I hope you all had a blessed and joyful Christmas Day. My family is coming tomorrow to celebrate and so you can imagine how I’ve been as busy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. But it’s a good busy as I get ready to have all my children and grandchildren home for Christmas.
While Christmas is a time for joy and love, it’s also a time for memories. I’m sure most of you, if not all of you, have someone you miss at Christmastime. I miss my parents, and especially my mother who did so much to make Christmases happy for her family. She had certain foods she cooked each year. Lots of candy from caramels to chocolate to divinity. I loved the divinity. I tried to copy her and make lost of candy too for many years. But then the kids grew up and moved away from home. They would eat a little candy, for sure, but not nearly all of it. Darrell and I did not need to eat all of it either! So I stopped making Christmas candy. I still make cookies for Christmas, but I guess that’s more my tradition because I don’t remember Mom ever making piles of cookies for Christmas. She made a fruitcake. It was delicious, but so rich you could only eat a sliver of a slice. To be honest, when I was a kid, I liked my aunt’s cornbread sticks better than the fruitcake. Of course, I did love the candy.
Then one thing Mom always made was crackerjacks. For years, she and Dad grew the popcorn and peanuts to go in it too. But even after she no longer did that, she had the task of making the most delicious crackerjacks ever downpat. I would eat those until they were gone!
This picture is of Mom helping me keep the tradition going after she had dementia and could no longer stay by herself. But she still oversaw the process of making those crackerjacks. In the picture, she’s making sure I have them pressed out right. Making those with her is one of the bright spot memories during those hard years as she slowly declined and forgot so much. Even us at the sad ending time. Well, I’m not sure she actually forgot us. She just remembered us as children and knew she wanted to make sure her kids were all right. It was a sad time, but a joyful time too as my sisters and I walked with her through her final years.
What sweet Christmas memories do you have?
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And as always, thanks for reading. I’m wishing you joy and and blessings at the end of this Christmas Day 2022.
Comments 32
My Mom was a good cook! She only made fruits cakes at Christmas time, which were very delicious. Then she would make all kinds of cookies, pies, cakes, and just great all around food. We usually gathered at her house for Christmas dinner and she really had so much cooked up, then sent a lot home with me. I also loved her coconut cake made from scratch with a real coconut. She didn’t make candy very much, just every now and then.
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All that sounds delicious, Connie. It sounds as though cooking was a labor of love for her and that she was happy to see you all eating her special dishes.
Beautiful memory, Ann! Christmas this year was celebrated with a one hour church service followed by lunch with friends.
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That sounds like a lovely way to spend Christmas, Caryl. We were supposed to have church, but I go to a little country church and the roads to get there were ice and snow covered and with the temperature minus 1 and wind chills in the 20 below range, the snow wasn’t melting. We had to cancel services. We will get to start out the New Year right with services since the snow has now melted with the temps forecast to be all the way up to 60 degrees Sunday.
Mama used to make a Christmas tree out of popcorn. She used candies for the ornaments, and we loved eating our tree. Hadn’t thought about that in years.
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That sounds like such a fun treat, Ola. I’m glad my post brought back that sweet memory to you. Thanks for sharing it. I’m imagining that popcorn tree right now.
Beautiful story about your mama! Daddy was our Christmas guy. He made popcorn balls with sorghum molasses and they were so good! Of course when I was a kid anything sweet was good because back then it was a real treat. As we got older Daddy started making sour cream fudge, peanut brittle in the microwave and sea foam divinity. The sour cream fudge was my favorite and he made sure that I got a batch of my own. I looked forward to it all year. He was a talented candy maker and his was better than any you could buy. I miss those days but most of all Daddy and his delighted look when I oohed and aahed over his treats of love.
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The love in your dad’s candy was the best ingredient, I’m sure, Linda. I’m like you. When I was a kid we didn’t have a lot of candy – except at Christmastime when Mom loved making a bunch of it. Divinity was my favorite then and still now. But I didn’t make any this year. Mom never made popcorn balls. She always just made the crackerjacks. Darrell’s mother would sometimes make the popcorn balls for her kids.
I remember my mother making “pull” candy for Christmas. It was a fairly long process, including pouring the mixture on a buttered marble slab. Then, we would help her pull the candy with our hands till it reached the right consistency. The next steps would be cutting the candy with scissors and wrapping each piece in wax paper. It was so creamy and delicious. Since her passing years ago, I never tried making it by myself. Cracker Barrel sold it, so I cheated and bought it there instead of making it. Wilma
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That pull candy is the best, Wilma. I have a recipe for it or at least I used to, but I never tried to make it. I didn’t have the marble slab. At least, that’s the excuse I used. I think Mom made it a few times. We did make taffy sometimes. You have to pull that too, but Mom was good at knowing when it was ready.
Nowadays, I’m like you. If I want that pulled candy, I find it at the store. 🙂
I remember my Mama making prune cakes, which was a lot like fresh apple cakes but with prunes. She would get Daddy to crack and chop the black walnuts for hours to use in the cakes. She made them for several of her sisters each year as well for gifts. Then her fab potato salad. She was the only person I knew who used pimento in it. But all the family members raved about her potato salad. Her last years as with most, Parkinson’s and dementia robbed her memory and ability to bake and cook. But my husband and I had the privilege of taking care of her the last 2.5 yrs of her life. I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world. We have to give God the credit for good health to do it. Thank you Jesus.
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Sounds as if your mother was a wonderful cook, and your dad was an able assistant with those walnuts, Linda. I’m cracked walnuts before and it can be a finger stinging process if you hold them so that the nuts are easier to get out of the shells. But there’s nothing quite as tasty as black walnuts in candy and cake.
Ushering someone through dementia years isn’t an easy task. Your mother was blessed to have you and your husband to help her.
I remember my career military uncle, who served 28 years, sending me a big old baby doll when I was about four. I named her Melissa Kay.
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That’s a big name for a little kid to come up with, Susan, but I’m not surprised. Obviously, that was a great success as a Christmas present although a couple of ladies who are sisters at our church talked about getting dolls one Christmas. One sister was thrilled. The other was not. She wanted something tomboyish instead. So she cut the hair on her sister’s doll to let her be as upset as she was, I guess.
My grandmother’s apple dumplings. I watched and helped her make them but she did not have a written recipe. Since she passed yeats ago I have attempted them several times but something is missing…perhsps her caring hands and love.
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Those grandmother cooks usually knew how to make things delicious without recipes, Pamela. I guess they learned from their mothers who learned from their mothers and on. I’m sure yours are delicious, but nothing can ever be as good as something you loved that your grandmother or mother made. 🙂
My memory would be dad and mom making donuts. You know the ones you have to mix up the dough. Chill. Roll. Cutout. Deep fry in lard. So Yummy. I have carried that tradition on for many years now. We used to make a huge pile of them because we shared with all our family too. I remember dad and mom joining us as we made them, just to be there and eat them fresh. Of course we always sent a big bag home with them. Now they forget a lot and my husband has Alzheimer’s. It’s so hard to watch. Lately he forgot this is our home even tho he was standing right there in the kitchen. And when I dropped him off to get the mail he asked where home was. Very hard for our daughter to watch to as she is still home. But. We still find ways to laugh! But the donuts went by the wayside this year. With everything else going on it has become too much for us to make them. Our daughter would bring her computer out and set it to Christmas music, and always the Chipmunks, help in the rolling and cutting out. Her and her dad always had a flour fight. Lol. Flour all over. Now it’s memories.
I just saw this and had to share my Christmas memories.
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Whant great memories, Shari. My mom used to make donuts too. Not at Christmas but at other times in the year. I’ve done the same at times, but it’s been a while. My kids loved being at the granny’s house when those donuts were being made.
I’m so sorry yourhusband has dementia. It’s the saddest disease and very difficult to watch a loved one lose their memories. My mother never thought she was home either and continually wanted to go home even though my siser and I were giving up so much to stay with her and let her remain in her home.
Prayers for you and your daughter as you walk this difficult path with your husband. I’m so glad you still find reasons to laugh. May the memories of those flour fights and more bring smiles. Thank you for sharing about your donuts. Reading your comment has me almost tasting the ones my mom used to make.
I love this memory. My mom made so many good things. Her white fruit cake, frozen fruit salad, date nut candy, potato candy, etc made with so much love.
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Maybe all that love they poured into the things they made was the reason it was all that good, Lucy. I haven’t heard of white fruit cake. But we did make what is called potato candy even though we never put a potato in ours. So, maybe that’s why we never called it potato candy. LOL.
Hi Ann,
I love the story about your Mother. My husband’s grandfather used to make the same thing when he was a child and stayed with them. My mother used to make fudge at Christmas. She always tested it to be sure it had cooked long enough by dropping a tiny bit of the hot fudge mixture into a cup of cold water, and if it held together and formed a small ball, she know it was “done”, and ready to pour into a baking dish or pan to “set”. We always enjoyed that process. In her later years, my mother also developed dementia. We had her with us in our home for awhile during that time and, even with her dementia, we had a good time together and could laugh together. I hit on the idea of a therapy dog, and adopted a tiny, elderly male poodle. He was content to sit on her lap or in her chair beside her, or sleep on the foot of her bed, and he was very calming for her. She called him her baby, and he was the best therapy I could have found for her.
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I did sometimes take one of my granddaughter’s dogs or a neighbor’s dog when I was doing dog sitting while staying with Mom, Lynda. She did enjoy the dogs, but since we took the staying with her in shifts, we couldn’t have kept a dog there. As hard as it is to believe, not everybody is a dog lover. LOL. But we might have tried a sweet cat. Sounds as if that would have been a help. Mom was generally very unhappy. I’m glad you found a way to help your mother.
That’s how Mom always made chocolate candy too and it’s how I make it too if I take time to make it. I still always test my candy in that cup of cold water even though I do, after all these years, finally have a candy thermometer.
All the different cookies she made that her mother made and we no longer make ourselves (very often). Mom called them cow plops. They were molasses and sugar cookies that were huge and like a little cake really.
You remind me that even in the sad times with a declining parent there are always glimpses of joy that we can remember and rejoice in.
Thank you for your sweet memories and your picture of your mom. Mom’s are the most special person in the whole world!
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Moms are the best, Amy. I had a really good one who wouldn’t have wanted to go out the way she did with dementia, but sometimes your body fails you as it did my mom when she was in her nineties.
What a name for those cookies. Cow plops. But sounds as if they must have been delicious. My aunt and mom made this thick sugar cookies or tea cakes. I didn’t like them much when I was a kid. Not sweet enough, but they are the best with strawberries.
I remember my mother’s rolls that she made. All the family loved them.
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That may be what my kids or grandkids remember about me someday, Marlene. I always make homemade rolls. But I remember those cornsticks that I loved when I was a kid.
After Mom’s Christmas breakfast, Dad always read the Christmas story from Luke 2. He usually commented, “I wonder how many people are reading this story today.”
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That’s a sweet thought, Diana, about all the families listening to the Christmas story on Christmas Day. It is good to focus on the Reason for the Season as we celebrate Christmas.
Now that my parents and my older sister are in heaven, I fondly remember when we would all reassemble as adults at my parents’ house for Christmas. Gradually little children were added to the mix as the family grew, and the holidays would be merry and bright.
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Those trips “home” to gather with your mom and dad and siblings are the best, Suzanne. I have many great memories of those special times at my parents’ house and at my husband’s parents too at Christmastime. We still try to gather with the sisters and brothers and whoever else in the family who wants to come, but it’s not the same as it was when our parents were living. Now many of the nieces and nephews have scattered to other states to find homes and start families. Of one thing we can all be certain. Everything changes. Except the Lord.
decorating together
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So many great ways to make good memories with our loved ones, bn100.