Welcome to the second week of our Virtual Advent Tour! We’re delighted to have you back!

Rudi at Random Duck offered me an impromptu post today about a traditional dish often served up at holiday gatherings in the Mountain West area where he grew up. Despite the name, the one time he made it, it was delicious!

Want to share a dish you grew up eating or seeing at Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, or Kwanzaa? Sign up to join our tour here!

I’m sitting in our living room with the lights down low. Our tree is replete with colorful lights and sparkly baubles, and I thought for our first Monday of December, I’d share our tree with you.

Most years, Rudi and I go and cut down a tree ourselves. We’ve bought from a school fundraiser and the farmers market before, but that’s the tradition I grew up with, and one we usually enjoy. However, this year we were pressed for time, so I opted to reserve one from an orchard, having been very pleased with the tree I bought from them last year. You could select a tabletop option, 5′-6′, or 7′-8′. I didn’t want to run the risk of getting a tree that was shorter than me, so I opted for the biggest size. We didn’t have to worry about it being too short.

Rudi sawed off those top two branches, and I strung lights around the tree and added our tree topper, a snowflake. My tree has 500 lights. Possibly I could have used another 100, but this is a good number.

Next come the ornaments. You might think that I throw a tree-trimming party so I don’t have to decorate the tree on my own. And while that is true, these days, it often comes down to me decorating the tree while other people sit and chat with me.

Here you can see one of my oldest ornaments, the angel on the horse, and my newest, a volleyball snowman, a gift from one of my teammates, Jennifer. There are also ornaments from former colleagues, a college Secret Santa, and my parents.

This year, my friend Susan brought her kids, and they took care of a gigantic swath of ornaments in the middle of the tree. (My friend Sarah noted that every time they come, they are able to reach higher and higher on the tree.) Holden was particularly pleased with his thought to suspend the bicycle like a real bike, and both he and Caroline commented on how many cat ornaments we own.

We also have a lot of characters from Rankin-Bass productions, particularly Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This Bumble was a favorite find of mine for Rudi when Karen and I were out shopping a couple years ago.

Even with the kids’ help, I ran out of steam decorating yesterday, so Rudi and I finished the task tonight, hanging the last couple dozen ornaments while middle-aged boy band singers crooned holiday tunes to us. (I made that styrofoam ornament in nursery school.)

Last but not least, the tree skirt comes out. I fell in love with this at a Bon-Ton in Connecticut before we moved and still adore it, even though it’s not wide enough to fit around our current tree stand. The tree is in a corner though, so it will only be noticeable when Corey starts playing under it and shifts it.

I think it looks really good this year.

Happy St. Nicholas Day! I hope your shoes were filled with treats when you awoke!

Today’s post is exactly the sort of holiday treat I adore. Raidergirl3 from an adventure in reading has provided us with a colorful recipe to delight all ages. (I may have already fallen down a candy-themed rabbit hole.)

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Please enjoy this classic holiday post, first published seven years ago and no less relevant today than in years past:

How to Throw a (Christmas) Party

My tree-trimming party is due to start in six hours. I am exhausted, but the state of the Burrow suggests I ought not to be.

Here’s roughly how we got to where we are:

1. Set the date of the party sufficiently in advance. (Mine has been the second Sunday after Thanksgiving since I started throwing them for my college interns and my friends the year after I graduated college myself. Twenty-five years is considered sufficient.)

2. Invite guests early enough so that can fit your event into a busy holiday season. If you have essentially reserved a date for yourself for two decades, this can be slightly closer to the event … such as when repeat guests start asking when the invitation is going to arrive.

3. Begin to clean your home. Depending how often this occurs at other times of the year, it may be necessary to place this higher in your timeline. In my case, I ought to have started the day after my last party.

4. Procrastinate. Allow sufficient time for this. Consider starting a large and detailed and difficult-to-relocate project right in your main party space. You work better under a deadline, after all.

5. Clean some more in a haphazard fashion. Preferably stop one project partway through and leave it behind as if Mr. Clean has been swept through your living space by a hurricane.

6. Take a nap. Make some food. You need to keep up your strength after all.

7. Tackle a small part of the paper you ought to recycle the night before the final recycling is picked up before your party. By small, I mean a handful of envelopes. By night before, I mean 4 a.m.

8. Start to hit a frenzy. Of course you’ll get this all done! There’s plenty of time. By that, I mean two days. Almost.

9. Buy party supplies. In my case, this involves a tree, food, drinks, and paper products. Why does this grocery store not carry half the things you want? Are three bags of chips enough? Where, for the love of all things merry, is the vegan eggnog?!

10. Despair. Is it too late to uninvite all the guests 16 hours before the party is due to start? Or maybe just turn out all the lights and pretend not to be home?

11. Prioritize. A clean bathroom and a clean kitchen are important. People are willing to overlook dust, but they like a clean sink; remember, though, you can still lock yourself in the bathroom to do a spot clean after the first guests arrive.

12. Why have you never noticed all the cat fur and cat litter tracked all over the place? Oh, no, wait. You totally have. You just opted to overlook it.

13. Eat chocolate and drink tea. This will keep your mind off the fact that you have not left yourself enough time to sleep.

14. Stop to write a blog post. Because we all know that helps.

15. Tackle the biggest non-loud projects in the middle of the night. Then you can pretend your tears are from the strain, rather than the knowledge that you will not finish in time.

16. Get some sleep. Two hours is a nice amount for a long day ahead. You wouldn’t want to get groggy.

17. Calculate the time the stores open that sell the things you forgot or couldn’t find. Arrive as they unlock their doors.

18. Give up on prioritizing. Now you are just going to work on moving/hiding/minimizing the mess. Lacking a bedroom door and extensive closet space makes this a challenge.

19. Chuck papers into bags. Make sure you note which bag contains the important/recent papers because inevitably you will need it tomorrow. This stage is not unlike moving apartments, at least for me.

20. Pile everything on your bed.

21. Try to vacuum before your guests arrive. (This will not always happen.)

22. Try to be done cooking before your guests arrive. (This will rarely happen.)

23. Assume that any guest that arrives promptly at the time you’ve said your party begins is interested in helping you clean and cook. Otherwise, why would they be there already?

24. Have an absolutely wonderful time with your guests during your party. These people are your friends and they really don’t care if you forgot to get rid of those cobwebs you just noticed in a dark corner or if they have to eat home-cooked chili out of a chipped bowl … or a (clean) reused takeaway container.

25. After your last guest has left, collapse on your couch and admire your lovely clean party space. Because you’re never going to bed with all that crap on it.

(See you tomorrow sometime on the other side of 24.)

You, too, could share some of your holiday traditions. Sign up for a Virtual Advent Tour slot here.

Because I have a holiday party to prep for on Sunday, this weekend I’m resurrecting/updating a couple classic posts from the Virtual Advent Tour over the years.

I first published a version of this post in 2010:

Christmas music is as intrinsic a part of my holiday season as is a tree or presents. Each year my family looks to see who has new holiday albums coming out and breaks out the old favorites from years past. Each of us has a pretty sizable collection of Christmas albums crossing genre and spanning a variety of delivery formats from LP to 8-track to mp3.

My dad used to make an annual Christmas mix. He made a few Christmas tapes when I was growing up, but making it a yearly event definitely became much more feasible once you could build your playlist on the computer and then burn it to disc. Each year you eagerly look forward to seeing what he’s included on his holiday cd.

After making a few gift tapes myself back in college, I found the process to be a lot of work and stopped making mixes. But the allure remained and, after mulling it over for a couple of seasons, I resumed making mixes about a dozen years back. It’s a surprisingly involved process if you’re like me and prone to getting a bit obsessive about getting your mix just so. But I thought today, in honor of being a stop on the Virtual Advent Tour, that I could offer some insights into creating a Christmas mix that you and your loved ones will enjoy for years to come:

• Start with a wide selection of music. It helps to have a collection of cds, records, or mp3s from which to draw. It is not imperative, however, as you can find plenty of holiday tunes online from which to draw. Clearly, free options are your friend, particularly if you’re starting from scratch.
• Begin early. Prep now for next year. Just create a playlist labeled Christmas 2022 in your preferred music playing program and dump songs you like there. Consider this your vault. It’s not too late to create one for this year, but if you want one done by Dec. 25th, don’t wait!
• Song selection is key. Here are my rules. Obviously yours will vary by taste and inclination:
• I like to keep it pretty even between male and female singers. That’s a personal preference because I definitely notice when a mix slants one direction or another. (Although, usually I find that if there’s a noticeable bias it tends to be toward the mix creator including a mostly male line-up.)
• Shorter songs are preferable. Aim for roughly three and a half minutes per song. Older songs are usually shorter; more modern ones tend toward the five-plus minute mark. I’m not saying to exclude long songs, although I try to keep those to a minimum. Christmas songs tend to get a bit repetitive and the longer one goes on, the easier it is to get tired of it. Plus, if you choose to burn your mix as a cd and you pick long songs, you get to include fewer songs.

• Include some artists you love even outside Christmas. You might decide only to include artists you listen to year-round, but I tend also to add artists I’m not familiar with who have songs I find very catchy.
• Find a balance between modern and traditional holiday music. By traditional I’m referring to songs everyone can sing along to. Marvin Gaye’s “Purple Snowflakes” is a song you can groove along to, but it’s not one that’s likely to get a carload of people singing along with it on first listen. But those unique tracks tend to be ones that people remember because, honestly, nearly every singer with a Christmas album has done a version of “Silent Night.” (I also like to throw in an instrumental or two. If your audience’s attention has wandered, a lack of vocals can help recall it to your mix.)

• Once you’ve assembled a collection of songs you like, it’s time to start playing with them. First, know your target number. If you’re putting this mix on a cd, you have 79 minutes to play with. If you’ve picked mostly longer songs, that’s probably 15 tracks. If you’ve gone with shorter pieces, you could get 20 or more songs on the cd. But it’s good to check this number regularly because there’s nothing worse than putting together a mix you love only to find that the last five songs aren’t going to fit on.
• I find it’s important to get your first and last songs right. The first song needs to draw your audience in, so I like an upbeat song to get you started. And the final song is that last taste you’re leaving people with. I like something a bit quieter here to send your listener out on a peaceful note. “Silent Night” would be a good choice here or “O Holy Night.”

• In between those I try to alternate every couple of songs, upbeat for a couple, then slow for one or two. Listen to your mix several times. If you find you’ve stopped hearing it or you get bored, move your songs around to create better transitions or bump the song that bored you. Sometimes a song sounds perfect by itself but just refuses to play nicely with any of its neighboring tunes.
• Finally, don’t forget to come up with a catchy title for your mix and artwork for it if you’re making cds.

• And, as with any holiday endeavor, try to remember you’re doing this because it’s fun and you like Christmas music. If it becomes too much of a hassle, by all means stop. There’s nothing wrong with just putting albums on the stereo or computer or listening to an all-Christmas radio station. This way gives you a unique and special holiday mix, but it’s definitely less important than spending time with your loved ones. And there’s always next year.

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Welcome back for the third day of the Virtual Advent Tour!

Over the years, I’ve shared some of the recipes I associate with the holidays. Often, they date back through the generations. Today, I’m going to share one that my mom found this year and that we tried at Thanksgiving. It was so tasty, I expect it to become a modern family classic.

Cranberry-Brie Puff Pastry Bites (from Parade Magazine)

Ingredients

• 2 sheets puff pastry
• 6 ounces brie
• 1/2 cup cranberry sauce

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Unroll a sheet of puff pastry onto a cutting board and cut into nine pieces (thirds vertically and horizontally).

Take each piece of puff pastry and tuck it into a mini muffin pan. (I don’t have a mini muffin pan, so will be trying this with a regular muffin pan this weekend.)

Cut the brie into 1″ pieces. (Freezing the brie for 15 minutes beforehand may make this easier, but I can almost guarantee I will never remember to do that.) Put one piece onto each puff pastry rectangle.

Put a spoonful of cranberry sauce onto each piece of brie. We used my mom’s homemade sauce, which has a thick consistency, but the recipe says you can used canned, too. If you want to mix it up, I imagine any thicker jam would work similarly. I bet cherry would be delicious, too.

Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry.

If you’re using the mini muffin pan, we found we had to pinch the tops of the dough closed in order to get all 18 pieces to not overlap.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Serve as soon as they’ve cooled enough not to burn your mouth or at room temperature. We were able to store them in the fridge overnight and reheat them slightly in the taoster oven the next day.

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