Holiday Traditions and Memories
Do you have memories from your childhood from holiday times? I do.
I remember my Mom baking every weekend. My Mom baked every weekend anyway. My Dad loved home made cookies and we always had to have some in the house for after dinner and for tea time. But, Christmas was special. My Mom made freezer cookies in different flavors, fruitcake, what she called Marshmallow Delights and sugar cookies with special decorations. My Mom was a great baker. I never really considered her to be a good cook because she couldn't make anything without a recipe whereas my Dad could throw a bunch of stuff in a pot and it always tasted different and good. My Mom could do that with sweet things but not with savory. My Dad made the best bread though. When I was grown and living on my own he would get up really early in the morning and make bread. Every time he made bread he'd put two loaves in a box and when my Mom left for work she would drop the box off at the bus station where it would travel via Bus Parcel Express and when I got off work I'd pick it up and we would have fresh bread that night with dinner. One of my biggest regrets was never learning to make bread the way my Dad made bread.
Both of my parents have now passed. My oldest son has memories of Grandma baking at Christmas time but my youngest does not. My boys are 12 years apart.
I don't make fruitcake even though I have my Mom's recipe however, I do make fruitcake cookies. I inherited most of my Mom's recipes and my fathers ability to throw things into a pot and have them turn out tasting great. I've even added a few new recipes along the way and adapted some of my Mom's old ones.
My Dad and I would walk the woods behind our house in the fall looking for the perfect tree for Christmas. We'd mark it with a strip of something so we'd be able to find it when the time was right. Then the week 
before Christmas we'd take the snow mobile out or we'd snow shoe out with the saw and cut the tree we'd chosen and bring it back to the house, shake off the snow and bring it inside to be decorated. We'd always take the tree down on January 6.
What brings these memories back is that I have been baking for the last few weeks for various parties and my youngest son decided he wanted to give his teachers home baked cookies this year. For the past years we have been making ornaments for his teachers but he has a few repeat teachers this year and wanted to give them something different. The smells have been pretty amazing and really brings back the memories of my own childhood. And, I hope they build memories for my children.
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