the scent of Christmas

I don't know about you, but for me Christmas is all about wonderful smells. Whenever I smell certain things throughout the year they immediately evoke memories or just plain old warm fuzzies. Does that happen to you? For me the scents of Christmas are very distinct and they all remind me of family. Of course, there is the lovely, crisp smell of pine trees. Every year my family would go to the local tree farm, pick out, and cut down our own Christmas tree. You'd think that this wouldn't take a terribly long time, but for my family it was a momentous and LONG occasion. We'd bundle up in our warm clothes and trudge through the fields of trees examining each as we passed. There were 5 of us and we all had different tastes. One would find "the perfect" tree, but someone else would disagree, it was too short, the next "perfect" tree found would be vetoed for being too tall. Too fat, too thin, doesn't have long needles, needles are too long, has a branch missing on the back side, it went on and on. Eventually, we would all settle on one tree that everyone was satisfied with. If it wasn't the "perfect" tree it would be once we decorated it. If it still didn't meet someones specific requirements for the perfect tree then they had a whole year to plot their strategy for how they would get the tree they wanted next year. Usually, it was the bitter cold and thoughts of a hot lunch and hot chocolate that finally forced all 5 of us to come to an agreement. My dad would manfully saw through the tree and we'd or should I say, he'd, haul it back to the front to pay and strap it onto the car. Inevitably, once we got it home and put it in it's stand it was always so tall it wouldn't fit into the living room until we lopped of a little. I think my mom secretly sang, "I told you so. I told you so." in her head every year. So, yes the fragrance of fresh pine reminds me of cold winter days and family fun (hey who needs to remember all the fights and fits we had over picking the Christmas tree? Those temper-tantrums are long forgotten - at least by me, since I was probably the one throwing them.) This year Josh and I debated over whether we should get a real tree or buy a fake one. We hmmmed and hawwed over it, tried to purchase a fake one but returned it immediately when it was rung up at 2 times as much as the sign said. We tried to find the one in the price range we wanted, but after struggling through 2 conversations, in French, with 2 different store employees we gave up. And in the end we bought this cute, if tiny, live tree. See, it even fits on top of the table, which we decided was a bonus if our apartment decided to take on water again! Lucky for us we have great upstairs neighbors. Marion and Beat let us borrow their Christmas decorations, which they weren't using because they are going away for the Holidays. Yeah!! We had plenty of ornaments to choose from for our little "Charlie Brownesque" tree. I added some red ribbons I had and we had been smart enough to grab some string lights from a couple moving out of the country this summer.

The other smells of Christmas for me are those which emanate from the kitchen. My mother is a wonderful cook and an even better baker. And at Christmas time our house was always full of the warm, delicious fragrance of baked goods. Classic sugar cookies, which we would help decorate, orange rolls, cinnamon rolls, pies, chocolate crinkle cookies, haystacks, chex mix, you get the picture. There was always something in the oven creating wafts of mouth-watering smells. So, I thought to put myself into the true Christmas mood I'd have to fill my own kitchen with those magnificent and nostalgic aromas. Yesterday, I kicked things off by making some sugar cookies. I followed my mom's recipe with only some minor substituting. I might have mentioned this before, but I'm not sure, my mom used Crisco in EVERYTHING. I, personally, think everything she makes is fabulous so when I'm in the States I use it to. Unfortunately, I can't find shortening, or any close approximation, of it here. So, I use butter instead. When I told my mom this she sighed and said, "mmm....butter just makes them better!" I don't know if I agree with her on that, but maybe I'm just biased because I think mom just makes everything better!
Last night, I sat around frosting the cookies and watching White Christmas, my all time favorite Christmas movie. My DH looked at the screen and said, "So let me get this straight. You are watching White Christmas now and then you are going to force everyone to watch it again on Christmas day?" I replied sweetly, "of course." and that was the end of that. I mean really, who can EVER watch too much White Christmas? Not I.
And here is the finished product




I do have more to tell of my Christmas kitchen exploits, but alas that will have to wait till later. So, tune in next time to see pictures of the infamous Mama Collins orange rolls and cinnamon rolls. My first attempt at making these yummy goody - the ultimate aroma of Christmas!