Tag: Christmas

so far from there

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A well-crafted cradle awaited at home:
masterful hands turned each wood post with care,
expectant love sewn into bedding and quilt.
But the night he arrived, they were so far from there.

Summoned to journey to prove their allegiance 
amidst rumors of vengeful tyrant kings, 
they cleared dung from hay for a bed in a trough
and shelter from what the encroaching night brings.

Family back home would have gathered to welcome
with kettles and blankets of comfort to spare.
But here, only strangers followed cries in the fields 
to a drafty hay barn, oh, so far from there.

This winter my heart is heavy and broken
amidst news of a vengeful tyrant king,
can’t rise to the joy on my twinkling bower
or wish for a chorus of angels to sing.

If I’m wanting for hope or assurance tonight
that the world turns towards peace and all that is fair,
I remember the family huddled in the hay
and all that they’d hoped for, so far from there.

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aunt sis’ dinky cookies

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I spent this afternoon conjuring my mother Aurelia Kempster’s memory, once again, as I whipped up a batch of her crisp little Christmas cookies. Each step in the making brought visions of her. It wasn’t just her handwriting in the photo of her original recipe that my sister texted to me. I could also see that diminutive woman counting 20 tablespoons of Spry, scooping the measuring spoons back and forth quickly as if she were forming quenelles, and tapping them into the mixing bowl. Rolling the dough into little balls and gently pressing a baby spoon of colored sprinkles into a small divot on top.

Mom’s cookies were never the flashy show stoppers on the cookie table, but their simple flavors dominated by nutmeg are Christmas to me. Some of my cousins (who, unable to pronounce Aurelia, called her “Aunt Sis”), referred to her cookies with a wink as “Aunt Sis’ Dinky Cookies” because of their size (and hers).

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aurelia’s fruitcake

Jim Kempster1 Comment
Aurelia’s Homemade Fruitcake

There’s magic in making a recipe that you haven’t tasted in more than 40 years, from a beloved baker who hasn’t been around to guide you through a recipe for a quarter century. It’s like finding seeds in an archeological dig and testing to see if they’ll grow.

That’s how it was making my Mom’s fruitcake this year during the COVID-19 holiday lockdown. Mom passed away in 1995, and this was the first time I’d tried making it myself. The recipe came by way of my sisters, with measurements like “a package of” that I had to guess at just how big a package Mom had used. I adjusted the recipe below with the way I measured the ingredients.

Growing up, I never knew that people didn’t like fruitcake, because I loved my mom’s. Aurelia Kempster made this moist, spicy cake with juicy fruit and nuts throughout. It always made the house smell of great holiday spices, and was a favorite dessert for me and my siblings.

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real christmas stories

Jim Kempster2 Comments

true lies

Santa came to our house on the eve of Christmas Eve each year, the night before December 24th, a whole day earlier than for everyone else I knew. My mom explained to us that there were way too many people in the world for Santa to visit on one night, so he had a special Christmas Eve list and we were on it. We also opened our presents ahead of tradition on Christmas Eve night, right after dinner, not the next morning like everyone else. But we didn’t ask for an explanation for that difference, not after waiting an entire day, from dawn to dusk, with unopened Christmas presents in the house.

Yes, later when we were older we learned that mom had practical reasons for breaking with tradition. She wanted to avoid squirmy children at church on Christmas morning. She had learned that, whether presents were opened right before or immediately after church, they danced too much in the eight wee little heads she needed to keep calm through Christmas morning mass.

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mandela’s peace and 1960s christmas

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Jim and Jane Henson’s handmade Christmas card from 1960.

Nelson Mandela’s death reminds me of all the great men and women who put their lives on the line for peace and justice, especial those of my childhood.

As a kid in Catholic grade school in the 1960s I was very aware of what the “reason for the season” really was. It was something more powerful than Santas kneeling before a manger, a fish on a bumper sticker, or a fight in a mall parking lot over being wished the wrong happiness.

We were taught that the message of the first Christmas was the longed-for good news of the coming of peace and justice to those who needed it most: the poor, the war-torn, the oppressed, and to ourselves when we recognize our humble role in the story. The great messengers of my childhood were not just from MY church or MY country, but from all over OUR world, and these men and women literally risked their lives for it.

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my first christmas dinner at bubba’s

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chocolatecakeChristmas of 1989, my first after having moved to New York City, would have been fairly lonely had my then brand-new-beau Bob not invited me to his home in Beaver Falls outside of Pittsburgh, PA to celebrate the holidays with his family, or should I say at “Bubba’s.” That’s what his family called his mother. Bob’s father’s side of the family was Serbian, and even though his mother is a lean, wise-cracking, back-woods Kentucky woman—someone who’s real name of Katherine or “Kitty” would have suited her better—nevertheless, as soon as her first grandchild was born, she was given the nickname “Bubba,” a Serbian term of endearment for grandmothers.

Now, Bob’s family is one of the wildest, most chaotic groups of people that this little son of a lockstep German woman has ever spent the holidays with, but that first Christmas at Bubba’s swirls in my memory as the wildest. Continue reading “my first christmas dinner at bubba’s” →

working-class heirlooms

Jim Kempster3 Comments

mom portraitMy sister Sally’s return address stuck out on the corner of the padded parcel envelope that someone had crammed into my mail cubby in the faculty lounge. I removed my gloves and carefully extracted the package from its tight squeeze, fearing that Christmas cookies, or what have you, might have been crushed. It was that time of year again. From Thanksgiving to New Years, my large family sent small gifts and packages to my work address in the City (the postal service in Brooklyn was not to be trusted), and most times the people at the elementary school knew better than to cram a package of cookies into a five-by-five-inch cubby.

As I freed the last corner of the envelope from the metal rim of the mailbox, I could tell that the contents were not crumbly at all. Rather, whatever was inside felt soft and pliable, like a small quilt or pillow. Continue reading “working-class heirlooms” →