Genealogy Jottings

Who can remain uninterested in holiday foods this time of year? This subject lies at the heart of the Christmas season.

In the home where I grew up, Christmas baking began shortly after Thanksgiving. With four children plus grandmothers who always visited for a week or two during the Christmas season, my mom needed to have lots of snacks ready. We baked, and then we baked some more.

Chocolate chip cookies remained everyone’s favorite, and we mixed up quadruple or even quintuple batches. We also baked decorated spritz cookies in several colors. For these we used a hand-powered press containing stiff, refrigerated dough. Each person took a turn manning the press when the previous baker wore out. We displayed the finished product in large clear jars. We also liked to have candy around at Christmas time, too, so we usually made a big pan of fudge and put out colorful ribbon candy.

The biggest baking marathon took place when we prepared the traditional Scandinavian treats. For the fried bread called fattigmand, we prepared the rich dough with a dozen eggs, brandy, cardamom, and 6 cups of flour early in the day. Mom always insisted on fresh cardamom, so we had to shell it all and grind it. After dinner, Mom started rolling and cutting the dough into parallelogram shapes with slits in the middle while we kids folded each piece and shuttled them to Dad. He stood at the stove with the fan running while he deep-fried each piece in hot lard. When the kitchen grew too warm, we opened the front door to let the cold Wyoming wind cool us down. Everyone wanted fattigmand for breakfast or coffee breaks, and they did not last long.

To make our other Scandinavian delicacy, sandbakkelse (sand tarts), we used our thumbs to press sweet dough into tiny fluted tins. Getting the baked tarts out of the tins could be tricky and frustrating. Yet if some tarts broke, we did not mind because we could eat those right away instead of saving them until Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, Mom always made a ham because she found it easy and liked the leftovers. We gobbled it down because we were so eager to get to the gifts under the tree. Before we could begin tearing open the packages, we had to wait until someone made up the Cranberry Twinkle Punch prepared trays of cookies, cheese, salami, and crackers. Sometimes we had kipper snacks, too.

The next day, on Christmas Day, we would enjoy a turkey dinner, very similar to Thanksgiving Dinner of the previous month. We dressed up and dined using our best china and silver at a table decorated with candles and real cloth napkins. As an extra treat, the children were allowed to drink chocolate milk. We were careful to enjoy it all because we knew this meal marked the end of the Christmas cooking and baking season. We would not see food like this again for another year.