The Book of Christmas Virtues (5 page)

Connie Ann nodded in agreement. She knew how much Mom liked things kept simple. It was, after all, the Whittle way.

Carol McAdoo Rehme

Bottomed Out

It was a difficult week.

He had completed some work in exchange for the promise that “the check is in the mail.”
Not.
Only bills appeared in his mailbox and never a check to pay them.

It was the holiday season—with its own slew of stressors—and the car was on the fritz again, the larder was frightfully empty, and his regular payday wasn't until the end of the month. No food. No money. No hope.

For certain, he'd hit the bottom of the barrel.

What was he going to do? Teetering on the brink of despair, he took three deep breaths, reached for his overcoat, scarf and gloves, and headed toward the woods. Nature had always been the sanctuary he sought when he felt hopeless or depressed.

Accommodating his stride to the snow-covered ground, he crunched through the forest of regal pines and snow-flocked blue spruce. He shaded his eyes against brilliant sunlight where it mirrored the diamond-bright snow. The tip of his nose reddened, and his cheeks burned from the crisp air.

As he headed toward the pond backing his property, a deer bounded across the path. A more timid tufted titmouse followed from a distance.

And he felt his breathing gentle and his gait slow.

“Chickadee-dee-dee!”
A vigilant warbler sounded its alarm. A crow flitted from treetop to fence post and back again with only an occasional,
“Caw, caaaw.”
A red-winged blackbird answered from the rushes fringing the pond and flew past in a swooping arc.

As he witnessed the song and dance of these feathered companions, he let go of his cares and felt satisfied as a kind of peace replaced them. Once again, nature had worked its magic—a major spiritual reconstruction on his soul. Satisfied, he turned toward the house while full-throated birdsong echoed an affirmation.

He paused at the backyard barrel to see if any bird food remained to reward his friends for their uplifting music and pleasant company. Under the seed sack he lifted from the barrel, he was startled to discover an unopened bag of flour. Ah, food for the birds . . . and food for him.

A rummage through the kitchen cupboard turned up enough ingredients for two fragrant loaves of yeasty bread. A few handfuls of assorted dried beans, a can of tomatoes and
presto:
Rhode Island chili with freshly baked bread! Plenty for him
and
his landlady. Perhaps things were not as bad as they'd seemed.

Just as the two sat down to dine, the postman delivered a parcel from a friend: jam-and-honey spread. Suddenly, the meal became even more interesting!

He gazed at the feast spread before him and the friend seated beside him and marveled at the gratitude he felt within.

Sometimes,
he decided,
life's richest gifts are found at the
bottom of the barrel.

Margaret Kirk

Secret Ingredients

I press “play” on the VCR and sit back to watch the ten-year-old video. On it was my kids' attempt to record my father's secret ingredients as he prepared our annual Christmas meat pies.

“Hi, Mom.” I see myself looking out of the screen, gesturing for Lisa to aim the camera at her grandfather instead.

“Hi, Grandpa,” she says next as the camera sweeps his direction.

My dad nods in acknowledgement while he pries open the lid of a spice can.

“Mom, what are you doing now?” The camera swings back to me.

“The hard part, as usual.” I make a production of stirring the meat in a large pot. “Dad, don't strain yourself shaking that spice can,” I tease over my shoulder.

We're making meat pies—my family's holiday tradition.

As an adolescent, I was not particularly close to my father. After driving a delivery truck and unloading heavy packages all day to support our large family, he barely had energy left to talk to me, except to ask me to get him another beer from the fridge or go buy him a carton of cigarettes.

But one Christmas, he expressed a desire to make meat pies like his mother had. Although he could figure out the filling, he didn't have a clue about the crust. Then my junior high home ec teacher gave me a recipe for no-fail pastry.

Mustering my courage, I approached Dad and suggested we team up and experiment with the pies. Much to my delight, he agreed to give it a shot.

I began the pastry crust in the morning. Following the instructions precisely, I blended the dough while Dad sautéed the meat in a large pot—equal amounts of ground chuck and ground pork. He added onions and then debated on the spices.

They were the tricky part. Allspice, savory, sage, thyme, cloves, salt and pepper. He added them all on instinct, guessing at the amounts. The meat simmered and teased our noses.

Meanwhile, I successfully rolled out the crust and placed it in a greased and floured pie plate. I held the empty pie shell close to the pot while my father ladled in bubbling meat. When we judged it full enough, I positioned the top crust, crimped the edges with the tines of a fork, brushed it all with milk, and popped it into the oven. We put together several for dinner.

The aroma of baking pies was encouraging. By the time they were done, the whole family was salivating. But, would the meat pies taste as good as they smelled?

Dad placed a slice on each of our plates. The pastry flaked when our forks cut through it. Then the first taste: eyes closed, nostrils flared, smiles appeared and a unanimous “mmm . . . mm” resounded around the kitchen table.

“This is really good,” Dad winked at me, “but I think the meat is the best part.”

“Oh, really? I don't think so,” I teased back. “The crust is delicious; the meat is a close second.”

The bantering continued until we finally agreed that neither would be any good without the other. I glowed with pride. We had worked—side-by-side—to replicate the old family recipe, my dad and I.

That was the start of our Christmas tradition.

As he aged, it became more difficult for my dad to do his part. Some years we made as many as fifteen pies and stirring such a large pot of meat was not an easy task. Finally, I recruited my children, Brian and Lisa, as our kitchen assistants.

One year, Dad got pneumonia and never fully recovered. The Christmas after he died, I couldn't bear the thought of making meat pies. Besides, they wouldn't be the same without his secret seasonings. But Brian and Lisa insisted we continue the thirty-five-year-old holiday ritual.

Forcing my mind to the present, I focus again on the video, curious to see what he adds to the pot.

But Dad smiles now from the television screen while he scrapes the last of his savory meat into a pie shell. As I struggle to position the top crust on this final, skimpy pie, someone off-camera suggests it should be for Uncle Bruce, who's always first in line to get his.

“Here, let me spit on it.” I wink. “I hope he's not watching this video.” Everyone laughs and the screen goes white.

Silence.

It occurs to me that I hadn't noticed a single label on the spices Dad used in the video. Yet a huge grin sweeps across my face when I realize we'd captured the secret ingredients after all.

The secret wasn't in the seasonings. It was in the people. The teasing and joking. The laughing and loving. And I know it was the working together—side-by-side— that made our Christmas meat pies so special.

Jane Zaffino

Common Sense

Select a cozy corner of your home to create a holiday haven—far from post-office lines, crowded malls and office parties—by engaging your senses.

Sight:
Display something that delights you—ice skates from your childhood, an heirloom Bible opened to the Christmas story or even a basket of sea glass collected during last summer's vacation.

Sound:
Hang tinkling wind chimes to catch a furnace draft or play an instrumental holiday CD.

Smell:
Light a seasonal candle—bayberry, pine or peppermint. Or select a fresh-from-the-oven scent like gingerbread, sugar cookie or pumpkin pie.

Taste:
Treat yourself to a soothing, warm drink. Hot chocolate with marshmallows? Spiced cider? Herbal tea?

Touch:
Layer the area with comfortable pillows, a soft throw, your favorite slippers—perhaps a few toys to entertain the cat.

Then set aside time each day to envelope yourself in this sanctuary of simplicity.

Love

Between the Lines

Sometime last year, tucked in the muscled folds of a metropolitan newspaper in Italy, a diminutive advertisement tiptoed out to compete with screaming headlines.

Elderly, retired schoolteacher seeks family willing to
adopt grandfather. Will pay expenses.

Eighty-year-old Giorgio Angelozzi had packed himself and his seven cats into the wrinkles of a two-room flat, along with his modest book collection of dusty Greek dictionaries and classics written by noteworthy ancients like Pliny and Horace and Kant. From this cramped home on a dead-end road, he occasionally maneuvered the hilly paths to a local village. But, for the most part, his scholarly, retired life was quiet. Too quiet.

Widowed seven long, lonely years, Giorgio found himself counting the number of words he spoke aloud each day. And on those days when he had nothing to say—even to the padding cats—the count was zero. A zero as hollow as his life.

To his dismay, he discovered he wasn't done giving and needing love.

Hungering for human contact, Giorgio made a thoughtful decision and put into motion a unique plan: He put himself up for adoption. His humble appeal in the classifieds of an area newspaper immediately captured the attention of an entire nation.

Giorgio's plight tugged at Italy's heartstrings, made it sit up and take notice. Government officials and villagers, counselors and commoners, clerics and laymen—all jolted to the core by this plea for adoption—took an internal accounting. The result? An immediate surge of response that brought more than offers of lodging. It brought eager offers of friendship. Of family life. Of . . . love.

After all, Giorgio didn't advertise himself as a mere tenant. He didn't seek a position as a part-time professor nor a salaried tutor. Instead, Giorgio sought a family willing to adopt a
grandfather,
a family willing to accept him as part of itself.

At one time or another, each of us—like Giorgio—must face life's tough, emotion-wrenching moments. We might deal with the trials of rejection, bankruptcy, terminal illness, loneliness, unhappy partnerships or even death. Love is the universal answer to our difficulties.

If we are fortunate, we realize the power of love—that spark of the divine inherent in each of us—to smooth and soothe, to heal and restore. We search for it in our relationships; we invite it into our lives. We admire it in others; we cultivate it in ourselves.

We grasp for it with both hands and, if we are smart, we give it away with both, understanding that love, like music, is a melody that lingers in the heart long after the words have been sung. It is the grace that allows us to feel for each other, to put ourselves in our neighbors' places. We see with their eyes, hear with their ears and feel with their hearts. Better yet, we learn to view others through God's eyes.

Giorgio moved his seven cats and his worn library to the home of his new family. Undoubtedly, he also packed enough warmth and memories to flourish wherever he settled, valued by this new family that love alone created.

The lesson we might all share from this Italian love story?
L'amore é come il pane. Bisogna che si faccia di nuovo ogni
giorno.
“Love is like bread. It needs to be made fresh every day.”

And what better time than this Christmas season to share
your
loaf, to reach out in love and adopt others into the embrace of your family's circle?

Sweets for the Sweet

Every year, between Thanksgiving and December 26, something mystical happens to me. The festive foods of Thanksgiving dinner start the process. Then Christmas music, piped from radio and DIRECTTV for an entire month, trips my alarm to
shrill.
Recipe ideas, over a half-century of them, cork to the surface like soda fizz.

Each chorus of “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree” and “I'll Be Home for Christmas” transports me deeper and deeper into a rhapsodic trance that has my husband, Lee, shaking his head, mumbling and slanting me knowing looks.

“What?” I snap, stirring candy.

“You're doing it again.” He saunters past, sniffing the chocolate mixture.

“Why do you want to spoil Christmas for me?” I glare at his back. He just doesn't
get
it.

“I hate to see you work yourself to death,” he says, munching spoils from my fudge heap.

“Hey, I
love
working myself to death.”

At the same time, something deep inside concedes that I
do
actually go a little mad. I can't rest until I whip up thirty pounds of walnut fudge, fifteen pounds of Mounds candy, five gallons of Rice Krispies/Snickers balls (so the grandkids can, once a year, eat to their hearts' content), ten dozen peanut-butter balls, twenty pounds of butterscotch fudge, and—although I
swear
each year I'll not do them again—I cannot resist making several batches of yummy chocolate-toffee bars.