Category Archives: Holidailies

Cardinal Ornament

Sacrificial

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The tree stood in the living room, centered in the arch of the window, its branches unadorned – naked. Despite being both artificial and pre-lit it had been there for several days because Ellie insisted that even plastic trees had to acclimate before they could be decorated.

Cardinal Ornament

Several RubberMaid totes, their purple hue faded to lavender by time and dust, sat open on the floor, each filled with crumpled tissue in a variety of colors. The same tissue was re-used every year, until it was so tattered and thin that it had to be replaced. The ornaments – mostly glass, but some wood, some tin, and a few made of seashells – once cradled within were scattered haphazardly on the coffee table, two snack trays, and an end table that had seen better days.

For Ellie, decorating the tree had always been her favorite part of the season, as if a piece of holiday magic entered the room with every bauble placed on a waiting bough until – finally – the angel was placed on top, and Christmas arrived in full force.

This year, however, something was different. The air felt heavier, almost as if the house itself were holding its breath. The dogs seemed to sense it too. Mumble had been pacing anxiously all day, and Pork Chop hadn’t even barked at the mailman once.

“Are you ready to start?” Max asked, coming into the room, and causing his wife to jump.

“You scared me!” Ellie said. “And yes… I am.”

“Great!” Max picked up a small yellow ornament – a glass version of a rubber duck. “This guy looks like he wants to be first.”

“Wait!”  Ellie’s cry made her husband freeze in place. “Don’t forget the sacrifice.”

It was the phrase she’d heard every year from her mother, growing up, and from her grandmother as well. “It’s part of the tradition,” the older woman had reminded them every year, her voice quivering. But in all the years those words had been spoken, often during late-night conversations she hadn’t been meant to overhear, Ellie had never known what they meant.

Tonight, Ellie felt the weight of family history. Every year, one ornament had to break. Not intentionally but also not by accident. Well, not exactly.

“What do you mean ‘sacrifice?’” Max asked. He wasn’t usually part of the decorating process from the beginning. Instead, it was up to Ellie and her mother, and he’d come later and do the top section where they couldn’t reach. But Ellie’s mother wasn’t with them anymore, and she’d insisted that she couldn’t – didn’t want to – decorate the tree alone.

“Mom told me once that it’s for the tree. To make the magic work.”  Ellie frowned as she said it. The notion was absurd. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother might have been right. She looked at the tree: it seemed to loom larger than its actual size, the dark green needles casting shadows that looked like clutching fingers on all the walls of the room.

Fighting a shiver, Ellie told their smart speaker to play Christmas music, and she and Max sang along to Bing, Johnny, Burl, and Nat as they began to decorate.

Carefully, they began placing the ornaments on the branches. Ellie’s hands trembled as she hung a shimmering snowflake as high as she could manage. Every brush of her sleeve against the needles or clink of glass as the ornaments touched made her flinch.

As the hours passed, the tree grew more beautiful, but the weight in the air grew heavier, pressing down on Ellie’s chest.

“Is it time?” Max asked as they neared the end of their task.

The remaining ornaments were among the oldest in their collection, things that Ellie’s mother had bought for her when she was still a baby. This one was from her very first Christmas, and that one was from the year Max proposed. How could she choose one to be destroyed?

The answer came not from her, but from the tree itself. A low creak echoed through the room, the sound of the center pole groaning under an unseen weight. The branches trembled, shaking the ornaments as if impatient.

“I guess it’s now,” Ellie said.

She picked up an old glass cardinal with a chipped tail feather. She held it tightly, her hands cold even though the room was warm. Cardinals had been her grandmother’s favorite bird. Standing in front of the tree she reached to slip the gold thread around the branch, but the second she let go, it came loose.

It fell in slow motion, spinning as it descended toward the tile floor. When it landed, the sound was sharper than Ellie expected, the shattering glass echoing like a gunshot.

The music stopped. The room fell silent. The shadows around the tree seemed to shift, retreating as though satisfied. The air grew lighter, the oppressive weight dissipating until Ellie was breathing freely once more. Staring down at the tiny pieces of red glass, she whispered, “It’s done.”

Max restarted the music and went to get the broom. The dogs sniffed the air, then jumped onto the couch, settling into opposing corners.

And the tree? It seemed to hum with approval, its lights glowing brighter. Ellie even thought she detected faint movement from the branches… a bow of gratitude, almost.

Later that night, as she and Max sipped spiked eggnog in the darkened living room with only the tree lights for illumination, it occurred to Ellie that the broken ornament had meant more than just a ritual sacrifice. It was a sort of a pact. The tree would retain Christmas magic until the dawn of New Year’s Day, when the ornaments would be removed.

Still, she had to wonder: what would happen if the tree ever went without?

 

 

Special thanks to Kymm and Francesca for naming the dogs.
Merchild Christmas with Whales

An Excerpt from “A MerChild’s Christmas with Whales”

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Merchild Christmas with Whales

There are always Aunties in the Mermaid Coves. The same Aunties. And on solstice mornings, with landwalker-entrancing song and candy darters, they would send me out to play and I would glide through the swaying kelp searching for news of the Seven Seas, and always find a barnacle-crusted whale by the deep trench or perhaps a clownfish with its colors dimmed by the colder water.

Merfolk and sea-creatures would be swooping and diving, riding the current with bubble-blown sighs and salt-scrubbed faces, all shimmering pale, their flicking fins and glinting scales catching the reflection of the sun against the careless tides.

Fronds of seaweed and clusters of anemones were draped over the branching coral in all the grottos; there were jugs of briny nectar, and succulent shellfish, and too many varieties of plankton and cheesefish and shellcrackers. Crabs in their crusty coats skittered near the phosphorescent rocks and the bioluminescence lit the caverns, making them ready for tales and shanties galore.

Some few large mermen sat on carved couches without their ceremonial sashes, Uncles all of them, trying their new conch pipes – holding them at arm’s length then returning them to their lips, blowing mournful tones like muted foghorns then holding them out again as though waiting for a whalesong reply.

And those loving Aunties, not needed to tend the cauldrons of fish stew (or for anything else, really) perch on the edges of their limestone chairs, poised but fierce, ready to crack shell and splash tail, but also on guard for the impending arrival of Sandy Klaws.

With apologies to Dylan Thomas.
rompope

Cidre, Ponche, & Rompope

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rompope

Since it’s New Years Eve, it seems appropriate to talk about the three drinks that are used to celebrate Christmas in Mexico: Cidre, Ponche and Rompope.

Cidre is exactly what it sounds like: hard sparkling cider. Some people like it sweet, while others prefer dryer varieties, but either way apple is the traditional flavor.

And speaking of apple, there’s another apple-based drink that’s had at Christmas: ponche. Ponche – or punch – is sort of a cross between hot cider and wassail. It’s made with dried fruit (usually apple or pear), hot water, brown sugar, spices, when it’s done, you can drink it just like that, or add rum. The most traditional ponche is stirred with a stalk of sugar cane, but we just used a spoon.

And finally, there’s Rompope. This is a drink similar to eggnog, but it’s not as sweet, and it’s sold bottled with rum already mixed in. It’s also served at room temperature. Some brands have pictures of saints on the label, some don’t, but it’s a lovely holiday treat, and very festive.

If you’re wondering which is my favorite, I like them all, but I think Rompope is the one I like most. It’s one of those drinks that can soothe a sore throat and warm your entire body, with just a tiny sip, and while it’s usually available only for Christmas, we bought the last bottle in town for our New Year’s celebration.

Whatever you’re drinking tonight, I hope you’re safe and warm, and that 2020 brings you joy and peace.

Felices fiestas.

tamales

Tamales

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tamales

One of my favorite times of year is Tamale Season. Other people know this as Christmastime, Advent, or just the holiday season, but whatever you call it, from around Thanksgiving through the first of the new year, tamales are on the menu.

In Mexico, of course, they’re a traditional Christmas food, and Mexican tamales always come with an olive – with the pit still in it – in the center.

Some people say that the olive represents Mary holding the Christ Child within her, and some people say it represents all mothers and their future children.

But the reality is that whether they’re wrapped in cornhusks or banana leaves, tamales predate Christianity, so it’s more likely that the olive represents the seeds we plant for future harvests.

Whatever the meaning really is, I think we can all agree that tamales are a tasty treat, made more special by being limited to specific times of the year.

Felices Fiestas.

Mazapánes

Mazapánes

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Mazapánes

Like buñuelos, mazapánes only come out for the holidays. Individually wrapped  in either waxed paper or colored saran wrap, these are light, with an almost shortbread-like texture, made with peanuts, and just sweet enough that one is completely satisfying, though we could all easily eat five or six.

There is some debate about whether they’re a cookie or a candy (they feel like a cookie to me) and whether there is any flour in the recipe. (Most recipes only list peanuts, peanut butter, and powdered sugar, but they may not be accurate.)

The mazapánes we have were gifted to my mother by her friend An, who apparently makes masses of them every year. (An is a gourmet cook and loves to share her food.)

When Mom brought these around at her posada, all the Mexican guests immediately lit up, recognizing the special holiday treat. The American and Canadian guests had to be introduced to this new delicacy.

Everyone agreed they were delicious.

And An has promised to send me the recipe… once she figures out how to write it out in English.

bunuelos

Buñuelos

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bunuelos

Just as the Madrillenos (citizens of Madrid) greet the morning with churros and chocolate, the Mexicans have a tradition of eating buñuelos at Christmas time.

Traditionally, these are caseras  – homemade. You can’t typically buy them in stores, though sometimes you might pass someone selling them on the street. (We had Lupita make a bunch for us, both for the posada we hosted on Saturday evening, and to eat with hot chocolate this morning.) Also traditionally, you make them and gift them to other people.

So what are buñuelos? Well, they’re about the diameter of a corn tortilla, but they’re typically made of wheat flour, milk, sugar, and egg, fried into a light, thin, crispy crepe-like thing, and then sprinkled with cinnamon sugar while they’re still warm.

After that, you can dress them up, or not. The most popular thing to do is drizzle them with honey, but I like them plain, dipped in piping-hot cocoa.

They crunch at first, then melt in your mouth – just a touch of sweetness. But unlike churros, these are only made at Christmas.

Lupita's pico de gallo

Lupita’s Frutería

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Lupita's pico de gallo

This week, instead of fiction, I’m sharing some of the holiday traditions and experiences I’m having while visiting my mother in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

There is a store in El Centenario that you get to by turning off the highway at the sign with the flags and the simple descriptor “frutería.”

In English, this is a greengrocer. A produce stand. But Lupita’s frutería is so much more.

First, of course, there is Lupita herself. She’s a small woman with jet black hair and deep berry lipstick, and she talks faster, even, than I do, with a cheery expression that you cannot help but mimic.

Then, there’s her produce. She doesn’t always have everything you want, but what she does have is excellent. Sweet potatos. Bananas. Tomatos. Avocados. Onions. All the staples you need.

But the real reason people visit her store – the not-so-secret, super secret reason – is her pico de gallo.

Now, pico de gallo itself is not a difficult thing to make. It’s just tomatos, onions, chili peppers and cilantro, maybe with a little bit of salt.

Something about Lupita’s pico de gallo, though, is just… effervescent. Not literaly. It doesn’t bubble. But it tastes amazingly fresh, and it seems to carry with it the essence of Lupita herself. We bought a container of it on Thursday afternoon, and by bedtime, we’d finished the container. (I did not measure the container.)

My mother says there was at least one time when she got the last container Lupita had for sale that day, and saw other customers walk away disappointed.

Chips and salsa aren’t something you put out at parties here. It’s considered “cheating” to offer something that simple. But everyone loves them, and everyone eats it.

Especially if it’s the pico de gallo from Lupita’s frutería.

The Bacon Guy's Truck

Huevos y Tocino (Eggs and Bacon)

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This week, instead of fiction, I’m sharing some of the holiday traditions and experiences I’m having while visiting my mother in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

The Bacon Guy's Truck

In this episode, I want to tell you about huevos y tocino – eggs and bacon.

While La Paz, and my mother’s suburb, El Centenario, do have grocery stores, mini-marts, and corner stores, just as you find in the states, the locals, and most of the ex-pats who are mindful about where their food comes buy as much as they can from local vendors.

BaconIn El Centenario, that means if you want chicken or eggs, you call Alex. Alex also services the pools for a lot of the people in my mother’s neighborhood, but that’s just because he works hard. At his house, across the highway from my mom’s neighborhood, he raises chickens. You call him and ask if he’ll be around and tell him how many chickens or eggs you want, and then when you show up at his house (it has white gates) and he has harvested the chickens – killed, plucked and cleaned, and cut into parts if you don’t want them whole – or eggs (also cleaned) and you pay him. (It was  100 pesos for a dozen eggs.) When you’ve finished your eggs, you return the egg crates to Alex, for reuse.

Getting bacon (or smoked pork chops, ham, or chorizo) is a similar process. You drive to the bacon guy’s house. (I forgot to ask his first name, and everyone just calls him ‘the bacon guy’) His commercial truck was parked in his driveway. When we went, his wife was in the window of their laundry room, and she gestured us toward the back of the house, where the bacon guy came out in his butcher apron, and asks what you want, how much, and how you’d like it cut.

We asked for a kilo of bacon, sliced thin, and he brought us chunks of freshly smoked ham to taste while we waited. He put on fresh gloves and went to slice and package our order.

More baconThe ham was amazing, juicy and hot, a little salty, a little sweet, just as it should be. I considered asking for some, but we already had an overflowing fridge, and none of us really eat that much ham.

It only took him a few minutes, and when he gave us our precious package of meat candy, he also brought us paper napkins to clean our hands. The cost for a kilo of bacon was $120 mxp, or a bit over six dollars, US.

Truthfully, it’s a little hard to see slabs of raw meat hanging there, some cured, some waiting to be, but I believe that if you’re going to eat meat, you should be familiar with how it’s processed, just as you should be mindful of where it comes from.

Our huevos and tocino purchases allowed us to get the freshest ingredients, while also supporting local small businesses, and that makes me really happy.

La Paz

Getting to La Paz

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La Paz

During the holidays, instead of fiction, I’m sharing some of the traditions and experiences I’m having while visiting my mother in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. She’s lived here for a bit over 19 years, and we’ve visited her almost every year, beginning with her very first Christmas here, and while the city has changed, and she’s moved house a couple of times, and we lost my stepfather last year, we still embrace the combination of our old family traditions with the new ones we’ve learned here.

Today, I want to tell you about getting to La Paz. When we lived in California, we could fly to LAX and then take any number of airlines into La Paz, but now that we live in Texas (and there are fewer US-based airlines who land in La Paz at all) we fly to Los Cabos – that’s the collective term for the region at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula that includes Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo – rent a car, and drive up the Baja on old Mexico Highway 1.

There’s another, faster highway, but Route 1 twists and turns up into the mountains along the gulf coast, skirting through East Cape, where we always stop at Los Barriles for lunch at Roadrunner Café. Los Barriles has a huge ex-pat population – mostly folks from the US and Canada –  and the prices reflect that, but the food and service at Roadrunner are usually good, and there are clean bathrooms.

From there, we go through San Bartolo, El Triunfo (home of a piano museum), and into La Paz, around the bay to Chametla, where one of our favorite cafes is, and then into El Centenario, where my mom actually lives. These are their own towns, but they’re still part of the greater La Paz municipality.

A good portion of the trip is pigtail turns and switchbacks through the mountains, and we often have to stop while cows or goats cross the road, but it’s also beautiful, and it feels like a transition from home to vacation.

It’s a three-hour drive, but it’s worth the slightly longer trip.

37icicles

37 Icicles

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37icicles

Seventy-three cents doesn’t buy you much, but the price of love is difficult to measure. Take Ben and Anna for example. They’d met in San Francisco, at a café called All You Knead, when Anna had dumped a plate of spaghetti in Ben’s lap. Fortunately, he hadn’t been horribly mad. In fact, he’d found her apology charming.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s my first week here, and I overbalanced and… can I make it up to you? I could pay for your dry cleaning?”

“They’re jeans,” Ben pointed out. “No dry-cleaning required. A new plate would be fine… and maybe a towel?”

“Sure thing.” And she’d gone into the kitchen for new food and a clean towel, returned with both, and thought no more about it, until later, when she’d gone to bus the table and found he’d left a tip of only seventy-three cents and a note that read, “You’re wonderful, but this is all I had. Call me?” His phone number was scrawled at the bottom.

Anna never called him – to be honest, she’d stuck his note in her pocket and forgotten it, but fate had something planned for the pair, because he bumped into her – literally – at the laundromat a few days later.

“Hey, it’s you!” Ben said, and his smile caused dimples in his cheeks.

“It’s me,” Anna said. “Oh, you’re washing your jeans, right?”

“Um… and other stuff… and I have other jeans, obviously.”

“Oh, right, sorry.”  She hesitated, the offered. “Well, let me treat you to a load? I really am sorry about the spaghetti incident…” She reached into her change purse to give him some coins for the machines, and blushed. “I’m out of quarters,” she said. “I’ve only got seventy-two – no, seventy-three cents left. Here, take it… I owe you two cents.” Her dark eyes were glowing with amusement. “I swear it’s not the same seventy-three cents you left me.”

“God, that was the worst tip ever,” he said.

“Well, I sort of deserved it.”

“True. Look… I’m gonna be here a while, but there’s a café across the street. If you’re willing to keep an eye on my stuff while you’re folding yours, I’ll get us each a coffee.”

“It’s a deal,” she said. “Cream, no sugar.”

“Okay.”

Their laundromat coffee-date ended up lasting until the owner strongly suggested they take their bins of folded clothes and go home, so he could. He even held the door open for them, and he never did that.

Anna shoved her laundry basket into the back seat of her vintage VW Beetle, then turned to lean on it. “I washed your number…” she told Ben. “I stuck your note in my pocket and got busy… I go to the culinary school and between that and work, it’s exhausting…. And then I washed the jeans I’d been wearing that day…”

“Well, I could give it to you again.”

“Sure… or…”

“Or?”

“Come home with me and I’ll cook a meal for both of us.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

That dinner turned into dating, and an engagement, and marriage. During those years, Anna finished her program at the culinary academy and Ben got his business degree. Not long after their marriage, they inherited an old diner from Anna’s aunt Molly, and turned it into a coffeehouse with an art studio in the back. As business grew, they expanded their menu from coffee and pastries to bistro fare – soups, salads, and sandwiches. One thing that never changed, however, was that you could get a regular cup of coffee and a lemon cookie shaped like a crescent moon for only seventy-three cents.

Their coffeehouse wasn’t the only thing that flourished. Bella Luna became a sort of community center of the funky beach town where they lived – less than an hour from San Francisco, but a completely different world – with live music on Friday and Saturday nights and pick-up Shakespeare on Sunday afternoons. Their patrons weren’t just customers, they were friends, and even chosen family, and when Ben and Anna had their first child, a dark eyed, curly haired girl they named Marin, the coffeehouse folk became her aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers.

Life wasn’t always perfect.  The first year of the coffeehouse was a struggle, and they both took side gigs to bring in cash. Ben sold paintings and gave art lessons – business school had been a concession to his parents – and Anna took special orders for bread, rolls, muffins, and cookies.

The year Marin turned two, there was a tragedy of another sort. Anna always swore she only turned away for a second, and all of a sudden, the toddler had toppled the Christmas tree, and was on her ass in the middle of the bent branches and broken glass ornaments, crying her heart out.

Anna didn’t blame her daughter. Accidents happen after all, but some of her ornaments had been family heirlooms and couldn’t be replaced. While drying her child’s tears, Anna cried her own. The pair were still sitting on the couch when Ben came home.

They cleaned up the mess, had dinner, and put Marin to bed. “We can get new ornaments,” Ben assured his wife. “We can create our own heirlooms.”

And they did.

Each of the artists and students who used the studio created an ornament for Ben and Anna’s tree. Anna (with Marin’s “help”) made paper chains and strung popcorn and cranberries. The end result was eclectic, but also charming, and very real.

“It doesn’t shine, though,” Anna said. “I shouldn’t complain… but I miss the way the glass ornaments caught the twinkle lights and reflected them.”

“We could use tinsel.”

“No, if Marin or the dog get into it, it could be dangerous.”

“I’ll think of something.”

But the tree remained as it was until Christmas eve.

That night, Ben came home from closing the coffeehouse with a wrapped shoebox in his hands. Marin was already in bed, but that was okay. His gift was for Anna.

“Sweetie… you didn’t have to buy me anything.”

“I saw this at the church gift store… you know they’re always selling wreaths and ornaments during Advent. Old Gladys insisted on wrapping it. Open it, please?”

“Okay,” Anna said. And she ripped open the paper not much more daintily than Marin would have. Then she opened the box. Inside were a bunch of tree ornaments (hooks thoughtfully provided), all of the same type. Faintly pearl colored, mostly translucent, with a hint of glitter for shine. “Icicles!” she said. “You found icicles…”

“I saw them on the sale table and had to get them to you. You need your tree to shine.”

“How many are there? It looks like a thousand,” Anna said.

“Not quite,” Ben said. “There are thirty-seven.”

“That’s a really odd number for a collection.”

“Gladys said there were originally fifty, but some got lost over the years. She said make sure you count them before and after you put them on the tree.”

“After?”

“After you remove them,” Ben explained. “Some were lost because  they sort of hide within the branches. They never thought to count.”

“Makes sense. Help me put them on.”

And so, Ben and Anna hung the thirty-seven icicles on the tree. When they were done, Ben brought peppermint tea to their couch and they sat and watched the way the tree seemed to shine from within. The icicles weren’t obvious. They could barely be seen unless someone was looking for them. But they added the final touch that Anna had been missing.

They sipped their tea and caught up on the rest of the day’s news, sharing special things that had happened, and knowing their daughter would wake them up at dawn.

As they finally headed for bed, Anna mused aloud. “Thirty-seven icicles. You know thirty-seven is the reverse of seventy-three?”

Ben paused in the hallway and pulled his wife close. “See, it was fate. We were meant to have them.”

 

Special thanks to Mark, the Encaffeinated One for providing the first line.