Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Christmas–my absolute favorite time of the year!No, we didn’t have a White Christmas this year. I took the above picture on January 7, 2017, after we received 9″ of snow overnight.

“Why are your Christmas decorations still up?” you ask.

Simple.

January 6th is the traditional Twelfth Day of Christmas, or “Old Christmas” as my mom’s mom’s side of the family calls it.

We received snow beginning on January 6th, so the decorations were still up in observance of Old Christmas. My mother’s extended family celebrated Christmas together on the Twelfth Day, and although we celebrate it on Christmas Day, we’ve continued the tradition of keeping all of our decorations up until January 6th. I’m not very sure why they did it that way, other than the fact that my grandmother is one of seven children, all of which had at least two children of their own, and it was almost impossible to cram everyone into my great-grandparents 1910s Craftsman-style farmhouse. My grandmother and mom have often told me of how the family had to eat in shifts: the men would eat in the house first, then the children, then the women would eat in peace with the house to themselves while the men sat on the porch and the kids played in the yard and around the farm.

Enough of the Stokesdale farm homeplace.

On to the McCuiston House Christmas!

Due to so many things going on in my calendar concerning the holidays, any projects around the place have pretty much been on hold. After the Thanksgiving dinner was cleared, my family and I set about to decorating the house for Christmas. Ever since I was little, we would set the Christmas tree up after the kitchen and dining room was cleaned.

First thing’s first! The house needs to smell like Christmas. No candle can do this as well as a simmer pot can.

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Christmas Simmer Pot Recipe
4 orange slices
2 cinnamon sticks
1 bay leaf
Handfull of cranberries
1 TBS whole cloves
2-4 drops of vanilla extractFill a pot with water and bring to a boil. As soon as water starts boiling, cut back to simmer and add all ingredients. Allow to simmer throughout the day, and add water as needed.

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I have found that a simmer pot helps add some much-needed moisture in the air that heating systems or wood stoves tend to remove. Some people don’t care for scented candles, and some have breathing issues and can’t handle many of the musky scents that Christmas candles sometimes have, but I have only had compliments on this simmer pot recipe from all of my visitors. It’s become one of my favorites!

This Christmas, I decided to make cookie tins for my friends and family. I knew it would be a lot of work to make 32 tins of cookies and candies, so as soon as the family went home after helping me start my Christmas decorating, I started my first batch of ginger snaps.

My grandmother hadn’t relented at the time to share her ginger snap recipe with me, so I had to search online. I decided to use old Victorian recipes whenever I could find them, and folks really loved their tins!

Because I love to cook and give things to folks, I bought 50 forest green cookie tins so I could have some set aside to use for gifts throughout the year. I found the tins and the tin wrappers from a restaurant supply company. I went to Hobby Lobby one weekend when the ribbon was on sale and also purchased pine cone ornaments to tie to the packages as a second little gift. Instead of ordering custom made baking tags online (they were too expensive!), I designed and printed my own. I was greatly pleased with the end result. Each tin contained a Victorian ginger snap cookie, a Civil War era snickerdoodle cookie, buckeye candies, candied orange slices dipped in vanilla, and a simple white chocolate fudge.

Stay tuned for recipes!

In decorating the old farmhouse, I tried to stay as close as I could to what might have been used in the 1880s-1900s. With the exception of artificial pine garlands and artificial trees to cut down on dry pine needles which could potentially cause harm to my little papillon dog, Joy, I feel that the decorations would (hopefully) be similar to what John McCuiston and his family could have had.