If You Bake It, They Will Come

I have taken today off of work for some of the obligatory holiday preparations – first, I’m taking Little Sister to see Santa at the mall. Then Mom and I are going to introduce her to the annual family baking day. Each year, my mother and I spend an afternoon baking. Typically, we make an assortment that includes: chocolate chip cookies with and without nuts, oatmeal raisin cookies, peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses, sugar cookies, biscochos, fudge, macaroons, turtles, buckeyes and almond bark. This is LS’s first go at helping us. She’s three and a half, so who knows how well this will go over, but as long as my mother doesn’t mind scraping frosting off every surface of the kitchen and sweeping up sprinkles for days, we should be okay.

This is one of the traditions we have that is usually more heartache than its worth, but we just have to do it. I must bake. My butt insists that I must NOT eat (although I will) but I must bake. I’m not anticipating giving this stuff as gifts, maybe to an unappreciative neighbor or two, but otherwise, it’s for our family and co-workers. I’ll take a tray of goodies in Monday. As with most offices, all of it will be gone in approximately an hour. I wonder sometimes if they even taste it before they swallow and grab another cookie.

I’m also hoping to take a swing at gingerbread this year. I might make a couple gingerbread men to test out the dough, but really, one day (most likely not this year) I’d like to make a gingerbread house. Now, I’m not talking about the little kits they have at the craft store. I’m talking a Martha Stewart, two-story, Victorian mansion with all the neurotic details I live for. I can do it, of that I’m sure. I even have a post card with a picture of the house I’d like to try.

I wonder why I even bother with all this, sometimes. I was talking to someone the other day and said that all the baking and the decorating and the gift giving and wrapping and planning...all an attempt to make Christmas whatever it’s supposed to be. The romantic in me wants to build up my holiday expectations to the point that no matter what happens, I’ll be disappointed because my life is not a Norman Rockwell painting.

I, for example, know that DB will wait until the last minute to buy my gifts. I will not go caroling (unless you count singing with the radio on my commute). I will probably decorate the tree alone while DB falls asleep watching football on the couch. Christmas morning will not be magical. The stuff in my stocking will most likely be the leftovers I put in there after doing other people’s stockings. My gifts will be anticlimactic because they gave me exactly what I asked for and my family will not be half as appreciative of the time and effort I put into their gifts as I’d hoped they would be.

This makes my family sound horrible, but they aren’t. They’re normal. I’m the one with these insane expectations. I’m the one that makes a list of things I want for Christmas, then gets upset because they got me what was on my list...sigh. Is it too much to ask that they actually listen to me and know me well enough to come up with something I would like without having to come out and say it? Almost nothing I got my family is off their list. I think and plot and plan and...waste my time, apparently.

Anyway, I guess I shop, bake, decorate and fuss over the holidays in an attempt to make it as special as I want it to be. If I don't grasp onto the holiday spirit now, it will be a year before it comes around again. So...it’s ten days until Christmas. What special rituals or traditions do you have to make the holiday seem more special? Baking cookies? Decorating the tree? What was the best gift you've ever gotten that you didn't ask for?

SP

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