I think of you every time I wish someone Merry Christmas he said. Thanks I said but I knew where this was going.  He had launched a campaign to wish everyone a Merry Christmas instead of letting the words Happy Holidays pass his lips. This from a faithful church going had lifesaving open heart surgery, second chance at life man who I think of as one of the nicest human beings I know…and who still owes me a glass of red and a co-written blog post.

He thinks of me because I’m ok with Happy Holidays, you can wish me Happy Holidays and I appreciate that you wish me well.  I’m no longer under the illusion that everyone celebrates Christmas.  I don’t presume to know everyone’s faith or what they believe in if they believe in anything.  I don’t push my faith on others and I don’t want them to push their faith on me.  Fact is I thought my faith was faltering for a long time but it wasn’t faith I was questioning it was religion and its rigidity and exclusivity and non-inclusiveness that was in question.  As I always say, “God ain’t mad at me, I’m doing good work”.

I am blessed to know and love many different kinds of people these days.  I’m no longer cocooned in a world of “my people” the way I was when I was growing up.  Things have changed, for the better in my opinion, when I can learn from different faiths and ethnicities and respect and love them just the same as if they were “going about with Merry Christmas on their lips”.

I love this season.  I didn’t always but my world has changed drastically and continues to change as I move through it with altered vision and perspective.  The more I look around the more I see the similarities and less I see the differences.  So if saying Happy Holidays is offensive to you I suggest you look at your valued collection of friends and colleagues and see if they might appreciate hearing that instead of Merry Christmas.  If Happy Holidays screams liberalism to you then perhaps you might want to step out of the political ring and into the town you live in where we help each other and say hello with full hearts every day.

Not acknowledging how diverse our towns, states and country has become is limiting yourself to the “old ways” that were none too happy for our ancestors who came from somewhere else and made a difference in our lives. Surely we’ve come farther than that.  Happy Holidays is a celebratory cry out for and from those who have embraced this country with their own traditions and love of freedom.

Open that now perfect heart my friend and see that you are surrounded by people who are living and loving this country and this season as much as you think you do.

The dogs start barking because our mailman is tossing a package up on the front porch.  Had I not heard the dogs barking I would never have known…UPS rings the bell and runs but our mailman does the close enough to the porch toss.

There it is, Christmas in a box from Amazon.  Done.  So if my package landed on my porch then there must be mail in my box.  Saddle up the girls and off we go for the evening walk and mail pickup.  There’s all the usual stuff and many many Christmas cards.  Somehow I always forget about the cards. I’ve long ago stopped sending them so it’s such a pleasant surprise to see them piled in the mail box.

There are all those wonderful greetings and good wishes and then there are the ones with the year in review letters.  Then there is the one in particular from my dear friends Jan and David Riley.  David’s been trying to pass the job along for years but there are no takers.  Partly because he keeps such a fabulous calendar through the year, I know because I provide it to him. But mostly because he is a wordsmith, a wonderful writer who can bring you through the year in all its joys and woes and come out the other side with gratitude and love.  He wants very much to be a curmudgeon but no one’s buying that either.  Well maybe Jan is.

When I see the typed page drop out of the card I immediately put it aside for savoring with my morning coffee.  I am lucky enough to see David and Jan regularly throughout the year, our lunches at Davies and dinners at one another’s homes always bring us to tears of laughter and enriches our friendship even more if that is possible.   But still, sitting down with David’s year end letter brings me back through the year with them and I enjoy every word, I can see every nuance, and yes I know like I know that this will indeed be grist for his “ordinary legacy”.

And so it begins, that time of year where I turn into the Little Red Hen asking who will help me make the cookies.  “Not I”, said…everybody.  Excuses from A to Z, but my very favorite is the “they don’t taste the same if we help” defense. Yeah yeah yeah.  The fact is I enjoy the cookie making escape.  I put on my favorite music, I get in the rhythm of the repetition, and the smell is intoxicating.

I begin with the sturdiest cookies.  The butter cookies come first, rich buttery vanilla flavors that melt in your mouth.  This is an old recipe that uses only the yolks of the eggs, rich bourbon vanilla, and powdered sugar instead of granulated.  It is luscious.  Made three weeks ahead of time; when it gets closer to Christmas I make them into sandwich cookies filled with Nutella.

The other sturdy cookie is the anisette cookies.  This recipe is from Nanny LoConti.  The boys usually get together each year to make them at the deli.  They use the huge stand mixer, the commercial ovens, and a gun formed from a calking kind of thing.  Obviously, I don’t have a deli, nor do I have a caulking gun kind of thing and I was lucky enough to escape with the recipe so I improvise.

The recipe had to be halved so that it would fit in my Kitchenaid stand mixer.  It’s a very solid dough so I use the bread hook. I once, and only once, tried to mix it with a normal paddle but the mixer was groaning and straining and just simply refused to move after a while.  Then I had to figure out the extruder kind of thing. Hmmm.

I am so damn clever some times.  I bought the sausage attachment for the mixer so instead of filling sausage I’m extruding the dough so I can form them into the signature braid-like shapes so easily recognized by my mother.   There is a knack to it, a rhythm, and a bit of dexterity required.  As the dough is extruded I measure it against the palm of my hand, clip it off with my finger and drop it on to a plate as I count them off by the dozen.  Once I’ve got a dozen, I twist them into the braid and place them on the sheet pan.  Get two pans done and into the oven they go.  But any number of things can happen in this little operation.  The strands can stick together on the plate, they can break on the sheet pan, and I can, and have, increased the mixer speed instead of turning it off.   That’s always fun, an I Love Lucy moment.

But all in all, the concentration takes your mind off of everything.  The music lurks in the background and the smell is like the best kind of aroma therapy the spa has to offer.  It is the Zen of Christmas.

I have containers especially for the zillion dozen cookies I make every year and a little mistake container for those who burst through the door (usually looking for their keys because they’ve locked themselves out) and stop in their tracks saying, “What is that smell?  What is happening here?”  As if they didn’t know.  Off they go with a bag of “mistakes” to enjoy later on, if they make it to later on.

I don’t know if everyone enjoys the cookies as much as I enjoy the process of making them. Little Red Hen be damned.  I don’t know if everyone knows where the recipes come from or that they will be gone at some point if no one learns to enjoy making them going forward. I don’t know if anyone appreciates the love that goes into them or the honor it is to continue the tradition but I know like I know that there are never any left come New Years Day.

Well, accept for the ones that Sandra stashes in her freezer for emergency consumption on a really bad day (those get made closer to the day).  So OK, maybe I don’t know but I have a funny feeling that if there were no cookies there might not be any crumbs in the beds of those sneaking them up to their rooms, there might not be the saving grace cookies that can be eaten by the celiac disease crowd, and I wouldn’t have the wonderful Christmas celebration I have each year by avoiding all malls in lieu of my kitchen and all its comforts.  Next week, snowballs, fig chiucharidi, Sandra’s favorite Italian cookies with the anise icing and nonpareils.  The week after that, pignoli nut cookies and finishing touches.  Stay tuned.