The official DU 'Holiday Cheer' Thread

Share a holiday tradition or happy holiday memory. Bookmark this thread to read about others' joyful experience. Or, share
a funny holiday story. Are you a Martha Stuart type? Share your recipes & best holiday decorating tips. I have a sneaking suspicion that DU'ers have some wonderful ways of celebration, so join in. The ONLY rule is this: NO negativity. Let's keep this thread for positive sharing only (we have all the rest of DU to bitch to our heart's content).

Let's celebrate...

:party:

I will kick it off with my ten favorite things about this time of year...

1. The first snowfall....

2. Packages in the mail.

3. Cookies

4. Icicle designs on glass paned windows

5. Driving around & looking at all the holiday lights

6. Reprieve from dieting (it's the HOLIDAYS!)

7. Christmas specials (A Mr Magoo's Christmas, A Christmas Eve on Sesame St, A Year without a Santa Claus, all
the Scrooge movies including Scrooged & the Muppet Christmas Carol, & It's a Wonderful Life)...

8. Kid's on Christmas Eve

9. Cutting down the perfect Christmas tree & then going out for pizza or Chinese

10. Figgy pudding (no I have never had it, but it is just is so much fun to say...here we go...FIGGY PUDDING!)

Now, there's a Christmas tradition for ya! Mom would make it for my uncles, after soaking the cod in lye for days. They would heap it on potatoes and pour on the cream sauce (that part was pretty good). Yes, I am of Swedish/Norwegian descent.

It was gross. I do like the pickled herring, though. Nowadays, you can get lutefisk in a cookin' pouch. It just doesn't seem right.

without ever tasting lutefisk.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Cookbook:Figgy pudding
From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

The history of figgy pudding dates back to 17th century England. The ancestor of figgy pudding (and plum pudding) is a medieval spiced porridge known as Frumenty. Today, the term figgy pudding is known mainly because of a popular Christmas carol. The carolers singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" mention it numerous times throughout the song. Currently figgy pudding is not very popular but is thought about during the holiday season. It is a British-style pudding, or dessert, resembling something like a white Christmas pudding. The pudding may be baked, steamed in the oven, or boiled.

Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large egg yolks
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons rum extract (or flavored extract of your choice)
2 apples, peeled and cored and finely chopped
2 pounds dried figs, ground or finely chopped
Grated peel of 1 lemon and 1 orange
1 cup chopped nuts
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 cups dried bread crumbs
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 large egg whites, stiffly beaten
1 strip of bacon, finely crushed (optional - New England variant)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 °F. Generously grease an oven-proof 2-quart bowl or mold; set aside.
Cream together butter and shortening.
Gradually add sugar, egg yolks, milk, extract, apple, figs, lemon and orange peel.
Add next 6 ingredients, mixing well. Fold stiffly beaten egg whites into mixture.
Pour into prepared bowl or mold and place into large shallow pan and place on middle rack in oven.
Fill the shallow pan half-full with boiling water and slowly steam pudding in oven at 325 °F for 4 hours, replacing water as needed.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Figgy_pudding

EDIT to add pic -- looks good!

--The first snowfall, yeah. Because for some reason, I feel like a child again whenever it happens.

--Deliberately looking at lit-up Christmas trees without my glasses on. If you have astigmatism like I do, and have tried it, you know what I'm talking about.

--Remembering how much fun it was to be part of the first generation that grew up with all those Christmas specials on TV, and which actually used to look forward to seeing them all year long because there WAS no other chance to see them. No VCRs, no videos, no DVDs. You got to see them once a year when they were aired by the networks; that was it. That made them really special.

--The rubber band my mother used to put on the knobs of the folding doors of her bedroom closet, saying we couldn't look inside because "Santa's workshop" was in there.

--How excited we'd get in the middle of October when the Christmas catalogs came out from Sears and JCPenney. My younger sister and I would curl up next to Mom and she'd open them and head straight for the toy pages in the back. We'd go through each one, a page at a time, looking at all the stuff that was there to want.

--How different and cool the living room felt every year when we put the tree up...and how naked it looked after we took it back down.

--How long it used to take Christmas to come when I was a kid. All those specials to watch, decorations and presents to make and songs to sing at school, all those plays and parties to participate in at school and Girl Scouts and church. Oh, and caroling with the Girl Scouts!

--How much fun it was the last day of school before vacation. Feeling so thrilled because now there was no more school between us and the presents and we didn't have to come back for two weeks! Waving goodbye and the teachers saying "See you next year!"

--Remembering Christmas crafts that nobody makes anymore because the stuff they were once made with has become obsolete. Here I'm talking mainly about that classic decoration of the late '60s-early '70s: the Computer Punch Card Wreath! Remember those? Fold over one end of computer punch cards into a conical shape, staple them that way, then staple layers and layers of these so the conical tips overlap onto a cardboard circle, then spraypaint it (usually green, silver or gold). Voila!

--Today. The way my nieces still believe (or pretend to) that Santa eats the cookies and milk they leave out for him on Christmas Eve. After all, if they ever let on that they don't believe anymore, the presents might dry up. They're not dumb.

I love being at work, being on the road, when everyone else is gone