Fresh thinking and fruits

I am lucky because I do not have many Christmas events that I must participate in. Some people are literally run ragged by all the parties, programs, and gift-giving they are involved in. My load is pretty small – getting Christmas cards sent out, making cookies, getting gifts for employees and other regulars in one’s life (like the sewing lady, the banana man, the egg lady, etc ), and only two known obligatory “events”. (Sometimes I am invited at the last minute on the holidays themselves so I also need to be prepared to have some small gifts and food ready to throw together at a moment’s notice.)

Sending cards out can be a bit of a challenge because you have to get them in the mail soon enough to have a chance for them to actually arrive before February. Otherwise you may as well wait and send out New Year’s greetings. Looking for cards is often a challenge too. There are some really whacky cards out there now. I don’t mean humerous, I mean weird. Like this one:

“Merry Christmas! Fancy 4 u place where is always all fresh thinking and fruits!”

Or this one: “Merry Christmas! The love is all around world and your dreams come true.”

Here’s another one I found a few years ago, I still giggle every time I see it. I mean, what is it?!





Today we are making cookies. In the second of my worlds you must make hundreds of beautiful, identical cookies so that you can artistically arrange them in big glass jars. Drop cookies are not acceptable because they are not beautiful. Cookies don’t have to taste good – and frankly often they don’t- they just have to look nice. The oven is typically a small tin box placed on top of a kerosene burner. It takes days to make enough cookies and you have to shut all the doors and windows lest a stray breeze make your fire uneven. So here, in the third of my worlds, we really have it good – we have a real oven and big cookie sheets, plus we can have a fan on! People here appreciate cookies because they don’t know how to make them. Even “ugly” drop cookies are appreciated because they taste good. (These people know what good cookies are!)

So, if you can't make cookies, may your season at least be filled with, er, fresh thinking and fruit!