Christmas

December Past

~ MaryG ~ 25 Comments

Posting for Lens-Artist Photo Challenge: Holiday Fun

I’m afraid the 2025 holiday season will be forever remembered as the “Year of the Knee.” Arthroplasty is rough, people. My husband is doing OK, but the pain is quite brutal. Thank goodness for opioids. I honestly don’t know how anyone gets through this without a partner. (I know they can and do, but it would be really hard.) Outpatient PT has started and now I get why folks call the PTs “Physical Terrorists.”

But on to happier things…

I have been enjoying looking at the lovely, happy holiday posts and photos from Scillagrace and others.

Last year was such a special Christmas because we had my brand new baby granddaughter—so perfect in every way. After the sting of the horrible election in November 2024, she gave me so much hope. She was—and is—a miracle. All babies are. I thank my wonderful daughter for the greatest gift of all last Christmas. Infants are pure love, pure light, pure joy.

My granddaughter and me last December
Our tree last year
The new mom managed to decorate—and even bake—last year.
Hand-dipped and decorated Oreo cookie balls
White roses for Christmas last year
I got Christmas “crackers” from the British imports store and did special napkin folding last year.

Related post and pics, also from last December:

Winterlights

I hope everyone can find some way to enjoy the season this year, despite whatever pain or hardships burden you. I recommend watching Sweden’s National Santa Lucia Day broadcast this Saturday, December 13. It’s always such a beautiful celebration of light in the darkness, with gorgeous choral music—including young children singing in tune. It’s typically available on YouTube the same day.

December Rx:

Music, lights, babies (if you can’t get your hands on a baby, watching young children sing is a good substitute)

My 80s friend

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments

At Christmas dinner yesterday, my father told me he had run into my old friend Debbie at the fish market. They recognized each other and exchanged some quick pleasantries.

Debbie and I were neighborhood friends who ended up becoming close friends for many years. She knew my parents well and I knew her family too. Her dad was a great guy. We took several trips to California and Florida in our late teens and twenties. We did a fair number of edgy things together including lots of underage drinking, shoplifting, dine-n-dashing, and at least one crazy 80s Spring Break trip to Fort Lauderdale. (Wet t-shirt contest anyone?) Debbie was 18 months older than me (a year ahead of me in high school) and liked to party and dance. I’m sure my first nightclub experience was with her. Even though she was a true redhead, she loved the sun like I did and we went to the beach as often as possible. We went skiing a few times too and once spun out in my mother’s car driving in a snowstorm. We did a 180 and hit the guardrail. (Debbie was driving at the time and we were fine.) In fact, we wanted to carry on with our ski trip with one headlight dangling, but when we called my parents from a gas station, they made us come home.

Debbie and I stayed friends for many years through a variety of life experiences including her being severely burned in a freak accident. (I remember visiting her in Shriner’s Burn Center where I saw the most horrifically scarred young children.) We knew each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. We attended each other’s weddings and then drifted apart as we became mothers and got busy raising kids. Still, we sent Christmas cards and occasionally saw each other in person.

Then, at some point during the second Obama administration her right-leaning political posts on Facebook caused a tiff between us. We unfriended each other and that was that. Some years later, I felt badly about it, but figured she had probably morphed into a Trump supporter, so what would be the purpose of reaching out. We were too different by then.

You know that expression about some friends being for a reason, some for a season, and some for a lifetime? Well, at one point I might’ve thought we’d be friends for a lifetime, but it turns out we were friends for a season. And our season was the 1980s. Big time.

Christmas 1989 (towards the end of our close friendship)

If I had to pick one song that tends to trigger a Debbie memory, it would be Kool & the Gang’s Celebration. I picture us dancing around in front of a mirror, sipping some alcohol, while we made our hair as big & fluffy as possible for whatever came next.

A Milestone Christmas

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

This year is a milestone Christmas for us—our first one as grandparents.

We know our sweet little baby granddaughter won’t remember this Christmas, but we hope to have many more where we’ll make memories she can remember.

Christmas already feels so exciting again just having this perfect little girl in the world.

Twenty years ago we were a family of four. We stuck together through good times and some not-so-good times and now we have a whole new person to love. A whole new person. Imagine that.

Merry Christmas 🎄

XOXO

Mary

Winterlights

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments
Stevens Coolidge House & Gardens in North Andover, Massachusetts
You gotta love a polar bear
I want to get some of these sphere lights for a tree near my driveway.
Shooting in 0.5x (ultra-wide lens) mode on iPhone gives a wider field of view but is available on the rear camera only, so you have to take a blind selfie (with the back of your phone facing you). It gives the photographer a very long arm.
It was in the low 20s last night on my son’s birthday, but we were dressed for it because we know how this works. It’s all about having the correct outerwear!
We added our wishes to a wishing tree. “Learn Italian without Trying” was my son’s.
Mine was the same as many others: 🌍☮️

All in all, a fun outing, but the lights were not quite as impressive as I’d hoped.

For some truly impressive winterlights, check out Brian’s post from Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.

White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

~ MaryG ~ 9 Comments

I’ve posted about Sally’sBaking Addiction.com before. It’s a great website for free cookie recipes. I’ve tried many of Sally’s recipes over the years and they always come out great. It’s where I discovered my amazing real maple syrup cookie recipe, which people absolutely love!

Last night, I tried making her Soft White Chocolate Cranberry cookies. They looked so pretty for the holidays in her “Cookie Palooza” newsletter. And doesn’t the inclusion of dried fruit make them a tiny bit healthy?

Anyway, they came out great and they are delicious. My only comment is that the dough is pretty crumbly. I needed to use my hands to knead it like bread before refrigerating.

Here’s the recipe in photos, in case the link above doesn’t work:

Here’s how mine came out. I will definitely make them again.

Scallops and Slippers

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments
Bloganuary writing prompt
Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.
View all responses

I have not yet let go of Christmas. My tree and all my decorations are still up. I’ve never left a Christmas tree up this long. Maybe I’m delaying because I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.  People keep congratulating me on my “retirement,” but maybe that’s just what people say when you’re around 60 and leave a job you’ve been doing for decades. In any case, a couple of favorite family traditions are Christmas-related, so I’ll write about those. 

My husband always makes his mother’s scallops for the first course of Christmas dinner. He uses her original handwritten recipe cards and serves them in her giant scallop shells (surprisingly, they’re dishwasher safe). My mother-in-law Duilia was a tremendous chef. She kept careful notes. I’m just now noticing the reference to “Claiborne & Franey” on the recipe cards. At first, I thought they were friends of hers, but Google tells me they were high-end food critics and cookbook authors who had “a lasting impact on culinary literature and culture.” Sounds about right.

My mother-in-law’s meticulous recipe card with some of my husband’s notes added in pencil. (Their cursive is so similar.)
Page 2 of the recipe card, which references (I think) Claiborne & Franey’s 1983 recipe for stuffed clams, which she adapted for scallops
Duilia’s Scallops, as served on Christmas 2023. They were insanely good this year.

Another Christmas tradition we’ve kept (this one from my side of the family) is “one present on Christmas Eve.” Kids get to open one present on Christmas Eve and it’s always some type of sleepwear. My son got slippers this year. He really liked them. He wore them around the house for the rest of his winter break and took them back to school when he left last Sunday.

Today was my deadline to take down my Christmas stuff, but I can already tell it’s not gonna happen. I’m giving myself a one-week extension. I will put away Christmas by February 1. I promise.

Related posts:

The Christmas Puzzle

The Old Recipe Box

Back when we were tiny

~ MaryG ~ 2 Comments

What is your all time favorite automobile?

I’m not a car enthusiast, but I associate certain cars with certain events or periods in my life. For example, Honda minivans will forever remind me of my young parenting years. Those were the largest cars I ever owned.

On the other extreme, my parents owned a blue Volkswagen bug when I was very young. I have an early memory of stuffing myself into a tiny spot in the upper part of the back seat. I remember looking up at the interior ceiling. It had little dots or holes in the material and you could kind of blur your eyes and it created an optical illusion. The dots would seem closer than they actually were, like in a Magic Eye book.

I don’t have a photo of that car, but here I am, around the same time, stretching out my legs in my new red wagon. I fit perfectly!

Do you remember fitting yourself into a small space back when you were tiny?

Merry Christmas

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

How are you creative?

I’m up early (7:30am) thinking of all the parents of all the young children around the world who have probably been up for two hours already. Santa came! Woo hoo! Enjoy it…these years are a lot of work, but will fly by in the blink of an eye. (Sorry, I’m sure you’ve heard this once or twice – or like ten thousand times – before.)

I think my main creative outlet these days, besides singing and this blog, is photography. And I don’t even use a real (35mm) camera anymore, just my iPhone. Here’s a shot I got the other night on my way home from choir. I thought this deer was a holiday lawn ornament, then I realized he was real. I backed up my car, opened my window, and said “hey deer.” This made him stop munching the neighbor’s shrub and look up at me.

We’re not having a white Christmas here in New England, but at least we’ve got (rein)deer.

Christmas deer

Grant Us Peace

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

I hope you enjoy this recording that my choir made in 2021 during the pandemic lockdown. We each recorded ourselves singing alone at home and then sent the files to our choir director. She mixed them together using some sort of software and it really sounds quite good, especially considering she’d never done anything like this before. It was also very meaningful to the choir, and to the congregation, to hear our voices blended again after being separated for so long. Many were struggling with loneliness and isolation.

The text “Dona nobis pacem” means “Grant us peace.” The melody has been passed orally, although it is sometimes attributed to Mozart. English-language hymnals usually mark it “Traditional.” It is sung as a round, so you can sing any of the three parts at any time. You’ll never be wrong.

Beyond use at church, the round has been sung around the world in secular settings as a prayer for peace.

Here’s the music. Sing with us.

Merry Christmas.

Peace on Earth.