Ah Christmas, my favourite time of the year. The time when the whole family comes together to share a huge Christmas feast, have fun in the sun, sit back and relax, drink and be merry. I hang out every Christmas for my favourite Christmas recipe . . . Homemade Apricot Ice cream! Every Christmas eve, mum and I spend our day and most of the evening in the kitchen baking. Some may say what a chore, but I find great delight in Christmas cooking with mum. We collect the Myer Christmas cds every year and every Christmas eve, whilst we bake, we play each cd. Sorry to say that this year’s Myer cd was pretty miserable so we shall stick to Michael Buble's Christmas album instead. It's amazing! If you haven't got it already, I suggest you hunt it down. Well, as I was saying, Christmas eve is rather busy at our house. This Christmas we are heading to my dad's side of the family for Christmas lunch, only to return home that evening to have mum's side up to our place for tea. So very exciting. I still hang out for Christmas day like a child. Obviously, I don’t do the whole Santa thing anymore but Christmas will always be special to me. When I was a child my mum used to encourage my brother and I to believe in Santa and to ensure that we did, mum thought it was a great idea for us to send Santa a letter telling him what we might want for Christmas. My brother and I would go away and think long and hard about what it was exactly that Santa could bring us this year. But as mum always said, "Don’t ask Santa for too much because he has a lot of boys and girls in the world who he has to deliver presents to". This was mum's way of saying choose wisely :)
Anyway, after we had written our letters in our best hand writing, we would neatly seal them in an envelope and give them to mum to post when she went to work the following morning. Approximately 1 week later, we would receive a reply. Each year my brother and I were amazed to see that Santa had actually written back. The envelope would have a north pole stamp in the top right hand corner, inside the envelope was silver 'magic' glitter, the letter was typed and lastly, signed with Santa Claus. Well, my brother and I thought we were so lucky. Little did we know that mum would go to the extreme to create a letter that actually looked like it was from Santa at the north pole. As I look back on it now, I am grateful that mum kept the dream alive for us as long as she did. It’s a wonderful memory to have. Thanks Mum, you're the best!
Hey Catherine!
ReplyDeletecongratulations on getting your blog up!
I think writing about family is a simple yet lovely idea. In our society it's so easy to lose touch with what matters most - but your blog reminds me that most of the special moments in my life come about through family, and for I while i think i had forgotten that. Especially all of those reminders about things that you used to do as a child, like writing to santa clause, just reminds me of all the efforts that parents go to to create specialness in their children's lives!
Your blog is really beautiful written and you are a good storyteller! I find it interesting to read about other people's familieis as more often than not they are similar to my own (especially your grandmother is similar to mine!! in your post below!)
I think I might spend the day doing christmas baking - which i havent started at all yet. thank you for reminding me about the importance of the tradition of cooking, coming from an italian family - cooking is a huge aspect of christmas time (and the whole year)!
Gilda :)
PS if you want to include a recipe for homemade apricot icecream i will happily accept ahha! :)