The season

This time of year can be very difficult for many people.  I think of the "most wonderful time of the year" song/carol - how it can grate on my nerves some times.  I think it's false advertising - encouraging unreasonable expectations. 

As a culture, I think our expectations of ourselves and others are on steroids much of the time already. 

Giving isn't a bad thing, acknowledging the loved ones in our lives is a good thing.  It is worthwhile. But pretending that an expensive gift is love, I'm not sure I agree with that.

And it's not that spending the holiday with four year olds isn't awesome.  They love the season. Thanksgiving night, they asked me "Is tomorrow Christmas?" (We've been telling them that Christmas is after Thanksgiving, so naturally, now that Thanksgiving was over, the next day had to be Christmas, right??)

They've also been trying to talk me into allowing them to wrap their own presents.

They are a joy to be around during the holidays.

But even before I had kids, there were some nice things about the holidays. 

I've always liked how peaceful the morning of December 25th is.  The entire day, actually.  Most all stores are closed.  With as busy as everything is with modern life, even before the internet caught on - I think it's just nice to have a day to breathe. 

It's a nice day not to focus on what a person does not have, but what we do have.  It is a cliche. Even if there are loved ones who are no longer with us, to think about happy memories.  To relax and meditate.  To read, bake or create art - whatever a person does to relax. 


Another possibility is to help those who are less fortunate.  To reach out to people who are lonely.  One of the best Thanksgivings I've had was a potluck put on by friends and other people who couldn't go home for the holidays.  Volunteering at a soup kitchen or shelter.  Buying toys or clothes for those who don't have any.  There are certainly plenty of people who are going without this year.

I can certainly understand why this time of year is difficult for people.  Everyone brings up scrooge - but admitting the holidays are stressful and filled with expectations is not being unreasonable.  Admitting that sometimes when a family gets together (or in laws get together) things can be hectic.  There's a reason why people typically imbibe quite a bit of alcohol around the holidays. 

Everyone celebrates (or doesn't celebrate) in their own way.  Respecting that, appreciating what we do have is pretty powerful and awe-inspiring, in my opinion.

And sometimes choosing exactly which traditions we want to participate in, and what we don't is something I can always be grateful for.

Holiday traditions with two year olds

This is the gingerbread house we decorated!

(I can't take credit for the gingerbread, a friend of mine baked it and brought it over for us.



I think it's fairly obvious from the falling chocolate candies - this was definitely a house decorated by two year olds!



As you might imagine, most of the candy ended up being eaten before being put on the house. But it was still fun!



Here are my version of kolaches.

I don't remember my grandmother making these - but they are very good! Here is the recipe.

They take a long time - especially to chill the dough and filling! I added some dried cranberries to the filling instead of golden grapes. Also note: they have no refined sugar in them at all! Yet I would definitely not consider them low fat.

Don't just give a gift

I shouldn't be surprised by the commercialism of Christmas. I've seen commercials for diamond jewelry for years now - complete with a starry eyed excited woman thrilled on Christmas morning. Maybe her husband surprises her across a table with the jewelry. Maybe he puts the necklace on her neck while she's sleeping. The common thread is that there's always a man (husband) giving the woman (assumed to be his wife) a piece of jewelry that she's thrilled about.

I remember talking in college about the subtle messages within ads - that if we're not conscious of what we're seeing - we start to accept things as normal. Families have two parents (male and female) who are between 25-35 with two kids (boy and girl). Older people look like they're around 50.

Typically, ads try to present an idealized reality - that if we buy the product (whatever it is), we can obtain that reality.

For some reason though, this holiday campaign has hit a thrilling new low to my mind. It's holiday commercialism at its worst.

One ad talks about a Dad who loves to fix things and had all old and worn tools. And what do the daughters do? They buy Dad a whole new garage full of brand new drills, die cast wrenches and cabinets. The tag line says "Don't just give a gift, grant a wish".

Or the mother who talks about her teenage daughter who doesn't have to wear a uniform to school anymore. They buy her a whole room full of new clothes - complete with the daughter shocked and squealing in delight on Christmas morning.

To some extent, the campaign is brilliant. It plays on our most basic feelings, our love for our families and our desire to make them happy. The insidious part is that it's claiming to sell happiness, one Christmas, thousands of dollars a pop.

And perhaps someone who just gets a loved one a single gift, a drill, a couple of outfits (what the vast majority of us can afford) - is just not cutting it.

They (we) just don't care enough about their family member to go into thousands of dollars in debt for them.

Yes, of course, there are plenty of people who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on a new garage full of tools, a new car, an expensive set of jewelry for the holidays. But I'm not sure this ad is really directed at those people.

As a Mom, it is incredibly important to me to send an alternate message to my kids during the holiday season. That gifts and money do not equal love. That the amount that I spend on a gift has nothing to do with the amount of love I have for anyone.

My Ukrainian Grandmother

My maternal grandmother is Ukrainian. Her parents immigrated to Canada near the beginning of the last century - in an amazing story I'll post about at some point.

A few weeks ago, we had a heritage pitch in at work. Everyone was encouraged to bring in a family dish or recipe.

I brought in kolachky.

Kolachky are a small jelly filled cookie/pastry. They are common in the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. My home town had many Polish/Eastern European immigrants, so dishes like kolachky were more common. I'm used to kolachky that are sugar cookies with jelly filling, not pastry - donut like.

Yes, I wimped out and bought kolachky from a local Russian bakery instead of making it myself.

Partially because I've been a little stressed out recently, and spending time baking didn't sound like something I was up for.

But mostly because my grandmother never made Ukrainian food for us while I was growing up. Except borscht (with beets).

She didn't make a lot of Ukrainian food, despite living near her family. Her parents never learned to speak English. Her sisters made amazing Ukrainian food - my Aunt Mary would make the full Easter feast (with 12 different dishes) each Easter. But they both married Ukrainians.

My grandmother married a Scotsman/Norwegian. He died before I was born, but I know a few things about him. He liked to golf. He was very religious - even before he and my grandmother joined the mormon faith in their late twenties. He had a temper and his eyes would get incredibly blue when he was angry.

And he disapproved of all things Ukrainian. I'm sure it was more than that. Growing up in an immigrant family, I've realized that there is a certain dynamic that can happen. Typically, the immigrants are not respected (Ukrainian neighbors of my great grandparents were put in camps in Canada in WWI). They don't speak the language. They have different religious traditions (my great grandparents were Ukrainian Orthodox). They are the "other" - in all senses of the word.

So often, what happens is the family does whatever they can to prove themselves - to prove that they are good, Christian, hard-working, normal people. This is at least what my grandmother's brothers and sisters ended up doing. Sometimes it is at the cost of family history and traditions.

I don't know why my grandfather didn't want my grandmother to cook Ukrainian food. And yes, my grandmother had to cook - they had a very traditional 50s marriage. I don't know if he just didn't like the food, or if he had ever even tried it. I don't know if he associated it with her family or with being lower on the social food chain.

So my mom never learned how to cook Ukrainian food from her mom. My grandmother made no cabbage rolls, perogi, perishke, kasha - nothing. And my grandmother is typically an amazing cook and baker. She has a strawberry pie to die for. So I learned how to make the strawberry pie - not the traditional dishes.

I've asked my grandmother to cook Ukrainian since then, and she will make borscht. When she's feeling up to it, she may make cabbage rolls. But these things seem to make her uncomfortable - she'll admit that she can't cook/bake like her mother. It's just not the same.