Enjoy these holiday pieces submitted by Scribble Sisters’ members in 2020. To read them, you can either scroll through the page or click on each story.
- “The Taste of Christmas: German Lebkuchen Gingerbread Cookies” by Claudia Dalton
- “A Christmas Comeuppance” by Judith Kniffin
- “The Gingerbread Decorating Event” by Jeanne Rogers
- “A Childhood Thanksgiving Memory” by Judith Kniffin
- “Holiday Traditions” by Kathy Wagenknecht
“The Taste of Christmas: German Lebkuchen Gingerbread Cookies”
by Claudia Dalton
My mother grew up in Germany, and every Christmas she would receive packages of Lebkuchen from friends and family back home. From the start I loved these big round cookies—to me this was the taste of Christmastime. You first bite through the hard sugar glaze of either vanilla or dark chocolate.
Then you were at the soft spicy heart of the cookie, where you also encountered a slight crunch from finely chopped nuts. At the base of the cookie was a thin white wafer made from egg whites and sugar. This bottom wafer (called an Oblaten) was not particularly tasty but I was interested to learn that the medieval monks who first made Lebkuchen used communion wafers to keep the cookie dough from sticking to their baking sheets. The cookie I ate as a child in the 1960s was essentially the same as those made in the 1200s.
Another appeal of the Lebkuchen was that it came in decorative boxes and tins with ornate medieval scenes:knights and ladies, knights on horseback, Christmas markets In the town center, and cathedrals and castles. Every Christmas we would have about a dozen cookies of various sizes and shapes (round, rectangles, hearts, and stars).
The colorful images on the boxes have remained the same year after year so are now like old friends. For as long as I can remember, my godmother Liselotte (Lottie), my mother’s best friend from childhood, has been sending us Lebkuchen. It is shipped directly from a well-known bakery, Schmidt’s in Nuremberg, and arrives like clockwork during the first week of December in a large tin box bearing their distinctive red logo: a heart (a popular shape for Lebkuchen) containing their name in white lettering. On top of the heart is a outline of a medieval castle.
My mother always split the contents of the box with me, and it has become a family tradition for my children as well. After my mother’s passing in 2013, I began receiving the box. Lottie always calls me to let me know she has ordered it and to expect It. When it arrives I call her, and then text the kids to let them know it’s here.
This year Lottie, who is now ninety, left me a voicemail to say that she heard that Schmidt’s was closed due to the Covid pandemic and that she had ordered our Lebkuchen from a bakery in Aachen instead. Then, a few days later, she called to say that Schmidt’s is open after all and that we would be getting a box from there as well.
How welcome a piece of good news is, especially during this time. So I’m on the lookout for two boxes to arrive on our doorstep in about two weeks’ time.
At least we can remember our various holiday traditions, even if we can’t actually do them all this year.
My mother had some German, not Dutch, heritage and perhaps that’s where our family tradition originated. Or perhaps she just read about it and began it with our small family of four. Nevertheless, we always hung up our stockings on December 5 in anticipation that St. Nicholas – not Santa – would fill them. December 6 is the feast of St. Nicholas and early each December there were our stockings, with our name printed in shiny glitter, filled to the tip top with candy canes, nuts, chocolate coins, a small stuffed animal, a puzzle or a game and in the toe – always an orange!
I have continued the practice with my own children and now my daughter does the same with her son and daughter. It was a wonderful way to spread out the holiday cheer, to surprise family members with small gifts, and as we children got older, a fun way to think of gifts for our parents’ stockings as well.
This year on the 6th of December, there will be stockings for every family member, hanging on various mantelpieces around the Northeast, and early in the morning, as we shake out the lovingly made long, wool socks, everyone will smile a bit and sigh, and know that tradition, like love, carries us through the smooth spots and rough, year after year.
“A Christmas Comeuppance”
by Judith Kniffen
Christmas morning in my childhood household was a strictly orderly process. After all, our family had two boys slightly over a year apart in age–and then me, 3 years younger. I’d have been flattened each year before the door swung open to the booty. So, after a civilized breakfast, complete with (grrrr) parental conversation, we were duly lined up at the door to the dining room, I in the lead. In the back of the room by a large window stood our Christmas tree in all its splendor, with wrapped gifts strewn about underneath. Everyone seated, I fetched the first present for someone else, and we went around the family that way, one by one. We all witnessed who got what, “ooohed” and “aaahed” accordingly, and Dad made note of the information for our thank you notes.
If this sounds a little too regimented for you, well, one year we added a new puppy named “Tuffy” to our household. Well and good, but she didn’t know the Christmas rules. Some time in the wee morning hours, Tuffy had sniffed out the boxes of chocolates that my father, a school teacher, inevitably got from parents. When we filed into the Christmas room, Tuffy was lying listlessly on the floor, surrounded by chewed Christmas paper, box material, unfinished chocolates, and whatever dregs she could bring up from her outraged stomach. The look on her miserable face said it all.The opening of presents that morning was particularly subdued; and the message was driven home to all of us that gifts are a blessing when received with thoughtful gratitude and enjoyed in timely moderation!
May your holiday be both joyous and thoughtful.
“The Gingerbread Decorating Event”
by Jeanne Rogers
Every December I invite family and friends to a ginger bread decorating event at my home. The name of the event is deceiving as there is not gingerbread involved.
Thirty-five years ago, when my first born was one year old, I was young and ambitious, with nothing on my mind but providing a means for gathering people that I love together. Holidays were a perfect opportunity to do this. I saw a picture of a gingerbread house and thought making one together would be an excellent way to gather my loved ones.
I invited family and friends to my home to make gingerbread houses. Being a person who doesn’t spend much time in the kitchen, I had no idea how much work goes into making gingerbread and how fragile it is.
The first gingerbread decorating event was a total flop, or so I thought. The Gingerbread walls would not support the roof, it all collapsed into a pile of brown mush. The ginger aroma filled the room, as we all looked sadly upon the brown, yummy smelling blob that towered the middle of the table.
What could I do? I had a kitchen full of children with their excitement fading and several adults staring at me with looks of disbelief and disappointment, they all feared gingerbread decorating was not going to happen.
I quickly grabbed cereal , milk, tea and any other container of food within my grasp and dumped its contents into a Tupperware container, tossed the empty boxes on the table next to the bowls of candy and confidently stated, “Paint the boxes with the white frosting on the table.” The children enthusiastically responded to my request as the adults looked at me dumbfounded. Then I instructed them all to stick a variety of candy on their frosted box.
Slowly, one by one, their boxes transformed into unique, beautiful, gingerbread houses. No one could tell what was underneath all that frosting and candy. Everyone was proud of their creation. Each child took home their own holiday decoration to fill their home with the aroma of Christmas.
And thus began the holiday tradition of decorating gingerbread houses with no gingerbread on the premises. Nevertheless, the Annual Gingerbread Decorating Event continues to this day.
“A Childhood Thanksgiving Memory”
by Judith Kniffen
Thanksgiving was always celebrated with Aunt Dorothy’s family, Dorothy being my father’s younger sister. She and John had two girls close in age to my two brothers. So while food was in preparation, we youngsters were swept outdoors to defray our energy, weather notwithstanding. By the time we dragged ourselves up the front steps and indoors, we were exhausted, with most of our giggling spent as well. We dutifully draped our coats, gloves and hats over the chosen piece of furniture, and washed our hands—sometimes our faces as well.And then quietly we sat down, spaced strategically among the adults.
It was time to sing “We Gather Together,”followed by “The Eyes of All,” the latter an Episcopalian chant.We launched into the chant with all due solemnity:
The Eyes of All…wait upon thee, Oh Lord,
And Thou gives them their meat in due season,
Thou openest thine hand,
And fillest all things living…with PLENTY OF SNESS! (oops, that’s “plenteousness”)
Glory be to…etc.,
…by then we were banging our hands on the table and shrieking with laughter, while the adults patiently waited us out to finish the chant. You might well ask: Why did the adults put up with this year after year? I think because it brought us children into the Thanksgiving conversation on our own terms and made for a much richer sharing during dinner.At least we kids thought so.
“In the Midst of a Desert, I Found a Garden”
by Mary Brady
My favorite Christmas memory comes from the desert. Palm Springs desert, to be exact, a place not known as a winter wonderland. Several years ago I decided to skip the holidays entirely signing up to dog sit for friends who also wanted to be somewhere other than home for the holidays. So Jeb, a smelly geriatric toy poodle, and I commiserated over daily medical shampoos, bingeing TCM and sampling my friends’ Trader Joe inspired wine cupboard – for the entire month of December.The poor creature smelled so bad it was truly a challenge to cuddle him in my lap, but I did. He was pathetic and adorable and stunk to high heaven, shampoos to no avail. Even riding in the golf cart, Jeb’s unmistakable aroma wafted about us like Pigpen’s cloud. An irascible skin problem was the cause, no cure in sight.
Nonetheless, my visit to the desert was pleasantly punctuated by forays to the Mary Pickford theater, seeing longhorn sheep at a zoo and (symbolically enough) standing on the Continental Divide during a visit from my brother and wife, as well as a memorable brunch with a 14-carat genuine celebrity. Palm Springs, aka Hollywood East, also sports the most incredible Goodwill store in the country. And some damn good dried fruits. In the midst of all this excitement, on a sunny day in December, I contacted a gay couple to whom my ancient therapist back in Baltimore had provided an introduction. They immediately invited me to their palatial, Sunset Boulevardesque home and we spent an evening getting acquainted over GNT’s. They had both been doctors and activists in San Francisco during AIDS. I had been relieved of an incurable voice disorder by a pioneering doctor there. They were good listeners and amazingly generous bartenders as well as very funny/interesting hosts.
A week later they followed up with an invitation to attend their family Christmas party. I took a long shower to remove Eau de Jeb, dolled up and headed over with a dumb gag gift. I expected to feel like an outsider, but was immediately made to feel like one of the tribe. Was their family Christmas party ever a gas! The extended family of twenty vivacious and friendly folks was represented by a photographic “Family Tree” – consisting wholly of the photos and fully detailed bios of everyone’s DOGS. The food was delicious, the gift exchange hilarious, and I have never enjoyed a Christmas gathering more than this one spent among complete strangers.
I followed up by spending my New Year’s Eve birthday with another couple of delightful strangers and a strangely delightful old friend. Stinky poodle and all, it was a spectacular and totally unexpected celebratory holiday season. Could lowering my expectations have made room for delight, or did I just get lucky? If so, this year in the midst of the Plague should be great, too. However, I’m not counting on it. And maybe this one precious memory, still making me smile, is enough.
“Holiday Traditions”
by Kathy Wagenknecht
My sister Karen and I were the only grandchildren on one side of the family and the only ones for my first twelve years on the other. Yes, we were spoiled.
Christmas was the point of major spoilage. We were the stars and winners of the sweepstakes in three separate celebrations.
It began on Christmas Eve, with a trip to our Wagenknecht grandparents house for a ham dinner (about 2:00 in the afternoon.) Dad’s parents, sister, and her husband were there, biding their time until they could start the gift avalanche for us. Yes, they and my parents gave gifs to each other, too, but Karen and I were the main attraction. I remember a large cabinet to hold Storybook Dolls built by Uncle Elmer as one big gift. My grandmother’s handmade quilts for each of us another time. Gifts made by hand.
The next party was Christmas morning, when we got to see what Santa brought. These were the cool toys: the new bikes, the stereo for our room, the play kitchen and real electric stove that baked tiny cakes from tiny, little cake mixes. After I was eight, when mother’s sister and her husband moved in with us, they participated in Christmas morning cinnamon rolls with Santa toys, too. Double the toys! That morning celebration was discontinued after Karen owned up to no longer believing in Santa. After that, we sometimes opened packages in the morning, if their size was too unwieldy, but generally we packed everything up for the FINAL gift extravaganza.
The hour drive to Kansas City, Kansas, to Mother’s parents, was an early afternoon respite from too much good cheer. We took along a favorite item to accompany us in the car, knowing full well that we’d have more to bring home with us. Mother’s mother was a professional seamstress, so we could count on clothing, beautifully made and very fashionable from her. My childless aunt and uncle also showered us with whatever we might have mentioned that we’d like.
Opening packages was regimented. All packages were handed out, then opened one at a time, starting with either the youngest (when we were kids) or oldest (as we grew up.) One benefit of doing it that way was that you had a good bit of time to enjoy one present before you were allowed to open the next.
One year after the last of the gifts were unwrapped and everyone was sated with consumer excess, someone asked Karen if she had a good Christmas. “Yes,” she replied, “I got everything I wanted, and a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t even want.” She meant she had gotten everything on her list and many other things she hadn’t requested, but her actual reply became part of the family repertoire.
As I grew up, I began to realize that there was more to Christmas than presents. There were the church services, family meals, caroling, playing and singing along loudly to the Chipmunks Christmas, and going to the dime store to buy a traditional perfume set of Evening in Paris for Mother.
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