Christmas Traditions

I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas traditions. I’ve been thinking about our family’s traditions and I think most of them revolve around food. I have a love/hate relationship with social media but I do wish that when my boys were children that I would have had social media to get ideas of how to make Christmas more meaningful to them. One of my friends told me a few years ago that their family has always made Christmas about Jesus’ birthday and they told their kids and grandkids that when it is their birthday they will get a lot of presents and their own birthday will be a big deal but that Christmas is not about them but about Jesus. They do give presents, they just don’t go “all out” like we did. I think that is a wonderful idea. Again, I wish I would have known her and known about their tradition years ago. One tradition that we have been able to keep through the years is to attend Christmas Eve services. It is probably my favorite thing to do.

Now to the food part. About 10 years ago we starting having prime rib for our Christmas meal. I have to tell you the first time I cooked it I was a little scared that I would either have it so well done that it would be like jerky or we would eat raw meat. I have to thank the internet for saving our prime rib. I believe I used a recipe I found of Bobby Flay’s. It turned out perfect. Over the years I have tried different recipes. They are all pretty similar, except maybe for a spice here or there but the main thing I’ve learned is that to cook a good prime rib you have to use a meat thermometer. I’m not going to tell you what degree to cook it to because that is a matter of taste but don’t be afraid to cook prime rib…just cook it to the temperature desired and you won’t be disappointed.

The meal tradition I remember most from my mother and my grandmother, Mimi, is that we always had homemeade rolls or biscuits. My mother made rolls and my grandmother made biscuits that would melt in your mouth. The problem now is that no one in our family has been able to duplicate either of them. I got close one time with Mimi’s biscuits but other times they have been as hard as a rock. My friend, Shanna says that I probably work the dough too much. I have better luck with my mother’s rolls but mine still aren’t as good as hers were.

I have 2 funny stories about my mother’s rolls. She made them often, not just for special occasions and she was very proud of them. One year at Thanksgiving my grandfather made the mistake of asking her where she bought the bread. The table got very, very quiet. She told him in no uncertain terms that she made “the bread” but that she would buy him a loaf of bread the next time she went to the store. The other story involves her recipe. The rehab center in Big Spring published a cookbook years ago using recipes from women around Howard County. Of course, my mother submitted her hot roll recipe along with a couple of others. I tried to make her rolls using the recipe in the cookbook and my aunt had done the same and neither of them turned out very well. We both told her that ours just weren’t very good and then she admitted that she might not use quite as much flour as she had put in the recipe. I told a friend that story and she said it wasn’t uncommon for women back in the day to share recipes with a change here or there so that when others made said recipe it wouldn’t be quite as good as the original! Mine aren’t as good as hers so I’m still wondering if there is something else she didn’t reveal.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and let’s all pray that 2021 makes us totally forget about 2020. What a year!

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. Matthew 1:21