Holiday Reminiscences
I Remember Christmas
Christmas has given us more than any other day of the whole year. Even its approach makes us all feel more kindly toward everyone. Bitterness, jealousy and greed are erased from our hearts. Life, we decide, is well worth living after all... not just for ourselves but we take keen delight in making it joyous for others. let's keep this festival with even more enthusiasm this year. And let's never allow Christmas to escape from our lives. Let's now recall other Yuletides and by so doing we will add color and warmth to our lives.
Christmas Baking
There was always baking back home, and it was good. But Christmas baking was something extra. Not only because the season was filled with keen anticipation for every move of preparation, but because Christmas was the time when mother or grandma assumed the importance that was her just due. Everything was special at Christmas time and an added bit of ceremony was very much in keeping. There were extra pans and spoons to lick - delightful things to sample.
The plum pudding and fruit cakes had been made and stored away to gain sweetness and flavor. Now came the gingerbread men, the bread-dough animals and Santas, the cookies of fascinating and varied shapes and colors, the nut breads and the mince pies. If one's family were of European descent, there was some special, time-honored recipe that generations had not changed or abandoned.
All of these traditional breads, cookies and pies had their beginnings in the distant past. Many of them were the descendents of Christmas foods dating back to the efforts of the people to carry out the story of the Nativity. the next time you have mince pie set before you, remember that it was first baked in the form of a manger.
Home for Christmas"Heap on more wood! - the wind is chill,
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still."
Sir Walter Scott
Home for Christmas! Christmas dinner with the family! No pale words can possibly tell the joy of this time-honored ceremony. Each one must reprint the picture from the memories of the past. Christmas at home is all the thousands of little things that we can recall if we will. It's the urge to rreturn to familiar scenes; and scattered families take the road back to home. Sometimes the road is long but somehow we make it. The importance things of yesterday turn to insignificance - We're going home! And when we gather around the Christmas table, each in the old familiar place, everything is all right in the world. Yet we feel the old lump in our throats for the ghosts of ourselves from by-gone days. This bit of America has not changed. It is the same today as it was yesterday... and it will be the same tomorrow. God Bless Our Home!
Christmas Services in the Evening
"When they had heard the King, they departed: and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mohter, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when the had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts: gold and frankincense, and myrrh."
Like the gospel story of the Birth of Christ... this part of the Christmas pagent has not changed. The Christmas Eve church services of today are the same as those of yesterday. And so, back to antiquity.
The services about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompany its annou ncement. No grander effect exists than that of hearing a choir and the pealing of the organ performing a Christmas anthem... Whether it be in an isolated little country church or in a great cathederal of a massive city.
Glory to the Heavenly Father,
And to his Beloved Son,
And also the Holy Ghost,
The midnight hour is striking,
Ave Maria!
excerpt from a Christmas booklet distributed by
Deal Funeral Home
4812 Georgia Avenue - GE. 8700
Washington 11, D.C.
circa 1940s
Roaring Twenties Antique Car Museum copyr. 2000 - 2010
Roaring Twenties copyr. 2000 - 2010