With the holiday season here again, many of us look for creative ways to produce festive gifts, decorations, and treats for home and work. December this year includes the holidays of Yule or Winter Solstice, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. (This year there is no major Islamic holiday in December.) Even those of us who don't celebrate any religious tradition still tend to eat special foods, drink a little something special, party, or at least enjoy a few days off with family or friends.
Candles
In keeping with the fact that this is the darkest time of year and that the winter solstice marks the turning point of the year when the light begins to grow stronger again, all these festivals traditionally involve candles and candlelight. These are often represented now by the festive white or colored holiday lights we string about so abundantly, but candles and their warm light are still an integral part of the season.
Candles can be quite expensive when purchased at the store, but for those with a little time to spare, candle making is not that difficult, or necessarily that expensive. With plenty of adult supervision, it's a great creative craft for kids, but grown-ups too can take pleasure in a craft which can result in creations ranging from a simple square milk-carton candle, to hand-dipped candles, or even incredible multi-layered, multi-colored carved designs. There are plenty of books and websites out there to guide the novice, and if you have children it's easy to find projects geared to their level, yet guaranteed to provoke oohs and aahs from the recipients of their creativity.
Sugar Plums
Sugar Plums are a treat from my English heritage, associated with this winter holiday for
some time. If you go out hunting on the web for a recipe, though, you'll find plenty of
recipes that don't even include plums! Mistress Renata Kestryl of Highwynds
(a.k.a.Sharon Cohen) has a great historical recipe for
preparing Elizabethan sugared
plums, which I found at florilegium.org.
There is also great stuff at Gode Cookery, where you can
find all sorts of medieval and Elizabethan recipes.This site is a lot of fun. You can
find recipes adapted for the modern kitchen as well as rather scholarly treatments.
Gentyll manly Cokere, for
example, includes facsimiles of recipes from the original manuscript. This author, who
plans to publish his work, says these are "Culinary recipes from Manuscript Pepys 1047
'Miscell. of Receipt's/M.S.S. Temp. R. Ed. 4', a late 15th century collection of recipes
and remedies found in the library of Samuel Pepys."
Gifts and Toys to Make
Some of us are extremely handy and knit, sew, tinker, and create with great facility, but for those of us a little less gifted who still want to make gifts for or with family and friends, there are kits. Hearthsong is just one of many companies offering all sorts of intriguing kits for activities such as soapstone carving, beadworking, ribbon weaving, and mask-making. I was also amazed to find instructions on eHow showing how to creatively recycle those old CDs into a fab disco ball. Just in time for those holiday soirées!
When visiting the Jewish Outreach Institute site, I got sucked into playing their dreidel game. After a bit of searching I found nice clear instructions showing how to make a dreidel, should the virtual fun pall or my spouse demand the use of the phone.
And speaking of the actual world, I stumbled across a book in the Knight Library stacks that had the appeal both of nostalgia and of actual practicality—in some cases, too much so! At TT160.B358 1983 is the centennial edition facsimile of The American Boys Handy Book. This thick and copiously illustrated tome gives detailed directions for things such as how to make kites that look like men, women, frogs, butterflies, fish, and turtles, as well as "The Chinese Dragon Kite". There's a section on home-made fishing tackle, and even home-made boats (of the raft variety). Obviously either parents were more sanguine about their children's chances of drowning, or the author secretly hoped to rid the world of a few brats. Still, I'd love a chance to pilot the "Man Friday"—in a swimming pool...with a lifeguard.....
Some of the recommendations in this book are downright dangerous, such as tying an open candle lantern to the tail of a kite, and others are unlikely to appeal today (the chapters on traps and trapping, practical taxidermy, and bird nesting spring to mind). Others look like they'd be a lot of fun in the right climate, perhaps east of the Cascades, where snow forts could actually be built from snow. The book is a product of its times, but the kites look pretty cool even today. Plenty of old yet still interesting information on handicrafts, including how-to books, can be found in the Libraries in the TTs and NKs. Browsing in the GV1200s to 1500s can be amusing as well if you're looking for some old-time games to liven up your next gathering. I must admit I look at these for inspiration, and then head to the store or the public library for something newer with color illustrations promising that the project is "fool-proof".
Food and Drink to Enjoy or Give
A few years ago, some departments in the Libraries got very involved in making gingerbread houses, and we had a lot of fun with it. Most of us used edible ingredients, and I belive some people even baked the gingerbread that made up their creations. "Gingerbread" seems to cover a variety of items, from the hard flat cookies suitable for houses or tree ornaments, to my own recipe for a soft, cake-like bread. With its warm spices of cinnamon and ginger, gingerbread is the perfect item to make and eat at this time of year. Interestingly enough, a recipe for gingerbread at my new favourite site, Gode Cookery, actually lacks ginger! It does seem to have great plasticity though, which might make it a good choice for this year's gingerbread sculpture.
Some people give the gift of fruitcake, a gift either adored or despised. But very few people seem to despise the gift of chocolate. Nearly everyone has a chocolate chip cookie recipe they swear by, and a nice airtight tinful of cookies might be the perfect holiday gift. Cookies freeze well, so even if everyone is sick of sweets in December, come March that lovely tin in the freezer will look very appealing! One person I know often makes brandied fruit and fruit liqueurs. Also known as cordials, these are easy to make. Cordials from Your Kitchen : Easy, Elegant Liqueurs You Can Make & Give by Patty Vargas looks like a good guide to this old-fashioned but delicious undertaking.
For those of us not keen on alcoholic drinks, though, that old standby, hot spiced cider, is still perfect for these cold days and nights. I like to put a big kettle on the stove and fill it with apple cider or juice. Add a sliced orange and at least one sliced lemon to keep it from being cloying, a couple of cinnamon sticks, some allspice, and cloves, and it smells like home! Some like to add cranberry juice to the cider; if you do, you probably don't need the lemon.
One of my standby party foods for the holiday season is a cheese log. For some reason I don't make this at any other time of year. Cheese logs are really easy to make, though a bit messy. My version involves a lot of neufchatel cheese, about a fifth as much blue cheese, worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, thyme, and big globs of whatever home-canned chutney I tend to have on hand (thus adding bits of tomato or fruit, and raisins, into the mixture). I mix it all together and turn it out onto waxed paper covered with chopped toasted nuts. Rolling it about in the nuts with your hands is messy, but necessary to cover every surface with nuts. I then wrap the log or ball in clean waxed paper and put it in the fridge to harden up. Leave it for a day or so for the flavours to meld. I've never heard anyone say they didn't like this, and I've never had leftovers no matter how large I made the log!
The holidays can be a stressful time, but picking just one or two things to make as gifts, or a couple of foolproof "standby" dishes for parties at home and abroad, can both satisfy the creative urge and keep the stress level down, while inspiring the admiration of friends and family. And if you are feeling really adventurous, check out the Boys Handy Book for instructions on making this cool "wind skater" and head for the nearest outdoor ice!
