Christmas time for family and home

A week from today, in the lull between Christmas and New Years, the last full moon of 2020 will fill the sky. The Ojibwe call it the Small Spirits moon; the Lakota the Shedding Horns moon. December is when the whitetail bucks drop their antlers. By the time we reach 2021, we'll have gained almost five minutes of daylight, a Christmas or belated Solstice season present from Mother Nature.

full Winter: full moon

Photo by J. Harrington

This year, more than most, we're waxing very nostalgic about the homes of our younger days. In part we suspect it's in anticipation of some return of normalcy as Voldemort and his horcruxes move out of the White House, plus trying to fit into the recently awarded title of grandpa, plus the affect of living through almost a year's worth of pandemic, which has prompted a new perspective on our mortality. All of this compounded by the arrival yesterday of the latest issue of Yankee magazine with a cover story on the comforts of pie (breakfast pie is a New England tradition) and a wonderful story titled Memory House. As a side note, and something we'll be testing next year, we discovered, upon searching online, that a supposedly great pie crust can be made from sourdough discards. Artisan pies may get added to artisan sourdough bread as a listed accomplishment next year. New Englanders hate to throw out anything, even excess sourdough starter.

Tomorrow and/or Thursday our typical white Christmas is forecast to arrive just in time. We hope we get no more than a few inches since we're committed to a 35 mile one-way drive midday Thursday to pick up our Christmas dinners for Friday. That typical lull between Christmas and New Year's is looking more and more appealing by the moment.

To Mrs K____, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris

By Helen Maria Williams

What crowding thoughts around me wake, 

What marvels in a Christmas-cake! 

Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells 

Enclosed within its odorous cells? 

Is there no small magician bound 

Encrusted in its snowy round? 

For magic surely lurks in this, 

A cake that tells of vanished bliss; 

A cake that conjures up to view 

The early scenes, when life was new; 

When memory knew no sorrows past, 

And hope believed in joys that last! — 

Mysterious cake, whose folds contain 

Life’s calendar of bliss and pain; 

That speaks of friends for ever fled, 

And wakes the tears I love to shed. 

Oft shall I breathe her cherished name 

From whose fair hand the offering came: 

For she recalls the artless smile 

Of nymphs that deck my native isle; 

Of beauty that we love to trace, 

Allied with tender, modest grace; 

Of those who, while abroad they roam, 

Retain each charm that gladdens home, 

And whose dear friendships can impart 

A Christmas banquet for the heart!

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