The end of the year has always been my favorite – from Halloween to New Year’s Day, I am happiest. Autumn is by far my favorite season with its cooler (but not yet freezing) weather and it’s stunning display of vibrant colors; the sounds the leaves make when they crunch under your feet; the smell of the first fires; the excitement of children as they prepare for Halloween; and the lead off into the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving, of course, leads off into the Christmas season (and for my house birthday season). Though my kids are adults now, I have not stopped trying to surprise them and the house will still be overflowing with presents. There will forever be a toy or two under my tree. I suspect part of the reason this is my favorite time of year is that I get to spend time with my family and friends (who I consider extended family). Our schedules are all so busy, but at this time of the year – we make time to see each other – to gather, to laugh, to create new memories. It’s simply a few months of happiness and love. No matter what other stress we have going on – we forget about it all to have some fun. It was with this in mind that I decided to share some of my favorite Christmas memories.
Growing up, we didn’t have a lot. My dad was a police officer, and at the time, extremely underpaid. I have two older siblings, so five of us in the house on one income. We never did without somehow. Our parents even put us through Catholic school. My mom was a master at managing a budget. I say this with the deepest admiration and love. And the one thing mom was always good at was making Christmas as magical as she could. She understood what it meant to retain that magic. Gifts overflowed from under our tree. Family came to visit. Friends stayed. We baked cookies. We sang carols. We read Christmas stories. We watched Christmas movies on VHS. It was about togetherness and love. It was magical.
One Christmas, I must have been about four, my Pop-Pop and Mom-Mom (my mom’s parents) came over. My mom was the family cook and baker. We were always gathered in the small kitchen in our row home. There were so many people, you could not move without tripping over one another. My Pop wanted to roast chestnuts. A little history of chestnuts for those who don’t know, at one time, America was resplendent with chestnut trees and eating them in the winter would have been as common as eating french fries today. Every home would have had a roasting pan, made just for the purpose of heating chestnuts over an open fire. But in 1945, a blight wiped out the chestnut tree crop in America and just like that – the tradition was gone. My grandfather would have remembered roasting them as a child, but maybe not so much the how of it. So, that Christmas, he brought a bag of chestnuts to my mom, in the hopes that she in all her culinary wisdom would recreate this gastronomical memory. My mom, being an adventurous cook, was willing to try. She placed her cast iron pan over the flame of our gas stove and let it heat and then dropped the chestnuts in, waiting for the magic to happen – and it did – oh it did, just not the way anyone expected. The chestnuts rattled and sizzled. The frying pan grew warmer and then one by one, like tiny little fireworks on the 22nd of December (I’m guessing on that, but that was my Pop’s birthday so it’s probably spot on), the chestnuts burst out of the pan and exploded – hitting the ceiling and the walls. Steaming chestnuts glistened on the surfaces of the cabinets. Bang, bang, bang – the sounds rang out as each and every chestnut propelled itself from the pan like tiny little rockets. No humans, miraculously, were harmed in the making of this memory. Remember this was back in the days before the internet and google (yes those days existed, don’t come at me, I’m GenX – I can take you down with a withering glance). My mom did not realize, nor did anyone else, that you had to score the chestnuts (or at the very least poke a hole in them) to release the pressure inside. I remember my father grumbling, in the way that dad’s do, as he ascended a ladder to scrape chestnut goo off the ceiling the next day.
It was simply and delightfully – magical Christmas chaos.
Shannon McCauley - Author 
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