A warning to all my cookie guinea pigs! This year I set aside the traditional gingerbread cookie recipe to try a new one. I set it up last night and trudged to the kitchen before dawn (which is, admittedly, pretty late by mid-December) to finish the dough, which now must chill thoroughly before it’s cut and baked. If it’s a success, I’ll post the recipe in time for next Santa Lucia Day.
As part of my continuing obsession each December to remind the world about the discovery of the TRUE author of the beloved Christmas poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” I cannot resist once more posting a link to the story. Naughty, naughty, Clement Clarke Moore. No golden walnut for YOU.
For today, the first of December and the first Sunday of Advent, a picture, and a poem by Ann Ellerton with which my daughter and I sometimes began our homeschooling day during this season.
Now the twilight of the year
Comes, and Christmas draweth near.
See, across the Advent sky
How the clouds move quietly.
Earth is waiting, wrapped in sleep,
Waiting in a silence deep.
Birds are hid in bush and reed
Flowers are sleeping in their seed.
Through the woodland to and fro
Silent-footed creatures go.
Hedgehog curled in prickly ball
Burrows beneath the leaves that fall.
Man and beast and bird and flower
Waiting for the midnight hour
Waiting for the infant’s birth
Down from Heaven, onto Earth.
—Ann Ellerton
Melissa
Chuck
In honor of the conjunction of Thanksgiving with the start of Hanukkah—an event we haven’t seen since 1888 and won’t see again for (by some estimates) 79,000 years—I made turkey-shaped challah for today’s feast, using the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Happy holidays, everyone.
Anne Clair
As we move into the darkest season, looking increasingly inward and reflecting on the year nearly past, and on our losses and our shortcomings, we encourage and inspire ourselves and each other with a multitude of festivals of light: Michaelmas, Dia de los Muertos, Diwali, Chanukah, Christmas. On November 11th we celebrate simultaneously Martinmas, the feast of kindly St. Martin of Tours, and Veterans Day, each with its acknowledgement of sadness, courage, and hope.
In our family, we follow a tradition begun when our children were tiny Waldorf kindergarteners, and we have a lantern walk at nightfall. Despite my [now very big] children’s inevitable complaints and eyerolling, we’ll all do the last dog-walk together, carrying our homemade paper lanterns and singing. Someday they’ll thank me…
In case you also would like to go singing through the darkness, here is one of the songs, a lovely round by Praetorius.
I justify this as an art-blog post because of the papel picado we made for our celebration.
The family Jack-O-Lanterns for 2013: Wildcat, Star Trek/Wars, Cat Eyes, and Autumn Leaves. Our trick-or-treaters speculate on who did which pumpkin, and they are usually correct.
For the the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi today, I post a painting from the series of Washington National Cathedral, where this coming Sunday you can take your pet to be blessed in honor of that kindly friend of all living creatures.
I also post below the well-known Prayer of St. Francis, which might come in handy at this time if distributed among the less law-abiding members of Congress.
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
—St. Francis of Assisi
Dominique
This year my daughter is in 9th grade, and at her school it is, according to custom, the 9th grade girls who, garbed in long gowns and flower crowns, will tame the fierce dragon at the school’s Michaelmas festival this week. In honor of this event, I made for the first time a bread maiden to accompany our dragon bread. Perhaps it will become a new household tradition.
If you would like to make your own, here is the recipe I use (on last September’s post). I used 1-1/2 times the recipe for the two figures, which are about 14″ high. Happy Michaelmas, everyone!
Dad
Our household isn’t Jewish, but who can resist the triple attraction of challah, honey-dipped apples, and the seasonal call to work hard at becoming a better person? This year I attempted to follow Smitten Kitchen’s nice clear instructions for braiding the lovely six-strand loaf; however, mine still turned out disappointingly non-round…But my family ate it anyway. L’Shanah Tovah!
