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This time of year brings many memories flooding in, for most of us, of years past, especially for me it seems my childhood holiday experiences. Family Man wrote a diary on Village Blue the other day that inspired me to share this story of one of my ‘Christmas past’s’ that I wrote last year and ask you to share your stories as well.
The house I lived in as a young child in Salisbury, Pa. was a dream and has been in my dreams for my whole life, I still walk the halls, climb the the polished mahogany front stairs and clamber down the back one, wander from room to room and still see the beautiful tall Christmas tree in the “sun parlor.” In our house the tree never appeared for sister and I until Christmas morning, all lit and decorated with all the old German decorations saved and passed on for generations. Spread beneath was a picnic of presents all gaily wrapped.
The entire house would be decorated with pine brought in from the woods nearby, decorated with balls and bows, laurel from another spot in the mountains where it grew wild and sometimes sprayed with a touch of gold, all tied together with a beautiful big bow.
Christmas was a big deal in my family, perhaps from the German heritage, where Christmas was celebrated long ago and before it was widely adopted from, I believe the German Americans culture.In the fall the candy making would be started, my family made pounds and pounds, grandmother even sold some/lots at Christmas (In fact there would be a steady stream of customers to pick up their orders as Christmas neared)…it went the full range, from caramels, fudge, toffee, mints, divinity, maple sugar candy, all the way to the families all time favorite. Fondant wrapped around peanut butter and then dipped in bitter sweet chocolate. No one could ever have enough of that candy, it was such a hit and no one but our family seemed to make it..
It was a very tedious project to make this candy, started out with boiling sugar, water and cornsyrup till it was soft ball stage, then pouring this molten hot liquid into cooled turkey platters. Once the mixture was cool to the touch, a spoonful of vanilla would be splashed on and then the turning began.
Butter knives were used to scraped and stir the thick sticky and clear mixture until it started to turn to white, just then you had to gather togther and form into balls before it went totally hard. Then wrapped in waxed paper it was laid on trays on the nice cold porch to temper..24 hours later and it was brought back inside to warm,soften and to be “worked”. That meant to squeeze and kneed until the consistancy was soft and pliable.Now it was ready for the peanut butter dabbed in the middle of a little flat circle, rolled in your hands to make an egg shape and then placed on the cookie sheet to go back outside again for another cooling down period. When sufficiently cool it was dipped in the chocolate and then placed on cookie sheets again for the next trip outside…
After it was cooled again, it was carefully packed in canisters to be stored on that same porch until it was needed, most especially for Christmas.
In some ways you might say the preparations for Christmas went on for months as candy, cookies, fruit cakes, rum cakes and some pies were prepared in advance and we did have unlimited freezer space on that back porch.
On Christmas morning we would rush downstairs to find the beautifully decorated tree and as was the custom in our family, opening presents was carried on throughout the day…my favorite memory of presents was a box full of handmade clothes for a new Toni Doll, some of them hand knitted by my mom…I was enchanted and in some ways inspired to design clothes later on in my life.
Anyway, Christmas was wonderful for me as a kid, and the memories are always lurking in the back of my mind.
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So that’s one of my memory stories, now tell us yours.
