Merry Christmas!

Creche scene

May you enjoy a merry Christmas your way (and if that means buffalo are (bel)lowing while poor baby wakes, so be it).

Snow way!

The new picture at the top of this blog was taken this week from my parent’s back yard.

It is a winter scene, that’s for sure, overlooking the Leaf River.

I figured an image with snow was required for a forum touting Minnesota roots, seeing as Minnesota has snow on the ground about 6 months of the year. And my parents told me today the weather forecasters were expecting a record amount of Christmas snow — more snow than has ever been recorded in Minnesota is expected to fall on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

It’ll be a white Christmas, that’s for certain.

Greeting of ‘happy holidays’ covers this one, too

Growing up, Mom made a big deal out of advent.

Advent, religiously, is a time of pregnant expectation. From a Latin word that means “coming,” it’s the beginning of the church year starting about four weeks before Christmas when Christians celebrate all the signs that signaled Christ’s birth: prophecies of Christ’s coming, Elizabeth’s pregnancy and John’s birth, Mary’s pregnancy and the run-up to the trip to Bethlehem. Advent is also about the preparation for the Second Coming, when Christ returns to Earth in the final days.

According to Wikipedia, the progression of the season may be marked with an Advent calendar, a practice introduced by German Lutherans. As a family of mostly German Lutherans, we adopted this practice, too.

When I was growing up, I remember lighting Advent candles on a wreathed centerpiece at dinnertime. We would light one more candle each week until all five (including the white one for Christmas) was lighted.

Nephew Logan gets the Dec. 23rd honors this year.

We also had a felt wall hanging in the shape of a Christmas tree with 24 hooks on it and 24 corresponding felt ornaments. My sister, brother and I were always jockeying for position about who got to put up the day’s ornament. In theory, it was always the biggest honor to hang the star at the top of the tree on Christmas Eve, but in practice, the best day of December for me was Dec. 23: My birthday. It didn’t matter which ornament got into which pocket on pretty much any other day, but the baby Jesus was always in the pocket No. 23 because that’s the day this baby was born.

Now that calendar hangs in my sister’s house, and my two oldest nephews began fighting a week ago about who gets to put up baby Jesus on Dec. 23 (“we still do it on that date because of you,” my sister told me — isn’t nice to know some things never change). A compromise was reached by telling them that putting up the last ornament on Christmas Eve is as cool as putting up baby Jesus on Dec. 23.

(Not everyone thinks so, but if we can settle the war that way, then so be it.)

On Christmas, please wish the Savior of the world a happy birthday. But on Dec. 23rd, birthday wishes will be accepted here.

If you were stranded on a desert island and could eat only one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Ever eaten shipwreck? Well, depending on your perspective, you haven’t missed anything. Or, you’ve missed a really delish dish.

I hate shipwreck. It’s one of my father’s favorite meals, and I remember pushing it around on my plate wishing for something else when I was in junior high school. There’s a reason “wreck” is part of the name.

While visiting my 94-year-old grandmother today, she mentioned she made shipwreck for one of her guests. I made a face, and my stepchildren (who love things like macaroni goulash and tater tot hotdish) asked, “What is shipwreck?”

Well, Grandma said, you start with a layer of onions in a pan, and then you add a layer of potatoes, and then you add a layer of cooked hamburger with a cup of rice in it. Then there’s a layer of cooked celery, she continued, and then you add a layer of beans or whatever vegetable you have — I like corn, she noted – and then you pour white sauce over the whole thing, and you bake it for a long time over low heat. I think that’s what makes it good, cooking it a long time, she said.

As she was describing it, I shuddered, but everyone else around the table — my husband, my 20-year-old stepdaughter and my picky 15-year-old stepson — nodded their head like it sounded like the most delicious hotdish ever. I just listened while nimbling on Christmas cookies.

But I don’t make it very often, Grandma said, because you have to dirty so many pans before you’re all done.

Not believing anyone could like that “wreck” of a dish as much as my dad, I asked them later, “Did that really sound good to you?”

Sure! they replied in unison, why don’t you make that?

I don’t make hotdishes, especially not a hotdish I won’t eat.

But now they have the recipe straight from the lips of the ship’s captain. If they want to eat it, they can make it themselves.

And I’ll clean up all the pans in the ship’s mess.

Lights, music, amazing!

As it turns out, I didn’t have to move two states away into suburbia to live on a street well-lit for Christmas.

There’s an over-the-top Christmas light display on a house four blocks from where I grew up in little Wadena, Minn. It even has its own radio frequency! All the lights blink in time to Christmas music! It’s really quite amazing (even if it is over the top).

You can get a little taste of it on this news clip preserved on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDw-YCfi0SY

When Caswell saw it, he said, “That’s the way my Christmas lights are going to look when I have a house!”

Enjoy!

Winter hearty

I was once at a bed-and-breakfast in California having breakfast, as is the custom, with other guests. The question going around the table was “Where are you from?” Most of the other guests were from other cities in California. When it was the turn of my then-husband and I, we said (naively): “Minnesota.”

Instantly, the table turned on us. “Why would you ever live in Minnesota?” asked these tanned, toned Californians who’d never encountered a day-off they didn’t like. “Is it ever summer there?” “I would never live that far north.” “Who lives there?”

These loony Californians thought we were stupid — if not insane — for living in a state known to have only two seasons: Winter and road construction.

As a native Minnesotan, I didn’t understand why a state with two-hour commutes, a water shortage and regular earthquakes was so overpopulated. (And that was before they elected a movie star known more for his brawn than his acting as governor.)

You see, I think living in Minnesota makes you strong. Not stupid.

You have to be strong to endure a winter that lasts from October to April (I’m not exaggerating), and as a native you start early.

The temps were in the 20s today where my sister lives, and my 6- and 10-year-old nephew spent nearly four hours outside. Playing! They chipped ice off a raft, they built a (well-constructed) snow fort, they tramped a pie-shape into the snow on the lake and played a game around it, and they snowboarded down a hill in the back yard.

They came into the house with little red cheeks and big smiles.

They’re tough. Unlike most sun-drenched Californians.

This cookie monster appreciates aesthetics

In the past, when I was living in Minnesota, I would get together with my sister and my mom on a day in December and make hundreds of Christmas cookies. Then I would plate them and give them away to the neighbors or serve them when I entertained for Christmas.

Even though literally hundreds of cookies passed through my fingers, I ate fewer than a half dozen every year.

While my sister is known to have consumed more brownie batter than she actually baked, I don’t really have a sweet tooth (unless there’s a stash of Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups in the house). I don’t like Christmas cookies because they taste good. Honestly, just about every Christmas cookie recipe is the same: butter, sugar, flour and some sort of flavoring — they all taste pretty much the same. My reasons for making Christmas cookies are more aesthetic.

Every year, it seems, I was assigned to make the candy cane cookies. This is a laborious process of rolling separate worms of white and red-colored dough and then twisting them together and bending a crook — all without breaking the tender dough. While we often made double batches of other types of cookies, I refused to double this dough because it would take twice as long to finish it.

But I endured this seasonal torture not because I liked the almond flavoring in these cookies but because I thought those uniquely shaped confections looked so pretty on the plate. My goal was always to have a balanced mix of colors, shapes and sizes in our cookie creations.

Making 10 different kinds of cookies by myself would require a ridiculous amount of time and patience, so I no longer spend a day baking for Christmas. But this year, I did make 60 peanut blossoms (very little shaping required) for a Christmas cookie exchange. I walked away with 10 different kinds of cookies plus a few bonus dipped candies. I gave a plate of them to our next-door neighbors.

Can you see the red one in the middle? It’s a chocolate truffle dipped in red-colored chocolate and drizzled with white chocolate. Isn’t it pretty?

On the first day of Christmas, my sister sent to me …

My sister sent me this You Tube link today after hearing Bob & Doug McKenzie’s version of the 12 Days of Christmas on the radio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqzZ1UkypqU

It reminded her of our brother, and she’s right on. This dumb song from 1982 is the perfect mix of the 1980s, up north humor and backwoods hicks that come together in the perfect union of Curt Wallgren memories. He was all that: A kind soul with a goofy sense of teen-age humor and a love of snowmobiling (and, on the first day of Christmas, maybe even a beer … in a tree).

This Christmas will be the 10th Christmas he’s been gone. He died in a car accident in January 1999. But obviously, his memory lives on. In many ways, of course, but in the hearts of his sisters, it’s a goofy Bob and Doug McKenzie Christmas carol that brings him to mind.

(Up in heaven, he’s laughing that this dumb song evokes thoughts of him, and he’s loving it.)

This conspiracy theory is worth subscribing to

My prayer this holiday season (or Christmas season, if you must be direct about it) is that while you spend money on gifts for family and friends, that you consider giving a little to charity, too.

I’m not the first to think of this — lots of people do this as a matter of course. But it’s getting headlines this year with the so-called Advent Conspiracy movement. If you haven’t heard of it, you might want to check it out the video on You Tube – it’s cool, and it will put you in the right mood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkTyPzRzuwc

This message about buying vs. giving at Christmastime was started by Portland, Ore., pastor Rick McKinley, who says the greatest threat to one of Christianity’s holiest days isn’t that store clerks say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” or that people refuse to put creches in the public square. No, the greatest threat is the frenzied activity and extravagant gift-giving of a commercial Christmas.

The Advent Conspiracy movement has exploded, and hundreds of churches on four continents and in at least 17 countries have signed up to participate, according to Time magazine. The Advent Conspiracy video I referenced above has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube, and the movement boasts nearly 45,000 fans on Facebook.

Over the past four years, churches that support Advent Conspiracy have donated millions of dollars to dig wells in developing countries through Living Water International and other organizations. McKinley likes to point out that a fraction of the money Americans spend at retailers in the month of December could supply the entire world with clean water.

You don’t have to give to Living Waters to be a part of the Advent Conspiracy. Support a cause that is important to you, or give a special gift to your church. Discuss it with your children, and you’ll give them something more valuable than another video game — they’ll learn the joy of helping others and making the world a better place.

This quote from Mahatma Gandhi sums it up nicely: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

If your neighbor jumps off a cliff (or over an electric fence), does that mean you should, too?

It’s not just impressionable and insecure teen-agers who let their pants hang below their butts and hair draped in their eyes just because their friends do.

Adults succumb to peer pressure, too, and it’s especially evident when it comes to outdoor Christmas decorations.

Our block is somehow the most lighted block in the village. Of the 20 houses on our block, 17 have some sort of Christmas lights. Naturally, like lemmings, we are among the lighted.

The next block over, only 1 of 9 houses has outdoor lights. Maybe that’s an anomaly, so I went two blocks over, too: 7 out of 17.

We are definitely higher wattage on our block.

I think some Christmas lights are pretty, but like everything Americans do from restaurant portions to big box stores, it seems quantity trounces quality in holiday lighting displays.

I understand icicle lights — they look like pretty icicles, hanging from the eaves. And I understand lighting your porch or your front door; that’s like painting your front door red as a way to draw attention to it and make people feel welcome. And draping the pine trees in your yard with lights? Well, that’s like having bonus Christmas trees to decorate.

But I don’t get people who outline every architectural detail of their house. With flashing lights. Or the ones who decorate deciduous trees — why draw attention to a tree that looks like a bunch of dead sticks in wintertime? Or the ones who have multiple Santa Claus figures in their yard — if one’s good, more are better, huh?

My favorite “outdoor” Christmas lights come from the inside. I love those lights that look like candles in the window, and I enjoy seeing a lighted Christmas tree through the picture window. That kind of lighting says “warm and inviting” to me: “Come inside and celebrate Christmas with us.”

We have a mix of good and bad lighting at our house. You can see the Christmas tree and the candle lights in the windows, but you also see a nice outline of our garage doors (probably the least attractive architectural feature of the house).

But we had to have something: The peer pressure on this street was as fierce as the electric bill will be.