Columnists
HO HO HO or OH OH OH
December 2025 is being kind to me and I thought I’d share some of my holiday, teachable moments with all y’all.
In 1969, LOML and I spent our first Christmas together as a married couple. We had a nice apartment. I had a good job. He was working part-time and attending university full time. We didn’t have a lot of money to spare. Let me revise that. We didn’t have any spare cash after rent, utilities, vehicle expenses, books, tuition and food. We set a budget for the holiday season, but forgot to include the cost of a Christmas tree. Lots of people suggested since we lived so close to our families we really didn’t need a tree. But we did. We needed a tree.
So, our very first holiday tree was purchased at the Miracle Mart at Jane Street and Wilson Avenue, in the Big Smoke. It is made of green, sparkly tinsel and wire with a teeny, tiny gold coloured stand. It is probably less than a foot tall, perhaps has twelve branches (which wiggle), but over the years has always had a place of honour in our home. The tiny, red price sticker reminds me it cost 99 cents. Not too many years ago a holiday visitor to our home commented on “the tree”. He suggested it was probably time to throw it out. I was about to waste my breath on him about the sentiment attached to our sparkly tree, but decided against it. The little green tree means a lot to us. Surprisingly, that first year I received a Christmas bonus of one hundred dollars, that helped to pay for a “real tree”. A real tree which my youngest sister and my husband cut down one rainy, muddy December afternoon. Both of them were on Christmas break from their studies at the time. I came home to the smell of pine and a front hall fully of muddy footprints. It was a glorious day. When we didn’t think we’d have one holiday tree in 1969, we were blessed with two. We couldn’t afford a string of lights or store-bought decorations, but we had two trees. In 1969, most of our decorations were homemade or slightly broken cast-offs from our family and friends.
And, it was during our first Christmas together I learned that a “cup of butter” wasn’t the same as a pound of butter. While LOML was at his evening job, I decided to “Betty Crocker” a batch of shortbread cookies. In that moment HoHoHo became OhOhOh. A pound of butter cost thirty cents at Steinberg’s and I had splurged on two pounds of butter for cookie baking. Having grown up in a large family, you would think I’d have known how to bake cookies! Well, I knew how to bake them but I was clueless about actually “making them oven ready”. My mom wasn’t a measuring kind of baker. Her methods didn’t work for me and I didn’t know much about following a recipe until I attempted to bake cookies, for the first time, on my own. A charred, buttery, shortbread soup was my first batch of cookies out of my overly hot oven on that festive evening. No mistakes made, just a lesson learned—follow the recipe. LOML never witnessed the mess and by the time he got home I’d managed to bake a batch of slightly burnt sugar cookies by actually following the recipe in the Betty Crocker book (a book I still have) and by actually using measuring cups and spoons as suggested by my Sister-in-Law— who was raised by a woman who followed recipes. The sugar cookies hardly stuck to the baking trays at all. Greasing and flouring was another lesson for another baking session.
Over the years I’ve learned a lot about holiday baking. First and foremost, read the recipe, follow the instructions. Secondly, have fun. And, holiday baking should involve at least one other person. That person should be rather young (or young at heart) and be crazy about sprinkles, cookie cutters, icing, chocolate chips and powdered sugar! Holiday baking in our kitchen, now, often involves one of the grandkids. The oldest one is a stickler for “rules” but loves to decorate with wild abandon. The youngest doesn’t care about the rules and there’s nothing he loves more than copious amounts of bright red or green icing and as many sprinkles as is humanly possible to lavish upon a hapless cookie, or cupcake.
My advice to all of the holiday bakers is to have loads of fun. For goodness sake don’t try to make holiday recipes healthy—that’s what 2026 is for. Use measuring cups and spoons. Wear an apron. Arm everyone with a candy cane. Preheat the oven. Let the sprinkles fly. And remember to eat at least two cookies every day, during December, to keep the doctor away.
Comments (0)