Trimming Traditions

By Emily Chase

Celebration of Christmas demands that we maintain certain family traditions year after year. Some traditions satisfy the desires of eager children, while others protect exhausted parents. Here are five easy suggestions for trimming those traditions to fit the current season.

Decorating the house is the first challenge of the season. Stores begin decorating their shelves before Halloween so why not follow their example and get an early start? Combine Halloween costumes with Christmas themes and have your kids dress up as a Christmas wreath or an oversized Christmas stocking. When they come home, just have them hang the costume on the front door or over the fireplace mantel. Your neighbors have helpfully filled the stocking with candy treats so you can cross that chore off your list too.

Have you accumulated a mountain of cardboard cutouts covered with macaroni and glitter that your kids made in preschool? Your children are now in high school, and your family tree is beginning to look like more a bulletin board covered with post it notes. Start a new tradition. Recycle those ornaments! Have your children write notes on the back and send them to their former teachers as greeting cards. Think of the joy the teachers will experience knowing the child that emptied the entire bottle of glitter into the fruit punch still remembers them.

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Demise of a Salesman

By Emily Parke Chase

The salesman appeared at my home ten minutes before the hour and parked his car behind my own vehicle, preventing any possibility of my escape.  From his trunk, Jim (not his real name) pulled a week’s worth of luggage. The biggest box held a vacuum cleaner. Three other boxes contained miraculous attachments that would turn this machine into the Harry Houdini of housecleaning. As he entered my home, I mentioned that I already owned a Kirby.

“Really? How long have you had it?”   “About ten years.”  “Well, we’ve spent two million dollars improving the machine.”  Jim displays the new attachments, all duplicates of mine which are stored downstairs under a tidy layer of dust.  “Ah, but have you seen this?” He picks up a hard rubber attachment and wrestles it inside out. He works hard to make this process look easy. “Of course, this is new. It becomes softer after a few times. With the blower feature, this attachment can clean out a drain.”  Have I been negligent? Do people vacuum their kitchen drains weekly?  “Can I use it to plunge a clogged toilet?”  “No, if you turned the machine on, water would splash all over you.”  The picture of filth spewing all over me is unpleasant, but wouldn’t a plugged kitchen drain do the same? That drain gums up only when the sink is full of tepid greasy water. This device cost two million dollars and I still have to bail out the sink first?

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Persimmon Pie

A plastic bag full of persimmons appeared at our doorstep while we were out one October morning.  An attached note explained that the bag contained fresh persimmons and that the fruit was sweetest when the skin was slightly wrinkled.  Those wrinkles should have been my first warning.  Never having eaten a persimmon before, I was intrigued by the small round fruits.  How did one prepare them?

I remembered how a newlywed once called my mother for cooking advice.  The woman was having trouble preparing an old family recipe for stewed chicken.  “Mrs. Parke, the recipe says to put the chicken in a kettle, cover with water and simmer for two hours.”  The directions seemed simple enough.  My mother asked what the difficulty was.  “I can’t get the chicken into the kettle.  It won’t go past the spout.”  Suddenly we realized that the young woman was trying to squeeze the chicken into a teakettle!  Now it was my turn to seek advice.  Because my mother was no longer alive, I called an older experienced cook, Ruth, to see if she could suggest a recipe that would use the fruit.  In her eighties, she had a lifetime of wisdom.”  Oh, my husband Bob loved persimmon pie!  He always ordered it whenever we went out!”  Ruth continued, “I’m sure I had a recipe for it once.  I’ll look for it and get back to you.”  The next day Ruth called to say she couldn’t find the recipe.  That should have been my second red flag.  Instead, I pushed ahead.

I typed “persimmon pie recipe” into the search field of the browser on my computer, and sure enough, the browser promptly provided a link to a recipe.  I printed it out and headed to my kitchen.  The recipe called for two cups of persimmon pulp.  There were no directions on how to transform the whole fruit into said pulp, but I washed the fruit, removing the stems and a sharp little thorny stub at the base of each fruit.  Did I need to remove the skins?  The recipe didn’t say.  (Was that yet another red flag waving on the horizon?)  I reasoned, when the whole fruit was only the size of a walnut, what pulp would remain if I tried to remove the skin?  I decided to leave it on.  As I began to mash the fruit into pulp, however, I discovered that each little persimmon contained several large seeds.  Some had as many as five seeds, and by the time I carefully removed these obstacles, what remained in my mixing bowl was something less than the required 2 cups of pulp.  Persevering, I added the remaining list of ingredients – sugar, cornstarch, milk, and an egg.  The result was a mixture that looked like custard with peach-colored flotsam floating on top.  The mix might not be attractive, but it smelled palatable.  I poured the whole business into a fresh unbaked pie crust and tucked it in the oven.  An hour later, the sweet fragrance of persimmons flowed out from my kitchen to the living room where my husband was reading.  We both were anxious to taste the results of my labor.

After allowing the pie to cool, I carefully sliced a piece for each of us and carried it to the table.  How can I describe the flavor of this exotic dessert?  Honestly?  The crust was tender, flaky, and delicious.  The filling?  It was sweet and chewy.  Especially chewy.  Chewy, like caramel-flavored bathing caps.  I called my friend Ruth once again and invited her to come try a piece of my pie.  “Tell me, Ruth,” I asked as we sat at the table, “what was it that your husband liked about persimmon pie?”  My friend smiled.  “Oh, Bob never actually got the pie when he ordered it.  No restaurant ever served it.  He just ordered it to tease the waitress.”  I should have guessed.  Bob was notorious for playing jokes.  When Ruth had told me the day before that she once had a recipe for persimmon pie but could no longer find it, I should have been suspicious.  And now, after tasting my pie, I understood why.  Proverbs 12:11 “A hard-working farmer has plenty to eat, but it is stupid to waste time on useless projects.”  (NLT)

Mysterious Maladies

By Emily Parke Chase –

My toddler woke up with small red blotches covering his chest. Measles? An allergic reaction to a food? Poison ivy? What caused this mysterious rash? I wasn’t sure but my son was scratching vigorously.

We headed to the doctor’s office in search of answers. Entering the room, wearing his white lab coat, the doctor exuded an air of authority. He scrutinized each spot and asked a few questions. Then he pronounced his solemn diagnosis: “erythemia punctalis.”

My knowledge of Latin is limited but it was sufficient to translate this brilliant piece of medical insight. My son had “red itchy spots.” For this wisdom I could now proceed to the check-out desk and render up a co-pay. The spots disappeared on their own several days later.

Fast forward through twenty-three years of scientific research and medical advances.

One day earlier this winter, my son discovered that his torso was again covered with red itchy spots. He observed them over several days. They did not spread. But they did not go away. They itched and distracted my son whenever he wore a shirt.

Once again my son headed to the doctor’s examination room. Once again, an all-wise physician entered, exuding confidence.

My son removed his shirt to reveal the full extent of the rash. The doctor hemmed and hawed. He peered at the back and walked around to the front. With a sagacious nod of his head, he helpfully announced, “It’s pityriasis rosea.”

That is Latin for “inflammatory skin rash.”

“And what caused the rash?” my son asked.

“We don’t know what causes it.”

“How did I get it?”

“We don’t know. It is not contagious.”

“So it’s a mystery?”

“Oh, no. It is not a mystery. It’s pityriasis rosea.”

“But no one knows how I got it.”

“Right. It just happens to some people when they become young adults.”

“So it is a mystery.”

“No, no. I tell you it is pityriasis rosea.”

“How long will I have it?”

“No one can say. It might go away in a few days. It might last six weeks. It might come back again. No one knows.”

“So it really is a mystery, right?”

The doctor shook his head vigorously. “No, no! I told you it was pityriasis rosea.”

The wise physician removed his latex gloves, jotted a note on my son’s chart and walked out of the room.

And my son? He put on his shirt, picked up his paperwork and headed to the check-out desk to pay his bill. His rash cleared up after a few more weeks of therapeutic scratching.

Medicine with or without Latin — it’s a mystery.

“Laughter is good medicine for the soul” (Proverbs 17:22, paraphrased).

(The only thing contagious about this author is her sense of humor. Visit her at emilychase.com to learn about her books, such as Help! My Family’s Messed Up!)

Handle with Care

By Emily Parke Chase –

What college student does not delight to open up his or her mailbox and find a request to pick up a package at the desk?  Thus I bounced from my mailbox to the counter, and the woman in charge handed me a small brown carton swathed in tape.

This was the first and only time in all my years at college in Ithaca, New York that I had received a care package from my home in Arizona.  I eagerly tore off the wrapping to reveal…a box of candied apricots.  Apricots? My pleasure in receiving a package turned to confusion. What was my mother thinking?  But here in my hands was a tray of shiny apricots, each glazed with a thick sugar syrup coating.

My friends had received stranger gifts from home.  My roommate’s mother once sent an envelope full of little packages of ketchup and mustard that she had picked up with her order at a fast food restaurant.   Perhaps she thought we would find them handy in our campus residence hall?  And we might have used them but she forgot to write “hand cancel” on the envelope, so they went through the automatic cancellation process. The machine pressed the contents flatter than the postage stamp.  Red and yellow stains obliterated all but the address.

Another thoughtful mother mailed an Easter basket.  She went to her local K-mart and picked out a large basket filled with chocolate bunnies, plastic grass and marshmallow eggs, all wrapped in single sheet of cellophane.  She tied a tag to the handle and dropped in in the mail.  I can only imagine that the postal service accepted it as a challenge.  In my mind’s eye I see each carrier setting the basket on the seat next to him in the truck, handing it gently to the next person, and the final mail carrier delivering it in triumph to our dorm.  Not a jelly bean was jostled out of place.

Still, as I looked at the strange gift in my hands, I wondered what had prompted my mother to send this package of fruit.  I did what any intelligent Ivy-League student would do.  I called home.

“Hi, Mom.  I got your package today.”

My mother chuckled, thus confirming my suspicion that a story lurked under that sickly sweet glaze.

“Your brother just moved out of his apartment in California.”

I knew my brother was leaving the country for a year.  He was driving across the country before taking a flight to Greece, and was stopping to see relatives along the way, including my folks in Phoenix.  Mom explained that he found the apricots at the back of a cupboard in his kitchen, and rather than toss them, gave them to her.  She didn’t know what to do with them and so she mailed them to me.

With a saccharine smile, I thanked her for thinking of me and hung up the phone.  Unlike her, I knew exactly what to do with these super-sweet fruit-flavored sugar cubes.

My brother was due to arrive in Ithaca the next week.

“How sweet are your words to my taste, they are sweeter than candied apricots” (Psalm 119:103, paraphrased).

(Send all care packages to the author at emilychase.com and read about her books, including Help! My Family’s Messed Up!)

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