ebook_24447_66514704 i sure do like those christmas cookies, sugar

7/30/2019 eBook_24447_66514704 I Sure Do Like Those Christmas Cookies, Sugar

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I sure do like those Christmas Cookies, sugar...


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Preface / Introduction

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Table of Contents

1. 'I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar. I sure do like those Christmas cookies, babe.'2. O Little Town... Christmas comes to Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 25, 2011. 12:54 a.m.20 degrees Fahrenheit. Winds W-NW 8 miles per hour.


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'I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar. I sure do likethose Christmas cookies, babe.'

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. I've got this day all planned. First, I'll finish this article and get it out to theawaiting world; then I'll finish my Christmas shopping. I've been well organized about it. So far, so

good; even the help at the other end of the telephone line, the people who take the orders, seembetter and friendlier this year. Maybe they're glad to have a job, even a seasonal one, with so manyunemployed and likely to remain so.

I've got an objective that keeps me focused today... and that objective is to help myself to somegood old, home-baked Christmas cookies... and not just one or two either. Diabetes be damned;Christmas and its cookies come but once a year.... and tonight I'll translate that into some seriousmunching.

One guy you may know who'll be helping me get in the mood is George Strait. He's called the "Kingof Country," his brand of music a toe-tapping mixture of western swing, bar-room ballads,honky-tonk style and fresh yet traditional Country. He seems a genuinely nice fellow, the kind of

man who in real life would give you a big smile, a strong hand shake, and a tip of his over sizedcowboy hat. Under the right circumstances, I could be persuaded to give him one of my Christmascookies... but not more, no matter how nice he is.

In 1999 Strait recorded a peppy little number by Aaron Barker called "Christmas Cookies." It's gotthe necessary "gosh, ma'am" twang factor and an infectious beat that'll follow you around the houselike your favorite dawg, "I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar." The tune is about how hewolfs them down before his sugar babe even finishes the sprinkles and the icing.... his good womanoutwardly chiding, but inwardly glad she has this big overgrown boy around the house; women likea little boy in their man... at Christmas and watching them down those cookies at record speedconstitutes proof positive that she's got one. "Ah, shucks, babe, I didn't mean to eat them all.... but

they were so good I couldn't help myself". What woman, and especially at Christmas, could takeoffense at that?"

No cookies, no Christmas.

Christmas for me means many, many things. Of the school pageant where my Midwestern schoolfellows shuffled through the first Noel all gawky embarrassment and barely suppressed giggles.

Of the all important trip to the car lot where one of those trees was ours... and no matter that it wasn'tquite symmetrical and never, ever of decorator quality. Our trees were mauled by love and had,from the very first moment, a family look... that became pure Currier and Ives when we tossed onthe tinsel; (we were too impatient to put it on piece by piece; clumps were more our style). And

when my father put the star on the top of the tree (and it was always the job of my father to do so),we all agreed, with our dog Missy reaffirming with her strident barks and capers, that this was thebest tree yet. And so it was... every single year.

Christmas was all about tradition... and no one was more traditional than the three children in ourhome.... and woe if such and such a thing done a certain way the year before should, by anunthinking adult, be done differently this year. It was done that way before; it must be done thatway now. This adamancy makes me smile when I think of it now. No army officer of ancientregiment could have been more devoted to the old ways and true than we were.

And this, of course, is where Christmas cookies come in. We were most dedicated to and unyielding

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about them, and not just because we always had the best cookies in the world baking in who's everkitchen we found ourselves. Quite simply, certain cookies with their unmistakable contours, tastes,and looks meant Christmas, and there would have been no Christmas at all without them.

The minute Thanksgiving was over...

I was born in Illinois in 1947, in February, so I was almost a year old when my first Christmas camealong. There were just three of us for that first Christmas, two young parents in their mid-twenties...and me, the apple of every eye with consequences still playing themselves out over 60 years later.The first cookie story I remember is so good I have to insert it here... even though it's not aboutChristmas, but says everything about my mother and her unceasing concern about my welfare andplace in the world.

When I was about three or four POM (Poor Old Mother) was so anxious that I have lots of friendsand assured position at our neighborhood park, that she sent me into that park alone (whilst shewatched anxiously from a distance), a backpack strapped to me and a big package of Oreo cookiesfilling that pack. So accoutered I became the bait that would ensure my popularity and socialadvance. There was a certain crazy logic to the scheme... and whilst I do not remember the incidentitself, POM told me years later, I was mobbed by moppets who were not about to turn down freecookies, whatever the strings attached. And so my charismatic career was well and truly launched...

... thus was the importance of cookies made clear... so much so, that I can never recall even a shortperiod of my life when I was cookie-less, and certainly never at Christmas.

Klotschkis

My grandmother was of English descent; my grandfather's was German. Yet neither English norGerman cookies were favorites. That was the klotschkis which truly symbolized the holidays.Needless to say as a boy I cared nothing for the proper description, where it came from, even howthey were made. I was simply mad for this one cookie, the cookie we only got at Christmas and atewildly, regardless of its astronomic sugar content and stratospheric calories. And I was not alone inthis. Klotschkis were everybody's favorite... and so my English-born grandmother bearing the name

of the great queen who died the year she was born, was kept baking what we all craved... and knewtoo well would be gone soon, severely to test our patience before returning.

This year thanks to Sharon Oshatz and fast Internet searches, I got the low-down on the klotschkis,everything but the taste; that I had never forgotten and needed absolutely no assistance to recall.

Klotschkis are simple Polish butter cookies festooned by various jams... particularly strawberry, andthe ones I remember best... apricot and prune. My grandmother always finished them with whiteconfectioner's sugar. She knew the importance of tradition, particularly but not exclusively to heryoungest relations; she never tampered with what she knew we wanted, expected, and would havebeen disappointed, dismayed and distraught had even the smallest particular concerning these

cookies been neglected or overlooked. And in her kitchen they never were. Though common sensewas.

The problem with traditions is that they all have the feeling of forever about them; that what onecelebrates today will necessarily be here to be celebrated tomorrow. Nothing could be less true... forevery tradition (like everything in the human condition) is doomed to fade, become uncertain andinaccurate, and pass on; and we humans are careless about such matters. We believe in "forever";when we should be working instead to ensure that forever, by working hard to avoid forgetfulnessand oblivion. And as a species we are just horrid at this.

Thus, in this year of our Lord 2011, I shall not have the joy of klotschkis, either the memory or therichness of flavor. My grandmother Victoria, as stolid and certain as Queen Victoria herself, would




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never be anything but forever; that's the way we acted... only to be upended by the predictable deaththat turns "forever" into a macabre joke. No recipe written; no recipe transmitted to her daughters,then to me and mine. If only she had said such and such amount of butter, so many dozens of eggs,blended in a bowl and baked for so many minutes. For without these simple directions, this cookie,made magic by Grammie, becomes the task of historians and archeologists.

Still this evening I shall do my best to recreate perfection, recipe in hand, high standard daunting butnot inhibiting. For I was there to sample this perfection in the first place... and I must try to recapture

it before I, too, cannot do so. I owe it to Grammie... my mother and siblings et al. And I owe it tomyself, too, because you see

"I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar I sure do like those Christmas cookies, babe."

Dedicated to Sharon Oshatz, colleague, friend, cook, on the occasion of her birthday. I didn't askhow many, because I know she's just getting better and especially appreciate the help she's given tomake me better, too.




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O Little Town... Christmas comes to Cambridge,Massachusetts, December 25, 2011. 12:54 a.m. 20 degreesFahrenheit. Winds W-NW 8 miles per hour.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. Before I left on my Christmas walk-about at not quite 1 a.m. Eastern today, I

turned on every light in my brilliantly lit house. On the lights in the hallway thereby exposing inradiance the wistful picture of a young 18th century prince of the House of Brunswick-Luneberg.Dead too soon, not even 20, he craves all the light I can give him, and that is much.

On the lights, all the lights in the Red Drawing Room, on the lights, all the lights in the Green Room,on the lights, all the lights in the Blue Room from where I am writing you now, where the chandelierthrows out over 10,000 facets of light. So the seller told me; I have long since given up countingthem... but their colors entrance while its welcome heat warms me...

What kind of mania is this that demands every light lit, every treasure burnished, everything bold,audacious, polished, warm and, to my uttermost ability, welcome?

Just this: It is Christmas Day, this very day, this day of days, to come but once and go... and I amalive, ready, eager to take myself from here and see how this 2,011th Christmas is evolving frommy vantage point in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I command all this light, first, to celebrate theadvent of this day and its great meaning, that on this very day, over two thousand years ago thePrince of Heaven was born, a boon to mankind, our sustaining hope unto the ages. And I want Himto know that He is welcome here... and always has been, though often I did not know or show it...

And, too, there must be light, an explosion of light, to welcome me home, for I mean to go out andsee for myself how this Holy Night is faring and what my neighbors may be doing.

Red hat, white fur, my lassez passer.

This is my 63rd Christmas; the year when my many friends worldwide, of so many climes andcountries, offer their advice freely before I venture out into the dark and cold. "Bundle up," saysMark Anderson. "Remember to cover your ears," proffers Dale Thomson. "Don't stay out too long,"offers David Mobile. Such words, each one on any other day lese majeste', convey care and love...and make me smile. A man like me knows well the warmth of such words and how to conjure them;they cheer the heart such as no fire can. Age hath its wisdoms and privileges; no one knows thatbetter than I do, and I crave them as surely as air or sun; and get them, too.

And so I put on the foolish Santa hat I was given by a young friend who looked raffish when hewore it, whereas I look just silly... but I know that wearing it out this night of all nights, will safelymark me as harmless, eccentric, a man who has imbibed too much of the grape, erroneous

conclusions to be sure, but useful when a man leaves his cozy house at midnight, and warm bed, too,to venture out into the piercing cold of a Bay State Christmas in pursuit of... but you must come outof your snug world and along with me to see.

Presents for me...

In the lobby of my building where I am now, I think, the senior resident or close to it, I see twoboxes for me. These neat parcels, festooned by words like FedEx and UPS and the numericmysteries of their tracking systems, firmly establish me as a card-carrying person of the middleclasses and of means; poor people shop at stores and carry home their packages, often on buses andlate-running subways. Mine ascend by elevators and are given by delivery men, exceptionally polite




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at this time of year, who say things like "Something else for you, Dr. Lant. Somebody loves you..."

But I have no time for such packages now... I have a mission.

Cold air, colder Puritan.

The cold of midnight is piercing but by no means the worst I have felt; the Internet weather report(the only place I go for weather intelligence anymore) says the wind chill factor is 10 degreesFahrenheit. I feel superior to that, and further plunges, too. I am glad to take it, and to know I can

still take worse; more evidence of my evergreen condition; of increasing importance as I get older...

The Cambridge Common, where by ancient law and privilege I could graze my cows (should I getsome), is vacant tonight... but the statue of John Bridge continues its austere duty, scrutinizing thelives of Cantabridgians, ensuring not that we are as worthy as he (for that is impossible) but that wedo not stray too far from his noble example.

Bridge was a Puritan, a man of God and God's affairs and ran these, no doubt to God's satisfaction,for Bridge's all-worthy career prospered in mid-17th century Cambridge. Such men, the very fibre ofmoral rectitude and self-assurance (my ancestors, too, for the nonce) made a point of destroying theolde English Christmas of "God rest ye merry gentlemen." Bridge would no doubt have disapprovedthe frivolity of my chapeau... and so I walked on, glad he was not coming to disdain my liberatedChristmas.

The artistry of ice.

Burdened by winter as I often am here, captive of the chill Atlantic and its perishing cold, I moreoften avoid the ice than consider it. Tonight I rectified this error and stopped to scrutinize therandom beauty of ice, frigid patterns that turned yesterday's puddles into tonight's etched allure. It isbeautiful, the kind of sharp avant garde pattern in black and silver a stylish billionaire might use todazzle every penthouse guest; here this transient beauty goes unremarked by all but me.

There is livelier fare across the street, when seven squad cars spurt police, busily at work at the maingate of Harvard College, just opened days ago from the thrall of the hapless revolutionaries whoOccupied Harvard, but not effectively or for very long. The police are out in force, a tow-truck at theready, a fellow human being in their arms, his Christmas and destiny to be paid out in hospital or jailcell.

I look instead at the statue of Senator Charles Sumner (1811-1874), a man of such austerity andrespectability that when he escorted Mary Todd Lincoln there was no touch of scandal at all, thoughhe was reckoned the most handsome man at Harvard and in Civil War Washington. I often wonderwhether the burden of such rectitude made him happy. Certainly his statue does not show it. He wascold in life, and perhaps the coldness of this statue is its truest aspect.

I prefer to spend my Christmas night with another Harvard man, the Reverend Phillips Brooks

(1835-1893). He is memorialized in Harvard Yard, but not in copper and stone. His is a memorial ofpeople, for the people who admired and loved him created in 1904 Phillips Brooks HouseAssociation, a student-run, community-based non-profit public service organization whose missionis the true meaning of this holiday, to give and give until it truly helps and makes a difference.

Brooks took the fine tune by organist Lewis Redner and graced it in 1868 with the words we know as"O Little Town of Bethlehem" and whose words are my prayer for us all this day, and every day.

"O holy Child of Bethlehem Descend to us we pray... O come to us, abide with us Our LordEmmanuel."

(Concluded and sent to the world as the author's gift, 5:05 a.m., Christmas Day, 2011).




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Resource

About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a widerange of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home businesstraining, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting,hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online

Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today.

Republished with author's permission by Elizabeth English http://LizsWorldprofit.com.

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