Christmas tradition #1

December 26, 2007

December 26. The day I always want Christmas to be over, the tree down, the decorations down, the food gone. Everything. Sort of sounds bah humbug.

Christmas traditions are probably the ones that people hang on to the longest, long after they have given up all others. I often think that my kids' generation is giving up so many cultural and religious traditions as we all become more unicultural, some of it being dictated by the necessity of being politically correct. My home is filled with things that mean something to me, from my family or the kids' father's family. I keep thinking I am going to walk around and photograph all of them and put them in a file somewhere, explaining who, what, when, where.

Then there are the traditions that one thinks they should have but they don't. Two examples come to my mind immediately and this year strengthened all of my reasoning about why I don't observe them.

The gingerbread house. I always always thought that was something I should make but the time involved seemed daunting. I also am not a big fan of dry, hard as rock cookies so it seemed a terrible waste of baking. I couldn't separate it being a food from it really only being a decoration.

When he was here for Thanksgiving, Liz's friend Rich was lamenting that he always wanted a gingerbread house but never had one. Um, Rich, you are Jewish. Nevertheless, when I was grocery shopping about three days later, there is was. A gingerbread house kit. Everything already made. All you do is put it together. The perfect Christmas gift for Rich.

So I bought it and Liz called Rich to tell him he had to come over to get his gift. My only involvement in this project was taking pictures. First picture looks so cute, doesn't it?

These two pictures are the real deal, why I never ever will make a gingerbread house.

This is where the gingerbread houses belong-in the New York Botanical Gardens with the two elves inside.