OOPS!!! Sorry I didn't know that about Jan. 1 being "everybody's" birthday, if a specific date isn't given. Oh well, Happy Birthday, whenever it is. :>) Mwoods, your statement about each year bringing "joy, laughter, and some tears" is so true. None of us ever knows what's ahead for us. But, as my DH says, "It's been a trip, but I wouldn't change any of it!"

My late mother warmly reminisced every year about her Christmas stocking which included a Clementine, unshelled walnuts, a few hard candies and in the very, very bottom a quarter. Those stockings were the sum total of their material gifts but the traditional Italian Christmas Eve seafood dinner and Christmas day feasting with relatives coming in and out (they all lived in close city neighborhoods) was the real deal. And the love...the feeling of being cherished and belonging to immediate and extended family. When we four daughters were young my mother didn't drive and then didn't have her own car for years. When I was 4 my parents moved us to "the country" in northern Jersey so we could grow up with wondrous woods behind the house in new suburbs. Dad did all the shopping then including for our Christmas presents. After pestering him, a few weeks before Christmas my father would call all four girls into the living room one night after dinner to "make the lists." We would run and jump up to sit on, over and around him on the couch where he fell asleep reading the newspaper after a late dinner every weeknight. He took a pad of paper and divided it into 4 sections with our names. We went around in a circle naming one thing we wanted at a time until we were done. Descriptions were elicited from my father as there were no circulars in those days and my father had not a clue what we were naming. Dad would end by saying he'd make sure Santa got the lists. Probably because it wasn't easy to get 4 girls up, washed & dressed with one bathroom into the car for Mass and then a long day of shuttling between "city grandparents" and family we always opened our presents at a most special time...midnight. We went to bed with such anticipation Christmas Eve and before we knew it my mother was softly waking us up at midnight telling us "Santa was here, come see!" after which we scrambled out of bed with a mixture of grogginess and excitement. I'll never forget the absolute magic of stepping into the hallway and seeing the glow of the lit Christmas tree emanating from the darkened living room with what seemed to be sparkling packages all laid out under the tree in four piles. Once into the living room we'd each find our packages and start to open them. My parents would be slumped in a chair thoroughly exhausted but with the warmest smiles at our delight and their joy. There was always a plate of the butter cookies (pink stars and flowers & green Christmas trees) we'd made with my father one night the week before Christmas to eat while we opened gifts. My paternal grandmother always made an Italian knot cookie with red, white and green lemon flavored icing. I somehow came to be the one out the four girls who took on that task as adults. Now all my nieces and nephews would disown me if I didn't have a huge rainbow platter of those cookies for them on Christmas. Then there's the Italian Wedding Soup...home made chicken stock with tiny meatballs (ground veal & chicken base) with the finest hairs of pasta. The meatballs for so many take one whole day on their own to make but they can be frozen ahead of time thank goodness. The kids would riot if their Nanny's "little meatball soup" wasn't on the Christmas day menu. The granchildren are now aged 21-27 but it was intentional on the part of my mother and we four sisters to make sure we passed on traditions to them so they'd have a bond to their past and each other. "Christmas Cookies" started out with each of us 4 girls making one or two batches to bring to my parent's house for Christmas day dessert along with a cake so the kids could sing "Happy Birthday Jesus." They must have learned that in their parochial schools as they demanded it but I went through 12 years of Catholic school and don't remember that particular thing being taught. Of course we did it for them as requested anyway. As my sisters started their families and ran short of time I started taking on more of the cookie baking. It's one of those things that just creeps up on you over the years until you don't know how you ended baking up to 14 varieties of cookies, each of which is someone's favorite, plus the traditional iced Italian knot cookies. The traditional Italian Struffoli (feather light honey drizzled balls) have been bought from an Italian bakery for years. My older sister and I tried our hand at them one year decades ago and they came out like lead cannon balls...LOL. The many batches of cookies get divided up into tins everyone brings and taken for enjoyment back at everyone's respective homes all Christmas week. My father's favorites are the Linzer Tortes my older sister makes for him every year. Everyone loves her Neopolitan cookies (3 colored layers, apricot jam in between & boiled chocolate icing all around) which are worlds beyond the ones you get in the store. This will be our fourth Christmas without my Mom and I naively thought missing her as the heart of our family would be tempered each successive year but it's not. Keeping the traditions she gave us is some comfort and seeing the kids faces as they scoff up multiple bowls of their grandmother's "little meatball soup" is one of the most touching times of the whole day. My older sister is farthest along in keeping a "family recipe cookbook" on the computer for her 2 daughters. So much of the cooking of my grandmothers and mother were never by "written recipe" and I'm thankful my older sister and father took the time to record recipes while those amazing women were still with us. How ironic that the one out of four daughters who never cooked much(me) has ended up "doing holidays" since my Mom passed away. I don't know how women do it continuously over decades...kind of like how I'm constantly amazed at how women here on the forums do so much with their gardening among all their other responsibilities. The holiday traditions are for generational continuity and priceless memories. It's a sense of "place" and belonging no matter where family members scatter through the years. Sorry I rambled so...time of year with so many memories.

Boy, I am really late. I just got my laptop back today. The 3rd would have been my DH's 81st. So was a bit sad for me. But......I hope you had a really really good day. Kathy

Thanks for the birthday wishes! This is the 5-0 birthday for me and it's just hard for me to believe it! After yesterday though, I'm FEELING it! LOL The house my boys lived in when they were in college is going on the market today so I was over there painting the kitchen cabinets and staging the bathrooms (cleaned them spic-n-span first). Oh my, I have soreness in places I didn't even know I had places! It probably didn't help that I came home and practically guzzled a bottle of wine while in the hot tub! So I guess 49 went out with a bang and 50 is coming in with a whimper. :-)