Friday, December 2, 2011

CHRISTMAS QUOTEDOWN (24)

Getting ready for Christmas was the most organized activity of the year…

Auntie was the cake-maker in the family. She made the fruitcake first and she always liked to have that one, with its richness of nuts and citron and pineapple and cherries and rasins, out of the way well before Thanksgiving so that it would season. She kept it stored in a tightly-lidded lard can and twice a week would douse it with blackberry wine. This was wine that she had made herself, and for a teetotaling Baptist she was inordinately proud of it.

That lard can was the most fragrant one in Georgia, and by Christmas day the cake weighed considerable more than when it came from the oven. It had the spicy, fruitful aroma of foreign lands, of forbidden nectar, and Auntie could slice it so thin that the light glowed through the cherries and pineapple and citron as beautifully as through medieval stained glass.
——Ferrol Sams, Christmas Gift!  


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I've collected Christmas books for years, and must have at least a couple hundred. Their contents range from anthologies of seasonal poetry, short stories, and novels, to histories of the holiday and its customs and traditions, sketches and narratives of remembered Christmases by various writers, cookbooks, even a craft book or two, though Myladylove collects the latter two categories and probably has upwards of a hundred Christmas volumes of her own.


This year, starting on the first day of December, I thought it might be fun to dip into a few of these works and share a quote or two from their pages—a few lines of poetry, a bit of prose, maybe even a recipe—on a daily basis, a sort of "Christmas Quotedown," which I'll put up in addition to my regular posts. I'll also include a photo of the book's cover, from which the day's quotes are taken—though a few, lacking a dust jacket or any sort of fancy cover design, might be decidedly non-photogenic. On the other hand, several of my favorite Christmas works are quotably rich troves, indeed, and thus might end up furnishing more than a day's worth of quotes—though I'm starting out with the notion of a different book each day. 

Along the way, I hope I select some things you enjoy.
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12 comments:

The Weaver of Grass said...

I have certainly enjoyed today's delightful quotes Grizz - and look forward to more to come.

Muffy's Marks said...

What a great idea! I can't wait for tomorrow, or the next day's selection. Thanks

Gail said...

HI GRIZZ - My Mom loves fruit cake, loves it! We get her one every year from 'The Vermont Country Store'.
Love to you
Gail
peace.....
p.s. plz stop by my place and comment of 'your glory', k?

Grizz………… said...

Weaver…

I'm having fun browsing my books for quotes; there are so many good ones—books and quotes—from which to choose. I hope I pick others you enjoy, as well.

Grizz………… said...

Muffy…

Thank you. I'm please you're enjoying this little notion.

Grizz………… said...

Gail…

Well, I'm with your mother…I, too, dearly LOVE fruitcake. My mother used to make a couple each fall—a "light" and "dark" version, different recipes—as soon as the grocery stores began to get in their candied fruits and barrels of nuts. Say about mid-October. She'd mix carefully and then bake them in an angel-food cake pan. She had a couple big tins in which she stored the finished cakes afterwards. She covered them inside the tins with a cloth soaked in blackberry wine—and also placed a wine-soaked cloth in the cake's center hole. These cloths were re-soaked at least weekly, usually a couple of times per week. Sometimes she used brandy for a soaking or two. And just like in the quote, when the cake was finished it weighed much more than it did just after baking.

Mom sometimes made several extra cakes which—after their necessary weeks of soaking and several more "aging"—could be placed on a cool shelf and kept for months. Later on she began wrapping these extra cakes—again, soaked and aged—in multiple layers of plastic bagging and placed them in the deep freeze. They were still good a year or more later.

I miss those fragrant and lushly delicious fruitcakes more than anything. I keep meaning to try my hand at making one, but never seem to get around to it. I'll bet your mom would find a slice delightful.

Arija said...

Grizz, you certainly have whetted my appetite with this one. What a pity it is already too late to bake that Christmas cake.

Grizz………… said...

Arija…

I'll try and keep delivering. Thank you. The thing that made that cake sublime was time…and probably my mother's sure hand. But one of these days I'll have a go.

Bernie said...

You bring back memories of my mum baking when I was a child. I can almost smell her fruitcakes baking as I read this post.....:-)Hugs

Kelly said...

...looking forward to your daily dose of Christmas quotes. Great idea!!

Grizz………… said...

Bernie…

Yeah, I sure know what you mean about those memories…and there are so many really good ones connected with Christmas. What days and times…

Grizz………… said...

Kelly…

I am, too—looking forward. I'm just going at this day by day. You'd think I could have planned it a bit, huh?

Nahhhhhh.