A Good Enough Christmas
An old family photo taught me an important holiday lesson.
The Greatest Christmas Card Photo of All Time.
This post first appeared on HerKentucky in 2012; today felt like a nice day to repost it.
I like perfection.
If things are in their place, we're all happier and more productive, right? Why have a bookshelf when you can have a color-coded bookshelf? And, if every tree is perfect, every serving dish is perfectly chosen, every decoration is perfectly spaced, then we'll all have the happiest Christmas ever, right?
Well, at least that's how I've always seen it. In my head, the holidays take on a Martha Stewart meets Southern Living meets Pinterest air of forced perfection. I want things just so, damn it. I choose a color and a theme for each holiday season, and I like to stick to it. My Christmas cards match my tree which matches the presents. It just looks so nice that way.
This photo is about Love. With a Capital L
This weekend, I was putting up the tree when I realized I'd spent a full hour fluffing branches and positioning lights. To be fair, the tree looked amazing but, you know, there still weren't any ornaments. And then I undertook the Great Wrapping The Ribbon Around the Tree Incident of 2012. We shan't speak of it.
Plenty.
My beau, God bless him, often tries to gently remind me that the holidays can never be as perfect as I envision them. Every day of December can't look like the L.L. Bean catalog, he reminds me, and every day (much to his delight and my chagrin) doesn't come with a Michael Bublé holiday soundtrack. And all I do is wear myself out trying to make it so.
That's my grandpa on the far left with the sweet bowtie.
Recently, I was going through some photos of Christmases at my great-grandparents' house. They had six kids, including my paternal grandmother. By all accounts, Christmas was a big crazy party with lots of family, food, and fun. As I looked at these pictures, it didn't stand out to me that they didn't have a ton of money. It didn't matter what people wore or what dishes they ate from. They looked... happy. They were genuinely glad to be with each other on Christmas. It wasn't forced or overproduced. It was a holiday with family. And that was enough.
Now, I'm not exactly going to give away my beloved Spode Christmas china, nor am I taking down any of my many themed trees. But, this Christmas, I am going to try to slow down and enjoy the season. People and memories are more important than the perfectly decorated cookie. Maybe happiness is good enough.
Pink and Green Plaid Butterfly Quilt
Every Thursday, I share photographs of a quilt my grandmother has made for me. My quilt collection is something I cherish deeply, both because my sweet granny has put so much time, skill, and love into the finished product, and because quilts are such a valuable key to the Appalachian culture in which I was raised.
My granny has always been really sweet about using the exact fabrics I pick out, even if they seem a little over-the-top when we're planning the quilt. I love the fresh, preppy colors of this one; the bright, almost chartreuse, green really adds a springy, preppy look to the room!
Honoring a Family Hero on Memorial Day
Remembering a family hero.
Yesterday, my family laid to rest a true hero.
My great-uncle, Warren G. Watson, was born in a holler in Knott County in 1923. From those humble roots, he'd go on to lead a big, big life. At the age of 19, he began a career in education. Soon after, he was called to serve his country in European Theater of World War II. At the Battle of the Bulge, Uncle Warren caught sniper fire in the throat, and was left for dead. A member of his battalion disobeyed orders and rescued him; upon returning home to the mountains, he had to re-learn to talk and eat. For his bravery in battle, my uncle was awarded the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, the Validi Milites, and the Croix de guerre, although he'd always humbly shrug and say "yeah, I got some medals in The War." This Memorial Day, I mourn my uncle the World War II soldier, a heroic man who made unbelievable sacrifices for the sake of worldwide freedom. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for him -- barely more than a boy himself and having never left the remote corners of Eastern Kentucky -- being sent to the European battlefields to liberate France. Even for the most patriotic and fair-minded, it must have been terrifying and surreal and invigorating. And, even for someone who believed as strongly in God, and freedom, and a general sense of what's right as my uncle did, I can't imagine how hard the road to recovery must have been, both physically and emotionally.
As a native Appalachian, with the strong sense of family as tribe that my heritage entails, I mourn my uncle as the last of my grandfather's siblings. With his passing, our family loses so many ties to the old-time mountain culture that once defined us. My granddaddy and his brother were incredibly talented musicians who played what they called "mountain music." There was a distinct regional variation that separated their genre from traditional bluegrass, they'd argue. Bill Monroe's sound was a musical dialect of Western Kentucky, while our family made the music of Kentucky's Appalachian towns. It's a distinction that, two generations removed and totally devoid of my family's signature musical gift, I can't begin to understand. My uncle loved music; he carved his own elaborate fiddles and he possessed the rare gift of perfect pitch.
In passing, my uncle takes with him his time-tested recipe for white corn liquor (Any Appalachian-American who claims to not have moonshiners in their family tree is, quite frankly, lying...) and the method his own father (a WWI veteran and fellow educator) taught him for extracting cube roots by hand.
This Decoration Day, as we mourn my family's loss, I also think of Uncle Warren's contemporaries among America's World War II veterans -- those often known as the Greatest Generation. I think not only of their sacrifices of safety, well-being and even their own lives; I think of the way that, as the last few members of this generation pass on, they take with them knowledge and insights from a pre-digital world. Like Uncle Warren, they possessed knowledge of a world we can't begin to imagine.
To my uncle and all who sacrificed health, comfort, safety, and their lives fighting for freedom and justice, there aren't sufficient words to express my gratitude and respect. I hope we all pause to remember the veterans in our own lives today.
Love in a Pan
My grandmother was the best cook in the entire world. The woman would put butter on toast and I would basically die over how she got the exact perfect ratio of butter to bread. It was so beautifully melted without being mushy. No one will ever top that woman in the kitchen EVER.
So many of her recipes weren't written down anywhere. I tried a few times to watch her make mashed potatoes, because hers tasted like creamy goodness and heaven and love all stirred together in a crock pot, but she never seemed to make them the same way twice and I finally gave up.
"made an out of this world mess"
Her handwritten notes are the best.
When she died last year, I inherited her recipe collection. It's an enormous mess of newspaper clippings, recipes cut from boxes, recipe cards, and hastily written notes on the back of whatever she had handy, such as receipts, envelopes, and shopping lists. I've been going through this pile for the last two days, trying to find some of her recipes to make for Thanksgiving this year.
Her best recipes- the magic she performed on green beans, the unbelievable macaroni and cheese, and of course, those mashed potatoes- aren't anywhere in my stash, but I finally picked one that I know she'd love. She was a firm believer in the power of cream cheese. I thought you guys would like this too. Enjoy.
There's no title. So let's just call it Love in a Pan.
What you need:
2 pkgs crescent roll dough
2 bars of cream cheese, softened (you can use light, but Granny is frowning on you for it)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 stick butter, melted (I refuse to allow you to use anything but real butter here)
Cinnamon-sugar
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.
Spread one package of crescent roll dough across the bottom of a 13x9 dish. Press all the seams in the dough together, and press it into the ban and a little up the sides.
Mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla.
Spread cream cheese mixture on top of crescent roll dough.
Place the other package of crescent roll dough on top. (This can be tricky. I usually spread it onto a cutting board, press all the seams together and roll it out a bit before laying it on top of the cream cheese.)
Pour butter on top. (Oh sweet Jesus YES.)
Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Do enough til you think it's too much and then do a little more. Trust me on this.
Bake for 30 minutes. Let them cool before you cut and eat them--it'll be hard, because that cinnamon smell is going to destroy your willpower, but they're easier to handle when they're not quite so soft.