & Found and most recently, Now & Then. Jacqueline Sheehan reminds us here that while the holidays can be a time of great joy, the very intense nature of the season often brings sadness as well, and that the greatest gift that each of us has to give doesn't come from a store, or in a box--it's the gift of ourselves.

The Christmas season can go from magic and unparalleled joy to stark sorrow. All it takes is a massive heart attack, which is what toppled my father when I was nine years old. He had been the biggest proponent of Christmas, whispering to me on Christmas Eve, “I think I hear Santa’s reindeer on the roof.” And we’d go outside to try to spot any roof top sleighs. “Darn, we missed him. Let’s go back inside and see what he left.” And magically, a sack of gifts would have appeared in the center of the living room.

His death hit my family like a bomb, each of us rocketing outward in our grief. By the time I was eleven, I dreaded going through one more Christmas with his glaring absence. Our big Christmas Eve event had gone from a festival of food and twinkling lights to a night of all of us trying too hard, waiting for something good to happen, praying that the undertow of grief wouldn’t suck the life out of Christmas again.

My mother was a young widow with five kids ranging from 11 to 24. My brother was 23 and the last male left standing. He and my father had argued ceaselessly in the year before his death and the despair was harder for my brother than any of the rest of us. He dealt with his pain and rage with alcohol. He chose to disappear for all holidays. I’d lost a father and now I’d lost a brother too. Two sisters had left for college and the family was a rickety ship. My world was shrinking down to a dim light.
 
My 6th grade teacher, Mr. Davidson, was an exuberant teacher. I adored him. He asked the class to write a short essay about what we wanted for Christmas. I don’t know what the other students wrote, but I wrote that I wanted only one thing: I wanted my brother to stay home and be with us for Christmas Eve. There was nothing else on the list, just him. Just my scowling, hard to love brother.

Mr. Davidson asked my mother to come in for a special meeting. Oh no, what had I done wrong? He gave my mother the essay and asked, “Is everything ok at home?” He meant well, and the entire town was sympathetic to our fatherless plight, but my proud, overwhelmed mother understood his concern as one more thing that she couldn’t fix. She was already holding us all together with tissue paper. “There’s nothing wrong,” she said. My mother related this to me and my sister Marty and then she crumpled the paper. “But what was on her list?” asked Marty. After my mother left the room, my sister retrieved the paper and slid it into her pocket. She was 19. I could not believe that I had caused so much trouble.
 
I wasn’t meant to hear the conversation between my brother and Marty later in the day, but there was little that slid by me. I was desperate to understand our family and I had perfected eavesdropping to an art. “She wants you to be home for Christmas.” Silence was the only reply from my dark Irish brother. I knew he wouldn’t come. I knew our flailing ship of a family was sinking fast.

I don’t remember anything I got for Christmas or anything that I gave as a gift. I only remember my bristling brother, doing his best that night, not drinking, sitting on the edge of a chair like he wanted to bolt. But he stayed for the whole event, the smorgasbord of food, the great aunts and uncles piled high with gifts for us, the barking dog, the fireplace, the tree that was starting to look brighter. He was kind to a great aunt with Parkinson’s, holding her steady as she walked along our icy steps. But someone wanted him. I did. We all did. He just had to get the message, and our wreck of a fatherless family felt safer that year.

What can you give for a gift this year? Tell someone that you need them, that they mean something to you, they matter, and you want them to be with you for Christmas. Try it.

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Gregory Maguire Shares His Current Favorite Book

What an honor! New York Times bestselling author of Wicked, and most recently Lion Among Men and Matchless, Gregory Maguire is here at my Holiday Open House! And just like at a cocktail party, he's sharing his current favorite book. Read on to find out what it is, perhaps it's one you'll want to buy for the child in your life (or in you!) this year. Be sure to see what Adriana Trigiani and Susan McBride had to say at the Open House, and I think Jacqueline Sheehan is on her way in next!

Having just written and published my own take on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," called Matchless, I suppose you will be not be surprised to find out that a book of Andersen stories is one of my current favorites. It is called Twelve Tales: Hans Christian Andersen, selected, translated and illustrated by Erik Blegvad. I love it for its artwork--Blegvad draws tight, crisp, droll scenes of great particularity and humor, which suits the stories. Magic, we all know, is much more believable when it is portrayed as snappily there, as real as a Nutcracker or a Little Mermaid or a Steadfast Tin Soldier: a real thing. None of this wispy gauzy fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden that you can't bring into focus (or you'd find out there were scraps of Burger King wrappings blown into the forsythia fronds). We want crisp actuality for fantasy, and Blegvad draws it as well as Andersen tells it. That's what Andersen gave to the fairy tale, and how he revitalized it almost single-handedly: He gave it particularity. That's what I tried to give to Matchless, too. I hope my story of Frederik on his island, and his meeting of the Little Match Girl, is as real as Andersen's tale. And my own drawings derive their strict line and their cross-hatching from my own love of Erik Blegvad's work. Check them both out!

Cheers, Gregory Maguire

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: Next Guest....Susan McBride Shares Her Christmas Memories!

Adriana Trigiani kicked off the Holiday Open House as my first guest and next through the door is the lovely Susan McBride! Susan is the author of several mysteries and young adult novels and this winter she's publishing a hilarious new novel called The Cougar Club, because if you think that life—and romance—end at forty, you need to think again (thank goodness!). I love what she wrote here, as I too was an IBM baby and her description of tinsel application on her childhood tree literally cracked me up. In addition to her reminiscenses of Christmases past, Susan's hostess gift was absolutely adorable—the super soft cougar stuffed animal and candy shotglass pictured below—both are sure to come in handy around here in the next few weeks! Stay tuned for more author guests, I hear Gregory Maguire's car just pulled up!

My family moved around a lot when I was growing up (my dad worked for IBM, aka I’ve Been Moved).  So every few years, we celebrated the holidays in a different place.  My mom was good about keeping up traditions so that Christmas was Christmas, no matter where we lived.  Sometime after Thanksgiving, she’d pillage packing boxes marked “Xmas Stuff;” and once she got going, there was no stopping her.  The scent of evergreen permeated the house as she wrapped boughs of it tied with red bows up and down the banisters.  Other decorations crowded table-tops, bookcases, mantles, and the piano.  Mom’s mix was eclectic: an elaborate nativity set from Italy, trees made from tuna cans, sculptural metal angels, and paper-mache snowmen.  No surface remained free of holiday cheer.

But before any counting down of days ‘til Christmas could commence, we had to do two things:  (1) Bake my great-grandmother’s shortbread cookies (that had at least 150 ingredients and all had to be iced in appropriate colors), and (2) Get a live tree.  The cookie part was almost easy compared to the tree trip. Mom had to bundle up three kids in enough layers to nearly render us immobile then we’d pack into the station wagon, bound for the nearest lot.  My dad would grab the first tree he saw and ask, “How’s this?” A half hour and two dozen trees later, my mother would nod and say, “That’s it!”  She always liked the biggest, fattest balsam that took eons for them to tie up.  Once home, Dad stuck the tree in a bucket and prayed the water didn’t freeze overnight.  The next day, he’d stuff it into the stand and put the lights on, and Mom would spread the skirt beneath.  Ta-da!  Let the tree-trimming begin!

Hanging the ornaments was a huge honkin’ deal.  My mother made sure the whole family was present before she put out eggnog and placed a holiday album on the stereo.  While my sibs and I unearthed equal parts hand-made doo-dads and delicate glass baubles from the tissue stuffed cavities of cardboard boxes, Nat King Cole crooned of chestnuts roasting on an open fire.  I loved glass birds with clips for claws so I could stick them on the ends of branches, like they’d flown in and were just resting.  I adored silver orbs that reflected every color in the rainbow.  But one pair of ornaments remained the most special for years:  a burlap man and woman my sister and I had named “Speed” and “Trixie,” after the characters in Speed Racer.  Every Christmas, their ink faces rubbed off a little more and their yarn hair disappeared, but Molly and I couldn’t wait to place them on the tree next to one another so they could chat about Spanky and Racer X. 

Once the ornaments were up, it was tinsel time!  We were tinsel-flinging fools back then.  Despite Mom’s instructions to put it on one piece at a time—“like a dripping icicle”—we’d toss fistfuls at the higher branches and see what would stick.  By the time we’d finished, our tree looked gaudier than a Vegas showgirl. 

We had our big family dinner on Christmas Eve.  The menu echoed our Thanksgiving meal:  turkey, spiral ham, green bean casserole, corn casserole, cranberry mold, and fat black olives that my sister plucked off the garnish tray and stuck on each fingertip.  After dinner, we opened one present from a far-away relative before we put on our coats to attend Christmas Eve service.  I loved to warble with the choir on “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and sit in silent awe as the star vocalist belted out “Ave Maria” and “Oh, Starry Night.”  Once home and sleepy, we’d set out cookies and milk for Santa, glance at our empty stockings, and head up to bed.  Before I nodded off, I’d listen for reindeer on the rooftop (I swear, one night, I heard them!). At the crack of dawn, I’d awaken and fling on my quilted robe as the rest of the house slowly roused.  My dad would bark a reminder not to go downstairs until he had his camera ready.

While Dad played Spielberg and Mom sipped coffee, my siblings and I tore through whatever Santa had brought, usually something like Tonka trucks, games, and trains for Jimmy; stilts, a slide-making kit, and a baseball mitt for Molly; a rock tumbler, dolls, and books for me.  Always books.  My favorite part of Christmas, once the chaos had ended (and it was always over quickly), was curling up somewhere quiet with Nancy Drew, Black Beauty, or Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Bliss!

Much about the holidays has changed since my childhood as my husband and I strive to keep life—and Christmas—simple.  We don’t go heavy on decorations and never get the biggest tree in the lot. I don’t bake shortbread cookies with 150 ingredients, and I’m not much for turkey.  But, as long as I have a pulse, two things will never change: the pleasure of being with family and the joy of un-wrapping a book.  Honestly, was there ever a better gift?

The Progressive Dinner Party Begins!

I'm excited to be part of this week's Progressive Dinner Party, especially because I'm participating in the appetizer course at the beginning of the week and then I can just sit back and absorb the rest of the great recipes as they roll in! My contribution to the appetizer course is Stilton & Watercress Spread. I found this recipe years ago in Bon Appetit magazine and have made it every year for the holidays. Last year was probably the first time that I didn't make it, but I had just had a baby in early December, so my family was lucky to find gifts under the tree and Christmas cookies. :) While we're not having our huge blowout party this year, I do plan to make it again to have on hand when friends stop by. It's great the day you make it, but also throughout a holiday week. So, without further ado, I give you:

Stilton & Watercress Spread

5 oz. stilton cheese (or blue cheese) crumbled
4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature (whipped)
5 tbsp. butter, room temperature
1 bunch watercress, stems trimmed, leaves chopped
2 green onions, finely chopped
1/4 c. finely toasted walnuts, chopped (I put a 1/4 cup unchopped walnuts in the oven at abt 350 degrees until I can smell them, then take them out and chop in the food processor)

Mix stilton cheese, cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl until blended. Mix in watercress, onions and nuts. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon into a small bowl, cover, and chill (can be made one day ahead). Bring to room temperature before serving. Serve with crackers.

Check out Dana's Scrap Therapy to try out her Cheese Dip and visit Epibloguer for her Creamy Artichoke Dip (which is one of my absolute faves). And be sure to visit the Book Blog Social Club to check out all the delicious foods that are being "served" at this week's Progressive Dinner Party!

Book Club Girl's Holiday Open House: First Guest....Adriana Trigiani!

Announcing a new series on Book Club Girl! All during the month of December I'll be hosting an Online Holiday Open House. I've invited your favorite authors to come on over for a visit and while they're here, to tell us about their favorite holiday traditions or memories. Today I'm thrilled to welcome New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani, who has written about how she and her family celebrate the holidays. I just love what she's written and can just see her house, adorned in all its greenery, in my mind. As a Christmas junkie myself, I love her descriptions of the ornaments and all the special touches around the house.

Our family doesn’t just celebrate Christmas, we revel in it.  We’re like Auntie Irma’s bourbon balls: the rich cocoa fudge center, chopped walnuts and sweet butter aren’t enough; as a final step, we drench them in confectioner’s sugar to give them a dusting of sugary snow in hopes for the real thing come Christmas Day. When it comes to the holidays, we can’t overdo the glitter, the greenery and the baking-our Joyous Noel philosophy is: enough isn’t enough-and too much is perfection! 

When my mother and father moved our family (seven kids) from Pennsylvania to Big Stone Gap, we packed up our Italian traditions and headed south to the coal fields of southwest Virginia.  It turns out Christmas was just as big in Virginia as it had been in our small Italian-American community in Pennsylvania. We began to blend our family traditions with the colorful local ones. The local clubs put on lavish Christmas shows, decorating our town’s historical homes and the museum with floral arrangements, opulent mantle decorations, and period Christmas trees from Victorian to contemporary country. When I think back, it wasn’t just our family celebration on Christmas Eve with our own Feast of the Fishes followed by Midnight Mass; it was a month-long party of concerts by the high school glee club and band, the town parade, and the judging of the best Holiday door decorations in town. 
 
My husband and I carry this model into our family life. We don’t put pressure on ourselves to travel during December; rather we entertain our families throughout the month. It makes for a festive time of year - and takes the pressure off making one perfect day.
 
I emulate my mother’s style during the holidays. She used fresh greenery throughout the house, you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing a spray of polished holly leaves with ruby red berries, swags of fragrant pine and bunches of evergreen tied with ribbons and tucked in offbeat spots like the kindling basket next to the fireplace. I recreate the same ambience in our home. I decorate every door, front and back, in our New York home with a fresh evergreen wreath, which I decorate with antique ornaments, (my favorite: a red, white and green Italian glass bugle in honor of my grandfather Carlo (who played the horn!)).
 
The mantles are covered in fresh greens, and then I create villages with small houses, candles, and antique miniature trees I’ve collected. As a final touch, I staccato the mantle with antique books propped upon gold leafed plate stands. All the books have Christmas themes. I have quite a collection from yard sales and antique book malls: everything from A Christmas Carol with a gorgeous swirly cover to books that have personal meaning, including my father’s Christmas Golden Book from 1940—a real treasure. 
 
Our New York tree is always big, loaded with ornaments old and new (I have an ornament of the American flag won by my grandmother at a bond rally in 1942), and lit like the tree at Rockefeller Center. We may be the only house in the United States that doesn’t have a problem with tangling lights.  You see, my husband is the lighting designer for Late Show with David Letterman-and while I’m fussy about the menu, he is persnickety about the tree lights. They are stored, year to year, on cardboard flats with grooves so they don’t get tangled.  Tim tests the lights on the flats before he even unwinds them. Then, he starts at the bottom of the tree at the base of trunk.  He weaves the lights from the inside to the outer branches, working his way up the tree, but always from the trunk first.  If a string happens to burn out-he can replace it-because he has layered the strings of lights just so.  Tim also creates a blanket of lights on the lower branches to light the train that runs in a circle around the bottom of the tree.   
 
For many years, when my husband and I were single, we’d go to our respective families for the holidays.  I have so many stories of getting stuck - missing planes and spending hours brooding that I’m in an airport instead of with loved ones. So, when my husband and I married, we married on December 17th, a reminder that our holiday as a family would be our holiday. We didn’t want to spend it traveling.  This is how our holiday open house came to be. We make sure during Christmas month that we see as much of our family as possible, but come Christmas week, we are in our own house, with our family. Our Christmas celebration is truly the sum total of our family traditions, with some new touches thrown in to keep it all fresh and real.  My daughter Lucia is a Christmas junkie, just like her mom.  Every light, every ornament, every guest, and every moment matters. 

Adriana's novel Very Valentine will be out in paperback on January 5th, with bonus recipes and a sneak peek to the next book in the Valentine Roncalli series, Brava,Valentine, which is on sale February 2nd. You can become a fan of Adriana's on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.