Ramblings of a Non-Native Texan

Every year that I’ve had a blog (and I have had one for many years, just not always THIS one), I’ve picked a day shortly before Christmas to post the text of “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.” I do this for a couple of reasons: One, it’s a beautifully-written response to a little girl’s curiosity about Santa. Two, as the hustle and bustle of the holidays pulls us in all directions, it’s nice to stop and remember the magic, the childhood wonder, and the joy of giving that Christmas brings us. And three, as I’m not a religious person, it’s sort of my own holiday religious moment: What makes Christmas magical for a child isn’t the gifts, and it isn’t even the baby Jesus story (let’s face it, kids don’t really grasp the mystery of the nativity). It’s still faith, though. Faith that what we believe can be real, even if we don’t see it with our eyes. That the spirit of something matters more than the material stuff. And that sharing love and compassion with those around us is where the true spirit lies.

Blessed are they who have not seen and have yet believed.

So for Christmas 2009, please enjoy the following… Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.

Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
“Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
“Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

“VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
“115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

(reprinted from the Newseum website)

With one week to go before Christmas, it’s time for me to start baking cookies. I don’t like doing it earlier than this, since they tend to get stale and crumbly if they sit too long. I bake for my family and friends, and sometimes I give the cookies as gifts… They make a great, festive, inexpensive gift that cost you just the ingredients and the time to bake! Everyone loves homemade goodies at the holidays.

Right now, I’m assembling my collection of needed ingredients, so that when I start diving into my overflowing box of recipes, I’ll have everything I need. There’s really nothing worse than getting halfway through a recipe and having to say “Oh, NO! I’m out of vanilla!” And then running to the store in the hopes that your half-mixed batter will survive while you’re out.

Quick tip: The batter’s never quite the same when you walk away from it like that. The more you know.

Anyway, here’s my list of always-needed ingredients (the recipes are after the list, in case you want to cut to the chase)…

Butter (I tend to use margarine)

All-purpose flour

White Sugar

Brown Sugar

Eggs (go with free-range! They’re cruelty-free!)

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Vanilla Extract (real, not artificial)

Baking Soda AND Baking Powder (both are needed, depending on the recipe)

Milk (I use organic skim)

Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa

Powdered Sugar

Cream of Tartar

Salt

Nestle Tollhouse Semi Sweet Morsels, at least 3 bags (the chocolate chip cookies I make are always from the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag, but I use these for other recipes, too)

Reeses Peanut Butter chips

Jar of cherries

Food coloring

Assorted holiday sprinkles

A really good cookie sheet (I don’t like to use baking stones for cookies, as the cookies keep baking even after the stone comes out of the oven)

A good hand mixer

So that’s the basic ingredient list… There are other things that go into my more unique recipes, but that’s the beginning. So which cookies do I make with this list? Here’s a list of my favorite holiday cookies, along with links to recipes:

Chocolate Chip (of course)

Chocolate with Peanut Butter Chips

Chocolate-Covered Cherry cookies

Meringues with Chocolate Chips - I have some tips on this one, passed down from my mother: First, you can never overbeat an egg white. That was one thing she said to me every year that we made cookies together. Second, use a clean, DRY metal bowl for making meringues. Something about the metal bowl just helps how they turn out. Last, make sure that you separate your eggs very cleanly… even the slightest bit of yolk in your egg whites will keep them from getting really fluffy. Trust me, I’ve screwed this up enough times to know it’s true.

Cut-out cookies – I like the cookie recipe on this page, but I don’t use their icing recipe. The one I use is similar and goes like this: Put a bunch of powdered sugar in a bowl. Add a TINY amount of skim milk. Stir. Add a tiny bit more milk if necessary until you get a consistency roughly the same as thick paint. Then separate the icing into Dixie cups, a little in each one. Add food coloring to each one so that you end up with several cups, each with a different color of icing. Then use paintbrushes to brush the cooled cookies with icing and add sprinkles as desired!

Thumbprints – My mom usually makes these. They’re my dad’s favorite.

The most recent addition to my holiday goody-making is chocolate covered pretzels. I get the standard bag of grocery store pretzels and a block of Plymouth Pantry’s Make Your Own Almond Bark (doesn’t actually have almonds in it) and just go to town. Melting the chocolate and dipping the pretzels is easy, tasty fun. And a few sprinkles on top adds festive color. Want a truly decadent treat? Get those peanut-butter-filled pretzel nuggets from the store and cover THOSE in chocolate. Mmmmm! If you have leftover melted chocolate, it’s fun to find other things in your kitchen to dip in it: marshmallows, potato chips, cereal… Whatever!

So what’s YOUR favorite holiday cookie recipe? Post it in the comments and I might try it out! I’m always on the lookout for new recipes that will become permanent fixtures on my seasonal baking list.

Happy holiday baking, everyone! I hope your season is as festive and calorie-filled as mine is shaping up to be.

You’ve heard of Taylor Swift. Everyone’s heard of Taylor Swift. From all the awards she’s won for her country-and-top-40 music, to the records she’s set while winning those awards, to the hubbub over Kanye West interrupting her acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, Taylor is all over the news. She’s young and beautiful and talented. She’s got crossover appeal. And my 9-year-old daughter is a huge fan.

photo credit: 8notes.com

Right now, the must-have, can’t-get-em-anywhere tickets are the ones to a Taylor Swift show. No matter which city she’s in or which venue she’s coming to, the tickets go on sale and then sell out in minutes, sometimes seconds. Taylor was on her “Fearless” tour last year, and now she’s gearing up for the “Fearless 2010″ tour, which seems to be just an extension of the first tour. Same opening acts and everything. I’m not even sure she went home and took a deep breath between the two tours.

Last year, I tried to get tickets for my daughter and me to go to the “Fearless” show in September in Dallas; of course, they were sold out, so I went to the third-party resale sites. Did I get tickets? Yep. Did I pay way more than face value? You betcha. But we had a great time, the concert was entertaining, and my daughter and I bonded over songs and souvenir t-shirts. It was completely worth it.

Still, I vowed not to spend that much more than face value on tickets to anything in the future. And I signed up for the Taylor Swift email alerts, just in case. Then, a month or two ago, I got an email promoting a pre-sale on Taylor Swift tickets in Dallas.

“Must be a typo,” I thought. “She was just here!”

But then I read further and saw that, as part of “Fearless 2010,” she’s coming back to Dallas in March. Less than 6 months after her last stop here. The email from the fan club was legit, and there was a pre-sale code just begging me to use it.

“Well,” I thought, “Might as well give it a try.”

I waited until the 10 am start time on the pre-sale date, logged into Ticketmaster, and put in the code. And then held my breath. After a minute, the confirmation screen popped up: I had gotten two tickets.

Two tickets for Taylor Swift, at face value! I couldn’t resist doing a happy dance. Granted, they’re upper level, but so were the last ones I got. And these new ones are closer to the stage and lower than the ones from the first concert. I had lucked out.

But now, the thought crossed my mind: What to do with the tickets? My daughter, you see, doesn’t know that I’ve gotten them. She might not even know that Taylor is coming back to town. And I know the resale value of these tickets will far exceed what I paid for them by the time March rolls around. So do I take my daughter to the exact same concert 6 months after taking her the first time, or do I sell the tickets and use the money to do something else with her? Or do I let HER decide what to do with the tickets?

That might be what I do: “Honey, I have these two tickets. We can go to the concert, or we can sell them and do these other things instead. What would you rather do?”

For now, I’m just happy I got the tickets. It pays to be on the mailing list, it seems! And no matter how we end up using them, I know we’ll have a great time. There’s only so many mother-daughter bonding moments we get with our kids, so I plan to enjoy all the ones I can.