Elizabeth Woodworth: The joys of remembering Christmases past
Lunar apogee occurs on the 12th, weakening the power of the new Moon. The period between the 13th and 15th, when the moon enters its second quarter, should dilute the cold of the past week. Rheumatism increases as the winter grows colder, often foretelling precipitation. Gather mistletoe as it become visible when the high trees lose all their leaves. (It as been years since I have seen fresh mistletoe. The last I saw was one tiny sprig, with maybe two berries and it didn't look very fresh.) Think about covering the wattle of your rooster with Vaseline to help prevent frostbite - definitely am a city girl, never occurred to me that poultry would get frostbite. (Countryside)
Dec. 13 is the Harrisburg Light Parade, starting at 6 p.m. It will come up a couple of blocks on Poplar, then turn onto Main and end at the Lions Club. Bundle up and stake out a good viewing spot. After the parade, drive around town to enjoy the Christmas lights. (South Main is wonderful.)
Dec. 17, the Wrights' first flight, 1903.
Dec. 12 is National Poinsettia Day! Red is the traditional holiday color, but there are more than 100 varieties. New hues include Gold Rush and Christmas Beauty Marble. In Mexico, Florida and other warm climes poinsettias aren't just for Christmas, they're grown year round and can be as tall as 16 feet. Contrary to popular belief, they are not poisonous. When we lived in Algeria, I would buy cut poinsettias in the market. The cut ends have to be burned or the sap will bleed out and the flower will die in just a matter of hours. They are a long-lasting cut flower, just like the plants. I probably won't decorate much, but I already have a house full of poinsettias - all red!
Leave Santa a glass of peppermint milk with his cookies. Combine 20 peppermint candies and 1 quart of milk in a pitcher. Stir, refrigerate 1 hour, stirring once or twice, then strain. Looks like strawberry Quik. I am not sure that peppermints would color the milk that well. Think it would be easier to add a drop of peppermint flavoring and a drop of red food coloring to the pitcher.
For those who are allergic to chocolate try snow cocoa: 4 cups of milk and ¼ cup sugar in a saucepan, heat until sugar is dissolved and milk steaming. Stir in 1 Tbsp. vanilla. Whisk until frothy. Divide into 4 mugs. Top with marshmallows or sprinkles. It looks really good.
An orange a day may be even better than an apple, at least for protecting your eyesight. A 15-year Australian study found that adults who ate one serving of oranges daily (about one medium orange) were 60 percent less likely to develop macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss, compared with people who consumed no oranges. We're supposed to eat fruit every day which I don't. Have tried an apple a day. That lasted two days. I have been able to eat an orange a day for a couple of weeks, so maybe I can stick to this. It might not help my eyes, but I will get my only daily fruit requirement.
Peppermint and oranges. Remember porous peppermint sticks? We used to take an orange, roll it in our hands to make it juice, cut a hole in the top, ream it out a bit, insert the peppermint stick and suck it like a straw. When the juice was gone, we split the orange open and ate the pulp off the peel. This was a Christmas season treat, the rest of the year we just squeezed the orange and sucked the juice until it was gone and the orange flat. Probably shouldn't be done in polite society, but kids loved it.
"Christmas is wasted on the young. But the old, the miracle for them is in remembering a lifetime of Christmases past in every new season. Which, I guess, means the season is for children, after all. I love this time - every mile of country road and every aisle in every store picks the lock on one of those memories. I see a single strand of new age, fiber-optic Christmas lights and think about the old, fat, faulty lights that surrounded our cedar tree. There were always a half dozen of the lights - the blown ones - in a bowl on a coffee table, like a garnish ... Even now I can smell chocolate-covered cherries across a drugstore. I see tangerines and Brazil nuts and almost cry. My brother is a grouch, but I see the boy who knocked mistletoe from the high branches with his pellet rifle and waited up all night listening for Santa Claus and then shook me awake with excitement on his face. In his voice. He always woke me and never left me behind. He always said the same thing. "He's done come." "Did you see him?" I would ask. "Nawwww," he'd say. "Nobody does." (Rick Bragg in Southern Living)
Did we all get tangerines and Brazil nuts in our stocking. Did a kid ever shell one? I have those string of lights, so worn I am afraid to plug them in. Christmases past, how we love them.