Talk Thursday: Once Upon A Holly Berry

For me, Christmas is all about family and tradition. I can't think of anywhere I would rather be during the holidays than in my mom's kitchen chatting as she stirs something bubbling on the stove with a Kahlua in my hand and Christmas music playing lightly from the other room. I even love that I hate her annoying-as-fuck Christmas clock.

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without my mom. There has always been other people around during the holidays, but it's still all about us. (At least in my mind)

When I was in elementary school, mom and I used to paint Christmas scenes on store windows and stuff all around town. I lived for this.. Not because I'm overly artistic (cuz I'm not) but we just had a lot of fun. It was kind of like the kick off to the holiday season.

Every year mom and I would drive an hour to go to the tree farm, walk through and pick out our tree, and chop that sucker down. Hmmmm except for the year we got the live tree. LOL. The tree was actually not bad, but the problem is that you have to figure out what to do with the stupid thing after the decorations are removed. I think ours lived in it's pot for another year then finally found a spot in the front corner of our yard. The tree never grew much. It pitifully stood there for years as a sickly reminder to all those stupid soft hearts out there that sometimes it's kinder to kill the damned tree.

Every year my mom and I would go out to my grandma's and cut holly (see a very weak tie-in to the topic) and cedar and mom would decorate around the windows with them and lights and it looked so wonderful and Christmasy.

As I got older, we became bakers- breads and cookies and candies and liquor. Truth be told, this is probably where my love for cooking comes from and though I'm a wiz in the kitchen, my first passion is baking. We made pumpkin bread and apricot-cranberry bread, sugar cookies, gingerbread bears (cuz men are just too passé), peanut butter balls, chocolate covered cherries, and toffee, and mom makes Kahlua. And the cherries... OMG... lemme tell you about the cherries. Mom would go around February and get a big ass gallon jar of maraschino cherries. She'd drain out most of the liquid and top it off with brandy and let it sit for the next ten months. BOY HOWDY. Like ten and you were trashed. As I got a little older, I discovered that the cherry flavored brandy tasted great in a coke.... or a slurpee. There were a few Christmases toward the end of high school that I was a little suprised there was still brandy in the jar come December.

Growing up, Christmas wasn't a holiday, it was a season that usually started the weekend after Thanksgiving and, if we were lucky, we were able to stretch it until right before our birthdays in February. I hate that I live in a different town and Christmas with my mom has pretty much been reduced to 1 day, maybe 2. I hate that I haven't given Burp a sense of those traditions. We kind of have one.. We usually invite some friends and go to Dutch Bros and get something warm to drink and stop and buy some cookies and drive around listening to Christmas music and look at Christmas lights. It's fun and he always looks forward to it. He also looks forward to doing the surprise stocking stuffer with grandma. And crazy Christmas socks. HE LOVES THEM!!

My very favorite part of Christmas is looking for the perfect gift for each person. I love it. (I wish I could be a professional shopper... I could get into that) If I could have a Christmas wish granted, it would be a whole week at my mom's for Christmas, and enough money to buy what I really wanted for people.

Regardless, I love Christmas..... as much as I try to pretend it isn't coming this year.