Cindy on December 29th, 2009
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston
For several years I’ve kept a small garden statue of a woman by our side entrance. I named her Hestia after the ancient goddess of home and family. In Greek mythology, Hestia’s role was to keep the flame of the hearth burning. This week she’s dressed in snow — and looking a little overwhelmed by the onset of winter and the challenges ahead. I can relate.
It’s been a mixed bag of a holiday in our household. My husband and I have been enjoying a week-long visit with our son, who flew in from Chicago for Christmas last week. We’ve shared some cozy meals at home together — I love to cook with my family — and we’ve made time to visit extended family, old friends, and favorite haunts around town.
Meanwhile, real life also paid us a yuletide visit. On Christmas Eve, my mother (who was just diagnosed with early-stage dementia last month) came down with another serious infection. I spent most of Christmas Eve morning at the doctor’s office with her, and the rest of the holiday bringing meals to her.
At times it felt awkward to celebrate with the rest of the family while my mother stayed in bed in her condo, watching television. And so, with regrets, I canceled out of several parties and gatherings, all the while feeling guilty for lacking the social energy and enthusiasm required of the holiday season. I know I disappointed more than a few people for not showing up in one way or another.
My mother’s doctor asked me to come in with my mother for a consultation this afternoon. As the doctor put it, we need to determine the next step for Mom’s ongoing care. I’m guessing, from the doctor’s tone on the phone, that 2010 will be a year of changes. But there’s hope too. Mom agreed, after several arguments, to take a new medication prescribed for her dementia. She adores her condo — keeping house is the thing that gives her life meaning, shape, and routine. So I’m hoping she’ll be able to stay in her own place as long as possible.
At this point in the holiday season, I’d usually be drawing up a lengthy list of New Year’s resolutions. In the past, most of those resolutions would have included ambitious career goals and pie-in-the-sky dreams of self-improvement. This year, I’m asking only two things of myself: To sustain the energy I’ll need to keep the fire burning — and to find the patience to ride out the changes ahead. — Cindy La Ferle
– “Hestia” garden statue photo by Cindy La Ferle –
Cindy on December 15th, 2009
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more? — Dr. Seuss
A few years ago, one of my editors challenged me to write an essay for the front page of the Christmas Eve edition. He said he wanted a piece as moving and memorable as Francis Church’s famous New York Sun editorial, “Is There A Santa Claus?”
Talk about pressure. I was going through a rough time and had nothing original or inspiring to say about Christmas. But I forged on as best I could. Today I can’t recall much of what I wrote for that assignment, and I’m guessing nobody else does either.
Christmas remains a forced and difficult season for me. Like the chains wrapped around Jacob Marley’s ghostly ankles, the secular pressures of the holiday are sometimes more than I can bear. I resent the marketeers who obligate me to buy gifts I wouldn’t otherwise consider. I resent the magazine editors who suggest that my yuletide performance — decorating, cooking, entertaining, baking — is never quite enough. And I dread the hot waves of guilt that wash over me when I can’t muster expressions of merriment or religiosity on cue.
But I wasn’t always such a Grinch.
Auld Lang Syne
As a kid, I bought into the Santa mythology, and for a short time I believed in magic. In those days, the lyrics to Christmas carols seemed fresh and stirring — partly because my parents never played them until after Thanksgiving. I was even more intrigued by the stories of elves and trolls. I was sure they assisted Santa on his midnight mission throughout the world. I’d stay awake all night on Christmas Eve, listening for them.
Even then, I knew the real wizards behind the Christmas magic were my paternal grandparents and a half-dozen eccentric great-aunts and uncles. Charles Dickens couldn’t top those folks when it came to holiday spirit. All were immigrants from Scotland’s Orkney Islands, and during the 1950s and ’60s, their generous Detroit neighborhood was a rich melting pot representing several nationalities and religious denominations.
My grandparents threw an annual Christmas Eve open house, inviting every relative, neighbor, and friend in the vicinity. The Goodmans, who lived across the street and celebrated Chanukah, always stopped by too. The whole house would expand with the aroma of my grandmother’s cooking and the clamor of jovial visitors — so much so that the windows of their modest brick-and-stone Colonial steamed up and I could print my name with a finger in the watery panes. At some point in the evening, my Aunt Annie, a chain smoker who outlived the other aunts and uncles, performed a Highland sword dance (using the fireplace tools) in the middle of the living room. Later, someone would pound out a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” on the piano.
Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house wasn’t about the presents or decorations. These were practical Scots who gifted each other with new underwear and wasted little money on trimmings. Their Christmas was all about community.
Stuffed with shortbread and happiness — and loaded down with boxes of new pj’s and underwear — I’d always return home late with my parents. And if our timing was just right, my dad and I watched the original A Christmas Carol on TV at midnight in black and white.
Holiday grief and loss
My Scottish grandparents — and crazy Aunt Annie — died many years ago. Since then, I married and had my own family, but as hard as I tried, I could never recreate the old-country Christmas festivities at my grandparents’ home.
And after my father’s fatal heart attack in 1992, the whole Christmas season felt like an emotional challenge. I couldn’t predict when a bittersweet line from a favorite carol, or another errant ghost of Christmas past, would bring tears. My family and I continued to celebrate our holidays with my dad’s only brother and my cousins. But when my uncle lost his battle with pancreatic cancer over two years ago, we faced yet another empty chair at our holiday table.
Thankfully, I’ve arrived at a quiet harbor of acceptance. But I still hold a special place in my heart for every soul who’s suffering a recent loss at holiday time. For the grieving or the newly divorced, those festive commercials highlighting family togetherness can seem downright cruel. Not to mention all the ads that suggest everyone in town is throwing a party and you’re not invited.
Regardless, like most women of my vintage, I’ve always understood that one of my duties as a wife and mother was to make the holiday bright for my own family. In retrospect, I think I did a fairly good job of it, and, yes, there were many sparks of genuine Christmas spirit when my son was small. The video my husband recorded of our toddler and me making sugar cookies reminds me that holiday traditions needn’t be over-the-top; that the truly sacred moments are the ordinary moments when we are, to borrow from C.S. Lewis, “surprised by joy.”
And those are the moments I’ll hope to recall in years to come.
Watching my widowed mother this year, I wonder if this will be the last Christmas she’ll remember. Last month she was officially diagnosed with early stages of dementia, and already her memories are jumbled. She’s lucid most of the time — yet she knows something is terribly wrong. She’s losing her hearing and is often depressed or confused. And I know she still misses my dad. It is my job to see that she is cared for and loved, and that she is made as comfortable as possible as we navigate another Christmas.
Redefining tradition
My husband comes from a large family of good people, and for years he’s been lucky enough to rehash the same Christmas traditions and memories with most of them, although his own father was moved to a nursing home this summer.
Aside from the fact that my mother-in-law bakes the best pies in the Midwest, it should go without saying that we need to spend some holiday time on that side of the family tree. My son needs the unconditional love of grandparents and extended family — just as I did years ago. My in-laws, bless them all, also invite my mother to their holiday celebrations. Their tables are always expanding to include new partners, nieces, nephews, stepchildren, and grandkids, and I know that my mom and I are always counted as family in their crowd.
And yet. Whenever I’m toasting Christmas with my in-laws, I can’t quite shake the sense that I’m an orphan looking through a window at someone else’s feast; or an obligatory guest at a cocktail party. These people have holiday memories and histories of their own, and I enjoy hearing them. But their nostalgia is not my nostalgia.
My dear husband reminds me that we do honor our own traditions here at our house — and that we have the power to turn off the Christmas Machine.
A few years ago, we started keeping a (mostly) gift-less Christmas, donating money to our favorite charities in honor of loved ones. And now that our son is grown and living out of state, the highlight of our holiday is his return visit. When he’s back in Detroit, his old friends inevitably wind up at our house, so we also get the chance to reconnect with the kids from the neighborhood.
At some point during the holiday rush, we’ll uncork a bottle of wine or two by the fire with other cherished friends who’ve weathered life’s trials and turning points — not just the holidays — with us. That’s when I’ll remember, as my Scottish grandparents taught me, that a real clan includes dear friends and neighbors, not just the people we’re related to. I’ll take a deep breath and it will hit me that everything is just as it should be, even the imperfect and the undone. Or, as Garrison Keillor once said, “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” – Cindy La Ferle
–The Grinch in top photo is a gift from my friend Shirley, who adores Christmas just the same. –
Cindy on November 8th, 2009
Tradition is a guide, not a jailer — W. Somerset Maugham
Over dinner with my husband’s brother and his wife last year, my husband and I broached the delicate subject of … The Holidays. I appreciated the chance to have this discussion with my in-laws. Celebrating the winter holidays, after all, is an emotionally loaded topic even among the most cordial and caring families. People-pleasers, especially, get wigged out at the very thought of trying to appease every relative perched on the family tree.
Regardless, the four of us began sharing a few of our favorite memories and traditions — the mother who stuffed the perfect Martha Stewart turkey, the barrel-chested grandpa who played Santa on Christmas Eve; the cookies we decorated with fistfuls of red and green sugar. We agreed that the nostalgic traditions of childhood are vastly different now. And still changing. They no longer involve the proverbial jaunt “over the river 
and through the woods” to Grandma’s house. Our grandparents all reside in cemeteries now, and our kids are making nests of their own.
Complicating the mix, our extended families keep extending — which makes it impossible to fit everyone around the same dining room table, even with an extra leaf in place.
One solution was to meet in smaller numbers on ordinary evenings, just as we’d done that night. Why wait for a major holiday to be a family? There, at a cozy Italian restaurant in Troy, the four of us were enjoying a rare opportunity to share what was on our minds and in our hearts. No other gifts required.
Not long after, I talked with a grieving friend who lost her mother and is struggling with a different holiday dilemma. As the eldest daughter, she inherited the tradition of hosting a Christmas Eve dinner that typically included up to 30 guests. As my friend explained, her mother was “a generous cook” who’d invite every known relative within reasonable driving distance, plus a few stray neighbors and friends who had no other plans for the evening.
“Having the house crammed with people was my mother’s idea of a perfect holiday,” my friend said. “I feel guilty, but my house is smaller, and I’d much rather have a quiet celebration.” So my friend decided to trim her guest list to a manageable 14. To honor her late mother’s memory, her siblings will bring a favorite family dish to the potluck.
Tradition is a good thing when it keeps us connected to people and places we love. It’s the essential ingredient in our most treasured family recipes. Baking shortbread, for instance, is a comforting ritual that links me to my Scottish ancestors, and it’s the only time I use pounds of real butter without flinching.
But tradition is not a good thing when it’s a futile taskmaster.
“It is my opinion that Norman Rockwell and his ilk have done more to make already anxious people feel guilty than anyone else,” wrote the late Gourmet magazine columnist Laurie Colwin. “The fact is, family is variable, but our stereotypical image of it is not.”
For the record, the family life of Norman Rockwell, “America’s painter,” was colored by three unhappy marriages, including one to a long-suffering alcoholic. All said and done, we can’t possibly replicate our nostalgic past, nor should we feel obligated to remain frozen in someone else’s sugarcoated holiday vision. Ideally, we can combine the best of both worlds — the cherished recipes and rituals we’ve inherited, along with a few newer customs that have meaning to us.
As we mature, we’ll likely have to negotiate some holiday changes with our families. This might require that we welcome a sibling’s new spouse and step kids, or a gay cousin’s partner, to the table. We might have to learn how to bake our mother-in-law’s pumpkin pie from scratch. Or, we might decide to throw in the dishtowel, turn off the oven, and host the whole flock at the local diner. Meanwhile, I’ve decided to relax and count my blessings — which include several festive restaurants within a three-mile radius of home. Here’s to a happy, stress-free holiday season for every woman! — Cindy La Ferle
– This essay originally appeared in Strut magazine–
Cindy on December 14th, 2008
“Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.” — Peg Bracken
Nothing stirs my Christmas nostalgia more than the co-mingled scents of oranges, cloves, pine, and cinnamon. Several years ago at Christmastime, my dear friend Debbie came over with a holiday bag filled with all the ingredients to make a simmering Christmas potpourri on the stove.
It quickly became one of my favorite holiday traditions, and sharing it with friends is always a pleasure. From my kitchen to yours, here’s the recipe:
THE SCENT OF CHRISTMAS
Fill a wide-mouthed pan 3/4 full with water. Add:
- 3 or 4 sticks of cinnamon
- 3 or 4 bay leaves
- 1/4 cup of whole cloves
- 1 lemon, sliced
- 1 orange, sliced
Simmer all ingredients on low, adding more water when necessary. You can use the mixture for a few days, and your house will smell delicious for the holidays.
