All those Christmas Damn Cookies

Sometimes the best motivator is shame. I know, because I ate my weight in Christmas cookies this year. God– peanut butter blossoms, pumpkin-oatmeal, peppermint-spice, iced Italian short-bread cookies, and baklava– which I know is not technically speaking a cookie, but, hey, I ate that too.

So when my mother proposed going on a hike two days after Christmas, my inner shame said hell yes. Never mind the fact that my mother is not an outdoors person, or that we spend most of our bonding time in the mall, transversing flat, well lit, environmentally controlled terrains; I had eaten an entire tin of Dutch butter cookies, and shame said a winter hike was just the ticket.

Conditions were favorable. It had snowed the previous day, but it was supposed to be sunny and 45 degrees on the day of the hike (If you are currently living some place sunny and warm, you don’t realize that a 45 degree day in winter in Pennsylvania, is a gift from the Gods). The distance was pretty short by any standards, 1.5 miles, and despite the snow and the rocky terrain, a relatively easy go, unless you’re not an outdoors person (imagine a big red, blinking arrow pointing at my mother).

Still, the aforementioned shame. Our proposed hike was to Jacoby Falls, a 29 foot waterfall that was sure to be half-frozen, and a gorgeousness sight of cascading ice. To get to the trail, we followed the dubious directions of “Take State Route 973 along Wallis Run Road, go over the bridge, pass a farm, and there’s a pull-off”. Against all odds we found it, probably because I was not driving.

Getting out of the car, we prepared our bags consisting of cameras and cell phones and started our hike. It took me about 20 minutes to forget about the Christmas cookies and the shame and look around. The glittering snow dropping in clumps from the trees in the warmish air, the soft rush of the nearby stream, the winter light highlighting lime green ferns pushing through the snow. It was beautiful, and the farther I walked, the better I felt. I couldn’t hear the cars anymore or smell anything other than fresh pine and clean air, and it was such a relief not to think about anything except being grateful for such a perfect day.

My mother was having a different epiphany however. As we stumbled and weaved over concealed rocks and wet leaves, up and down narrow snowy paths fit for mountain goats, like a couple of drunk college girls after a night at the frat, she remembered why she didn’t like the outdoors or exercise. Each bend of the path that revealed not Jacoby Falls, but more of our winter paradise, brought a fresh round of muttering “This is ridiculous” and “I hate exercising”.

I didn’t help either, by stopping and taking pictures at every opportunity, so what should have taken a little over an hour took almost two and illicited several charming mother-daughter moments consisting of my her throwing her hands up in exasperation yelling “I’m done!” and me yelling back “You are not done!”. But in my opinion (and eventually my mother’s too over dinner that night), it was time well spent. When we did reach the falls, and we stood at the base looking up at the sparkling ice crusted ledges, plunging water, and translucent rainbows reflected in the mist, I can honestly say, that I’m kind of glad I ate of all those Christmas cookies, especially the Italian short-bread ones. They were good.

For the love of Christmas

As a kid, I used to love going to get the Christmas tree. My parents would trundle my sister and I up in matching coats, scarves, mittens, and boots and caravan with my aunt and uncle and their dysfunctional brood to some remote, windy, hill top farm to cut down our respective Christmas trees. My cousins, sister, and I would run from one tree to the next, each one bigger than the last, proclaiming this tree to be THE TREE. Of course THE TREE was usually 12 feet tall, seven feet across and wouldn’t fit on top of our car, let alone in our house. But that was what Christmas was too us– BIG and a preamble to a month of good food, colorful lights, flying wrapping paper, and loud, happy family gatherings.

As an adult, Christmas is BIG in a totally different way and the family tradition of going out to cut down the tree is just one more thing to do, one more thing to be squeezed into the schedule. So that now on top of working, going to the gym, laundry, and other banal domestic chores and errands, I must add writing Christmas cards, shopping, wrapping, baking, traveling, decorating, all while faking good holiday cheer.

Sitting in the car with my family, on the way to get the Christmas tree this year, anxiously jittering my legs, tabulating a mental list of everything to do, and asking my mom how long did she think this was going to take– I suddenly had a vision of myself trying to crush my own Christmas spirit, like a paper cup at the end of a party that I didn’t really want to attend.  It started with wondering more and more about how much of a difference can there be between the Christmas tree farm and the Christmas tree lot? Not much. And it would be so much faster to just pay for a cut tree and screw tradition. But why stop there? Fake trees really are more efficient, but do I really need a tree at all? Wouldn’t it just be easier not to get a tree? Because then I wouldn’t have to worry about decorating the tree and having to take down the tree in January, and oh January– the sweet, gray, cold, peace that is January! If only it was January right now– Agh! Stop it.

And that’s when I realized that for the love of Christmas, to just say screw it. Screw getting home early, beating holiday traffic, hitting the gym, and eating a sensible dinner. Get used to the idea that it won’t be perfect, it will probably be late, and that despite my best intentions and efforts, I will forget a present, overeat Christmas cookies, and be irritated with my family instead of feeling grateful and then feel guilty because of my lack of gratefulness and the aforementioned Christmas cookies. Getting a Christmas tree reminds me that Christmas doesn’t have to be perfect, organized, or efficient. I know mine won’t, but at least at the end of the day, I will have a tall, bedecked and twinkling Christmas tree to show for it; a monument to my love of Christmas.