How We Celebrate Christmas

Christmas season can be stressful or fun. For me, it is both. It used to be my buying gifts for my nine kids, doing the shopping and wrapping, preparing the Christmas Eve meal and Christmas Day meal. With nine children and not living by our extended families, we never got invited to spend the holidays with anyone else. That is the downside of a very large family. Oh wait...I did have one friend who would invite my family over to their house for snacks, desserts and ice cream pecan balls, on Christmas night. It was something that I looked forward to. It prolonged the day. The desserts were delicious. They would serve vanilla ice cream rolled in crush pecans for the children. I know my kids liked that treat and I wished that I was one of them while they ate the pecan balls. But I did sneak a spoonful or two from one of the kid's bowls.

Now that my children are grown with families of their own, my Christmas has changed. I have tried to prolong the holiday with our family cookie exchange. Each year it turns out better then the one before.

We also try to go to Light up Night in Bellevue, in one of the nearby boroughs. We start off at my son's house and walk the two blocks to the downtown area. We stand in line for free hot chocolate and a Christmas cut out cookie. After we walk around, we go into the coffee shop, where one of the ladies reads a Christmas story. Then we stand along the curb with the little ones and watch a small parade of EMS cars and trucks drive by with Santa standing prominently on the top of one fire truck with the sirens going off, and waving at the children. When Santa gets off the truck, the children can go and talk to him and give him their Christmas wish list. We end up going into a pizza shop and order pizzas, appetizers and drinks.

Sometimes a few of us go out and cut down our Christmas trees together and follow that tradition off with lunch at a restaurant.

I now buy and wrap present for nine children, 14 grandchildren, 4 daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, two of my daughter's boyfriends, an adopted son, and my son's girlfriend. A few friends come over and share the festivities with my family.

Christmas Eve is still celebrated here at my house. It takes a few days to clean, decorate, prepare the tables, buy the food, and get everything prepared for Christmas Eve. I also haul down all the presents that I have bought and wrapped and place them under the tree in the living room. The room fills up with other presents as my children arrive for the evening.

Unlike my Italian grandparents, I do not make the Italian Seven Fish Dinner. I do not like fish, and have found another way to celebrate our Christmas Eve. I make cheese fondue. In the beginning, when our family was smaller, we sat around the table and used a few fondue pots. We ate cheese fondue, a steak and shrimp fondue, with an assortment of dipping sauces. I also made a special salad, with my own homemade dressing. It took a long time to consume this meal but that was the point...to sit around the table, eat, talk and laugh together as a family.

As my family has grown larger from the original eleven, we no longer fit around the table, So, we have appetizers laid out on one table, We put our fondue pots on another table. We fill up our plates and sit on the couches or on the living room and kitchen chairs.

Later, we open our presents. Imagine being in a living room filled with furniture, all those adults, grandchildren, a tree and tons of presents. It isn't easy, no matter how hard we try to figure out how to handle all of this. For over an hour, the presents are passed out, unwrapped and the paper discarded into big black trash bags. It is loud and crazy! When we are finished we are exhausted and lucky that we can find the floor and no one has thrown anything away. Then we go back and eat and drink.

After everyone leaves the place is as quiet as a tomb. I put out the rest of the presents for the children who are staying with me. I also fill their stockings. I try to clean up a little but in the end, I am tired and go off to bed.

I do miss the old days when everyone was little and under my roof. I do miss my friend's invitation to have dessert at their home. You know something - I miss those pecan balls with my friends. I miss everything about those days and more.

Family Cookie Exchange

Something that I always wanted to have was a family cookie exchange. I wanted to bake cookies with my daughters, then daughters-in-law, and eventually my grandchildren. So when my middle daughter suggested a family cookie exchange, I was excited.

This was the beginning of our families' annual cookie exchange. We sent out email invitations. Each person was to bake their own cookies and give one dozen to each of the other households. My daughter, who is a chef, planned and cooked the brunch.

The first year, everyone showed up - daughters, daughters-in-law, sons and babies. They loved the brunch, and the cookies. Some years it was a delicious homemade French onion soup with crispy bread to go along. Some times, it has been a full breakfast with eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes and the works. Other times it was quiches, croissants and salads.

I guess I should have given more thought as how to do a cookie exchange. The first year everyone showed up ready to actually make their cookies at my house from scratch. We mixed our cookie dough, baked the cookies, packaged them, and divided them up. By evening I was the last to get my cookies baked and handed out. It was fun but an exhausting day.

The following year we figured out that we needed to just make our own cookies in our own kitchen and then come with them already packaged. We eventually eliminated the "boys" from coming along. Anyway, some of them lost interest, even though they wanted to eat their sister's great meals.

In the beginning, a few who attended would find shortcuts as to what to make, like Oreos dipped in chocolate with sprinkles on top, or pretzel rods dipped in chocolate with sprinkles. They were good and everyone enjoyed them. But as the years evolved, everyone tried to find different kinds of cookie recipes and would try those.

The packaging of the cookies became the high point of the exchange. Some were in Christmas boxes and others on Christmas trays. A few different packaging ideas were fancy Chinese containers or festive holiday, plastic ware.

Now our cookie exchange has seemed to come along way and it runs smoother. We still gather together, eat something and exchange the cookies. But the simple idea of one dozen cookies has evolved into a few dozen cookies, which isn't so bad. But the plus of all of this...we come together for a short time to talk, eat, and share cookies. For a few hours we forget about all that we have to do for the holidays, and we are family under one roof until our big Christmas Eve celebration.

The cookies don't last long but the memories do.