by Judy Handley | Dec 21, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 355: Welcome, Yule!
Date: Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High Temp 43, Low Temp 36 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
In Pagan times, the winter solstice was known as Yule. British author Susan Cooper captures the magic of this day in her poem, The Shortest Day. I read the poem every year on this day and celebrated solstice this year by inviting the Goldstones to dinner. We had seared ahi tuna with a fennel salad and the ultimate winter comfort food, mac and cheese and made a toast to the shortest day and longest night. I delight in the fact that tomorrow and each winter day following will have a wee bit more daylight than the day before.
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!
by Judy Handley | Dec 20, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 354: Getting Ready for Christmas
Date: Monday, December 20, 2021
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Cold; High Temp 33, Low Temp 29 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It barely got above freezing today, but at least the sun was shining. I wrapped presents and made a list of things that need to be done before Christmas Eve. Only three more ‘working’ days until Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 21, at 10:59 EST (15:59 UTC) the Northern Hemisphere will be the farthest from the sun which marks the beginning of the winter season. Tomorrow will be the shortest day and the longest night of the year. I am always happy to see that day end. What I love about winter solstice is that it marks the beginning of longer days. Yay! Heather, Jed, and boys are coming over for a solstice celebratory dinner tomorrow night, so my day tomorrow will be spent getting ready to officially, “Welcome, Yule.”
by Judy Handley | Dec 19, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 353: Revels and Boston Commons Ice Skating
Date: Sunday, December 19, 2021
Weather: Overcast Turning Sunny Late PM; High Temp 43 (Boston), Low Temp 24 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Shadow and I were up early to do our mile walk in the misty rain this morning. Then I left Shadow for the day to go to Christmas Revels in Cambridge with Heather and family.
We knew we would not be home until evening, so I asked my trusty friends Karen and Peter Baranowski to come over in the afternoon to play outside with Shadow. Shadow and I send a big thank you to them.
Fifty one years ago author and performer, John Langstaff, launched the very first Christmas Revels. Here is what he wrote in the program notes in 1971: “Long before there was a Christmas, man celebrated at this time of the year upon noticing the return of the sun to higher elevations in the sky. Pagan rituals sprang up around this event, later to become tangled with Christian lore, which called for a celebration at a nearly identical date. Folk dances, songs, and plays often blended and blurred the pagan and Christian traditions. The result was a unique type of expression that was both wild and holy.”
Each year since, with the exception of the year of Covid 2020, Christmas Revels has been performed in the beautiful Sanders Theatre on the Harvard campus in Cambridge.
Heather, Jed, Sam, Jonah, Ollie, and I thoroughly enjoyed this year’s production which takes place in the present day.
Usually, the audience is transported to another part of the world in a much earlier time. But this year, the ‘past’ visited the present at a 17th-century English pub, the George and Dragon, owned by an American couple and famous for its annual Christmas caroling party. I think it was particularly interesting to the boys as there were many references to the happenings in our lives over the past two years, including a plea for world peace and for reaching out in some way to the homeless among us. We all especially enjoyed the music played by the pub jazz band which was superb. It was a different kind of performance but still held true to the tradition of audience participation in the singing. That is by far the best part!
We attended an early afternoon performance and exited the theatre just before 3 pm. It was overcast and dreary when we entered, but the sun was shining brightly for our next adventure. We drove through Cambridge and across the bridge to the Boston Commons to go ice skate on Frog Pond. I was only an observer of this activity, but again, every one of us enjoyed it. I was dressed for the cold weather and sat on a park bench to watch the action. I could easily spot Ollie as he spun round and round the outdoor rink as he had on a bright blue tie-dyed sweatshirt.
The others were a little harder to find amongst the many merry skaters, but I eventually got good at finding them all. As the sun sunk slowly in the background, I got to also enjoy watching the color changes in the sky.
And we walked back to the van, we enjoyed the view of the State House gleaming in the setting sun.
As we drove out of Boston, we got to see a very dramatic full moon rising through the dark clouds. We had hoped to go out to dinner in Boston, which is our tradition, but due to the threat of Omicron, we cancelled our reservation at Fire and Ice and had a wonderful sushi dinner at home. After dinner, I helped Sam roll the cookie dough he made last night to make Chocolate Krinkles. Messy to make as the dough was very sticky, but delicious cookies which brought back memories for Jed as his grandmother used to make these same cookies. He doesn’t remember her dough being as sticky. He checked her recipe and it was the same as the one Sam used except his called for oil and Jed’s grandmother’s called for butter. Maybe we’ll try another batch with butter.
by Judy Handley | Dec 18, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 352: Christmas Cookie Frenzy
Date: Saturday, December 18, 2021
Weather: Overcast and Rainy; High Temp 46, Low Temp 40 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Weatherwise, today was the opposite of yesterday when it was wonderfully warm and sunny. Today it was overcast, cool, and rainy. A good day for making Christmas cookies. But Heather and gang went to Hyannis this morning to test drive a new vehicle possibility and ended up Christmas shopping their way home. I had texted Heather early in the day asking if anyone might be interested in making Christmas cookies and she replied that they were planning to do just that when they got home. But she added that Sam had deemed me the Cookie Woman saying they couldn’t make Christmas cookies without me. So late in the afternoon when they got home, we dove into a full out Christmas cookie making frenzy.
Now that the boys are older, all I had to do was hand them a recipe and they took it from there. I had made one batch of Martha Stewart’s sugar cookie dough in the morning ‘just in case’ they wanted to make cookies today and I put Ollie in charge of rolling out that dough and cutting out the shapes. I gave Sam a recipe for chocolate crinkles that are coated with confectionary sugar which makes them look like they are covered with snow. And Jonah got his favorite recipe which are Hersey’s Kiss cookies without the peanut butter. Sam was also in charge of the music and for the next two hours we all worked and sang and danced and made merry. Heather and I basically staid out of the way, only coming when we were called. But then Heather took the challenge of turning some little cube-shaped wafer cookies I bought into little presents by covering them with icing and putting a bow on with decorating icing. They will put those around a cookie tree the boys made out of the sugar cookie dough and sit it outside their gingerbread house that is yet to be made. We will continue working on this project after school this week and on Christmas Eve.
Tomorrow we are off to Boston to go to Revels at the Sanders Theatre, a beautiful concert hall on the Harvard campus. This is a tradition for us, but we haven’t been since 2018. In 2018, we went to both Revels and a Celtic Christmas, but in 2019 we decided to go to neither. Then, of course, last year in 2020 there were no performances. So, we bought our tickets for this year when they went on sale in October and when there was no Omicron variant. We are all very excited to go tomorrow even though we know it is a COVID risk. But everyone attending must show that they have been fully vaccinated and must be masked. We do hope our reveling will be done safely.
by Judy Handley | Dec 17, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 351: Beautiful Day from Beginning to End
Date: Friday, December 17, 2021
Weather: Sunny, Blue Skies, Warm Wind; High Temp 60, Low Temp 36 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
The weather today was wonderful—bright sunshine, Cape Cod blue skies, a warm wind blowing. I reveled in it and enjoyed my walk with Shadow wearing no coat. But all good things must come to an end. It will be almost 20 degrees cooler tomorrow and getting down into the 30’s for a daytime high by Christmas. I took advantage of the warmth to get the kayaks covered for the winter and I put in the snow stakes around the driveway. This will be my fourth winter here in the cottage and there has not been enough snow to plow since I have lived here. But with the unpredictable weather, I put the stakes in the ground ‘just in case’. Then I went inside to get ready for the evening.
Tonight, my dining in group met at Midge Frieswyk’s for an evening of French food and festive fun. Midge’s beautiful home was all decorated for the holidays and looked fabulous.
We started our food fest with delicious baked brie brought by Terry and Olivia and then moved on to a four-course dinner. Karen and Peter Baranowski brought French onion soup. Yum!
That was followed by Midge’s seafood and chicken crepes. Yum!
We then took a little break to share things people had brought for each other. I contributed an activity instead of a gift. I bought five jigsaw puzzles, each one with a scene from a different country. I gave one to each couple and one for Midge and one for me. The idea is to work the puzzle, take a photo to document your success, and then put the puzzle back in the box and bring it to the next dining-in gathering and trade with another member. This should keep us busy all winter. Midge gave each of us the cutest little chocolate mice and Terry and Olivia gave each of us a bag of Christmas baked goodies. Karen and Peter are going to keep us looking good with a gift of hand cream and lip balm.
The plan was to have salad after the main entrée, so we proceeded although we were all stuffed by this point. I provided the French country salade. We ended the evening with a yummy chocolate cake with caramel sauce made by Jane and Bruce. Double yum! Stuffed or not, it was wonderful to be together. Since the last time we met, Bruce and Jane have both had knee replacements and Peter had brain surgery. They are all doing great and for that we are all thankful.
It was a beautiful day from beginning to end.
