View from the Mountain

All Through The House

Not a creature was stirring not even one or the tabby cats. They were all snuggled in their beds dreaming of Santa Cat and his sled full of cat treats. What a feast there would be if the sled just turned over. Even Goose might get his fill for once.

Merry Christmas from Goose, Merlin, Jester, and Maverick and the less furry members of the family.  Read our latest Christmas story here at Post.news.

Christmas Traditions -The Chris Moose

Christmas is a very personal holiday sometimes surrounded with festive communities.
 
In 1973, my wife and I had our first Christmas together on the Nova Scotia coast. Thirty-three years later in 2006, we were back on the coast. This time we were enjoying the holiday season on the North Carolina coast many miles south of Nova Scotia. It was an easy decision to haul a Crab Pot Christmas tree from our second home and back to Roanoke, Virginia, our permanent home from 1989 -2012.

Our Crab Pot tree was the source of much interest in Roanoke, and at least a couple of visitors to our coastal second home after the 2006 holiday season took crab pot trees home. We kept crab pot trees shining brightly in our coastal home for fifteen years.

We left our Crab Pot trees and the coast behind when we moved back to my home turf in North Carolina's rolling hills just west of Winston-Salem.

One of the most interesting coastal Christmas celebrations that we found during our time on the coast takes place in Rodanthe and Salvo near the Chicamacomico Life Saving Station. 

For over one hundred years residents in the area have celebrated Christmas both on its normal December 25th day and Old Christmas which is celebrated eleven days later in the first week of January.  Old Christmas comes from the days before the Gregorian calendar which removed eleven days from the year.

The Old Christmas celebration starts with an Oyster Roast, music, bonfires, and the ritual visitation of Old Buck, a bull like, costumed creation which legend has it roams the woods during the year and comes out only during the Old Christmas festivities. We did not see Old Buck while we lived on the coast, but we enjoyed many oyster roasts.

We lived in Nova Scotia on the Fundy coast a for a couple of years and later in Halifax another two years.  One of the Christmas traditions there and in Newfoundland was that of Mummers.  During the time from after Christmas Day until Old Christmas, costumed visitors knock on doors while singing songs and hoping to be invited in for a drink or some food.  There is even a Mummers’ song by the Great Big Sea, a Canadian folk-rock band from Newfoundland and Labrador.  This is part of it.

Hark, what's the noise out by the porch door? Dear Granny, there's mummers, there's twenty or more. Her old weathered face lightens up with a grin. Any mummers, nice mummers 'lowed in? Ah, come in lovely mummers, don't bother the snow, We'll wipe up the water sure after you go. And sit if you can upon some mummer's knee. We'll see if we knows who ye be. Ah, there's big ones and small ones, tall ones and thin, There's boys dressed as women and girls dressed as men…

In some places there is a tradition that if the host cannot guess the identity of the group they have to join them in their merry making.

My mother before her death used to tell us about Christmas on Styers Mill pond in Yadkin County just north of where we now live in Davie County.  Christmas was not so much about the gifts as about the celebration of the season.  She was born in 1910 and remembered most of Christmas treats being fruit, nuts or candy.  Some clothes or other useful items might be given, but toys as Christmas gifts were as rare as automobiles for transportation were on the dirt roads of the day.

One of the special traditions was the cutting of a country ham which had been specially prepared for the season. My mother talked of her father driving wagons onto the ice of the mill pond to harvest ice for their underground sawdust-insulated ice house, but most of the meat had to be eaten fresh or cured. 

Late fall and the winter holiday season was a time of plenty since the weather was cool enough for the seasonal killing of the hogs.  Mother claimed that hogs were especially good when fattened mostly from a barrel where kitchen scraps were mixed with water and some grain.  Somehow slopping the hogs makes a little more sense when viewed from that perspective.

I suspect my mother’s childhood had a lot to do with the Christmas preparations that she made when she became an adult.

For years until she got into under late eighties, Christmas was a time of baking and candy making.  She would do a dozen or more of real fruit cakes which were well laced with brandy.  There would also be fudge, soft mints, applesauce cakes, spicy cheddar cheese straws, and finally what became another family tradition, peanut brittle.  Presents were often hand crocheted hats or afghans.

Even today, we try to hunt down some raw peanuts and dig out the granite slab that we inherited from my mother and make a batch or two of peanut brittle when we gather for Christmas and the weather turns cold.  Not surprisingly Christmas breakfast is usually a meal of country ham.  In a further nod to tradition our eldest daughter often surprises us with cross stitch or knitted gifts.

While some Christmas traditions come from the countries where our families originated, many are a medley that families develop on their own as they move through different areas.

I grew up near Winston-Salem which has strong Moravian traditions.  Moravian Sugar Cake and Cookies were part of our holidays.  I can still remember a trip to an Old Salem Christmas Candlelight service, and of course when we moved to our farm in Canada we took along a Moravian Christmas Star with its twenty-six points.  It was not long before we had to import a few for neighbors along with some Moravian Cookies.

Our first Christmas in Canada along the shore of the Bay of Fundy helped us pick up a few more Maritime traditions.  That year I had pickled herring as one of our holiday meals.  Many of the local Nova Scotians had lobster as their holiday meal.  That first Christmas was something of a lean one with little extra money to spare so we had to create almost all of our Christmas decorations.

We made some of our decorations out of salt dough and painted them with water colors.  We also did many hand-carved wooden ornaments for our tree.  There was one special ornament that ended up on that first coastal Nova Scotia tree.

I had stared out trying to carve a reindeer out of some scraps left over from the pine paneling that we were putting on the walls of our farm house.  It did not take long to figure out that Moose antlers would be easier to carve, so thus in the winter of 1971, the Christmas Moose or Chris Moose for short was born.

That winter strings of popcorn and cranberries joined our handmade ornaments on a fir cut from the back of our farm.  Since that time we have collected unusual ornaments, and not surprisingly I have received a veritable herd of ornaments, with each Christmas Moose more unique than the last one. 

We started our children early on their own ornament collection, but perhaps the best part of the tradition of Chris Moose has been giving to each of our three children their very own Christmas Moose which I carved by hand.  As each of our children moved out on their own, they got a wooden Moose ornament which was also accompanied by a letter which took as long to write as it did to carve the Chris Moose.

I actually took the time to cut and cure the wood for each Moose from the back of our property on the mountain in Roanoke, Virginia.  In our family getting your own Chris Moose was symbolic of growing up and being able to develop your own Christmas traditions.

The days of this Christmas season have flown by as quickly as have our many Christmas seasons since that first one in Nova Scotia.  The memories of the season swirl like snow on a winter day in the north country.  I remember my father telling me of the salt fish and oysters from the NC coast that were always his special treats for the holidays. I am pleased that my holiday memories now include steamed oysters.

I remember my mother's parties with real eggnog and I even remember my first train set and going to cut a Christmas tree in the woods of Lewisville with my one-armed Uncle Joe. I had to drag it out myself. Later after we moved back from Canada and were living on the mountain overlooking Roanoke, Virginia, I remember our children coming home for the holidays.  My wife's famous clam chowder was always the beginning of the holiday feast for me.  This year we are having a pot roast.  Somehow salt cod cakes got voted down.  Imagine that.

Still we are making some new memories and I hope everyone will have some as nice as ours.

 

The Pressure Cooker of Our Lives

Tulip Magnolia, Mocksville, NC

How wonderful is it to wake up and the most important news that you read this morning is that nearby Clemmons is getting an Aldi grocery store?

Not only did I wake up to that interesting news but I also read an article that mentioned an unheralded benefit of remote learning, no mass shootings or having children practice lockdowns. I think everyone agrees that children will benefit from more in-school time but there is nothing wrong with making a little lemonade out of some very sour lemons.

The pressure cooker that many have lived in is nothing new except that over the last four years our government by tweet has made it worse. I certainly was not surprised that my latest physical revealed a blood pressure that was the lowest it has been in years. My wife and I no longer wake to an immediate discussion of what crazy thing happened last night.

Certainly, the recent killings in Atlanta are heart-breaking, but I have the feeling that this will be a priority for our first Asian-American vice president and the administration around her. Yes, there are other issues like the border surge and a determined effort by one party to undermine voting rights.

As worrisome as all this is, I somehow feel like the adults are in charge of enough of the government to push towards a more appropriate responses instead of tweets. Even if they are complex solutions they will be better than the typical government by tweet that haunted us for the last four years. You will not find me complaining about complex policies that actually solve problems. Focusing on policy instead of grievances might have a better chance of creating solutions that work and actually make things better rather than worse.

Still government-by-tweet was certainly not the only factor in our pressure cooker lives. There is the pandemic made worse by government inaction and the resulting long period of lockdowns without seeing family and friends in person. This was all made worse by a subset of the population who refused the simple gesture of wearing a mask to protect others if not themselves. Now many of the same don’t-tramp-on-my-freedoms group is refusing to get vaccinated. Vaccinations and continuing to wear masks are clearly our best path back to normal life.

I think it is worth remembering that your freedom ends where it starts to endanger others. You might have earned the privilege to drive a car but if you drive it recklessly at eight-five miles per hour on a public highway, I am going to be rooting for the police to arrest you and throw the key away.

With freedom comes responsibility. If you cannot be responsible with your freedoms, someone will likely suffer. Think about how your actions will impact others. Will running that red-light to save two minutes end up steal someone’s life?

It is critical that we think about others when it comes to vaccinations. If enough people don’t get vaccinated, we might be wearing masks for a long time as COVID continues to rage. If everyone gets vaccinated, we might have a normal Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Are you willing to sacrifice a normal year, just to prove that you are a part of a group that most closely resembles the know nothings of the last century?

A Fourth of July Message for 2019

I posted this yesterday to my friends. The message resonated well with many people so it has now made it to my soapbox for all.

I love my country of birth, but having lived in two countries, I also feel great pride when I hear "Oh Canada." Having visited many countries, I feel great respect for a number of them and understand that there are other paths to happiness besides just ours.

Today the Fourth of July, I salute the vision of our country's founders and hope that we can live up to their thoughts and ideals which have helped us evolve to a better but far from perfect place. We will eventually emerge from this nightmare of children caged along our borders.

Any student of our battle for independence will attest to our founding fathers great fear of standing armies. Changing times have resulted in the need for a professional US military.  There is little doubt that we have the best armed forces in the world but why brag about it?

Our founding fathers would be appalled at a Four of July celebration of military power. There is a big difference between honoring those who have served in the defense of freedom and celebrating military power.

Celebrating military power is no more a part of the American tradition than separating children from their parents and holding them in intolerable conditions. We will overcome this at the ballot box.

Happy Fourth of July!

Turkey Traditions

Thanksgiving is a special, enduring holiday that prompts us to think of our blessings and our families even if we are unable to all gather in one place. We spent many years away from home on Thanksgiving, but somehow we always managed to talk to our family and feel like we were together.

When we lived in Canada in the seventies and eighties, American Thanksgiving was one of the things I missed most. There were a couple of years when we had friends come up and celebrate Thanksgiving with us, but still, it was not quite the same.

I remember vivid images of driving across the Canadian border into Maine one Thanksgiving day when I just had to have a taste of American Thanksgiving. Maine had shut down, everyone was home with their family. Even the gas stations were closed.

Today while many stores still close for Thanksgiving, more and more are staying open at least part of the day.  Their thought of capturing the early bargain hunters takes away from the holiday. Shopping on Thanksgiving or Christmas is where I draw the line. Everyone who can be at home should be at home.

Thanksgiving is a time of family and friends and of turkey and dressing with all the trimmings whatever they are in your own family tradition. I still remember our first Thanksgiving back in the states when we lived in Columbia, MD.  We made the trip down to Mount Airy and back in stop and go traffic. It was a brutal trip and we were blessed when we were able to move to Roanoke, VA not far from our families.

This week when we sit down together with whatever family we can manage, it will be to enjoy a brief respite from the pressures of daily life. At the table will be the memories of many past Thanksgivings along with relatives whose company we enjoyed in years past. The family, the memories and the time together, however brief, makes every Thanksgiving as we get older even more precious.

Like many families, we have transitioned from the time when we always went home to enjoy turkey at my mother's house in Mount Airy. For a few years, Glenda went down the day before to help with the preparations.  Then there were a few years of going down and bringing my mother and her friend, RJ, back to have dinner with us.  I would leave early on Thanksgiving, drive the two hours to Mount Airy and have them at our table in time for the meal. Then we would get back on the road and I would make another round trip. Finally, after RJ died my mother was living with us or nearby. The biggest blessing was the complete absence of traffic on Interstate 81 on Thanksgiving day.

Now we are the old ones and feel blessed whenever we get visitors for Thanksgiving or even Canadian Thanksgiving. Once we managed to venture away for Thanksgiving to be with the children but the drive and holiday traffic are too much for us now. Traffic and travel get ever more difficult even for young adults so we would rather our children stay safe in their homes than spend much of their precious time off driving. They will still be at the table with us, just not in person.

Each year in their honor, we try to cook many of our family favorites though the quantities will be smaller and sometimes the cooking spreads to the day after Thanksgiving. The whole turkey has become a turkey breast. The broccoli casserole will be baked in two dishes so we can enjoy it over time. There will still be a big pan of stuffing and plenty of turkey gravy. Glenda sometimes even buys some extra turkey parts just to make sure she can make lots of gravy.  I mash some potatoes and maybe make some rolls if I do not wear myself out making biscuits for breakfast which are part of Thanksgiving for me. Some green beans will be cooked and if there is any energy left Glenda might make a small sweet potato casserole since we usually have a bag of sweet potatoes in the garage.

We can count on Glenda making her homemade cranberry relish. She might even do that the day before in honor of my mother who believed in cooking ahead whenever possible.  Dessert might be the sweet potato casserole but it might be irrelevant.

Most Thanksgivings the meal takes at least all day to cook, thirty minutes to eat and two hours to clean up.

However, in the world of not-on-a-deadline, no-one-is-coming-for dinner adults, you can spread the preparation out, and maybe not wear yourselves completely out.  By pitching in together, when you do collapse in your favorite spot in front of the fire, there will be less guilt about the cooking and cleanup of the meal. You can even try to forget that you probably ate too much and maybe should have left off that last roll.

May each Thanksgiving with your family and/or friends always make another precious memory to add to the treasured ones that are already in your book of wonderful holiday memories. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all.