Christmas Stitches and Christmas Wishes

Here we find ourselves at Christmas Eve morning. The days of anticipation and preparation are nearly complete. Before the day is over, we will take part in our church's candlelight service and enjoy our annual family Christmas Eve dinner of Manhattan clam chowder. (Watch for the clam chowder recipe early next December.)

This short post shares this year's additions to the garland I have on my bannister. Over the years, I've accumulated more ornaments than can reasonably fit on our Christmas tree. I've elected to use my garland as a place to display my cross-stitched ornaments, most of which feature designs from Shepherd's Bush. 

Here are a few "up close" looks at some of the ornaments on the garland.

This year's additions include one original Shepherd's Bush design and one from With Thy Needle & Thread. I now have a total of 21 stitched ornaments on the garland. Here is another look at the two new additions:

With that, I will bring this post to a close and wish you a very merry Christmas and extend my best wishes for a happy 2024. I will leave you with the apostle Paul's perspective in his letter to the Galatians. Just as we are now experiencing the culmination of our preparations for Christmas 2023, move than 2000 years ago, the entire world experienced the culmination of the promise first made in the Garden of Eden with the birth of Jesus.

When the fulness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters. Galatians 4:4-5 (NASB)

Danish Christmas Cookies

 

As the countdown to Christmas 2023 winds down, I hope that you all are putting the finishing touches on your holiday preparations. Through the years I've shared some of our recipes for Christmas caramels, chocolates, and cookies. For this short blog, I thought I would share another cookie recipe that has become a Christmas season favorite over the past few years. 

In at least one of my past postings, I've shared that I'm half Danish. The only Danish recipe I have that has been handed down through the generations, though, is my paternal grandmother's recipe for aebelskivers. Through the years, I've picked up a couple of Danish recipe books with the larger goal of learning some new cooking skills and enjoying some new foods. A few years ago, I decided to add a Danish cookie to our repetoire of Christmas cookies. A recipe titled "Countess Cookies" caught my eye as one that seemed like one we would enjoy. After following the recipe as published, it was quickly evident that something wasn't entirely right, and I needed to make some modifications. I did some searching for "Countess Cookies" and "Danish Countess Cookies" on the Internet without any success in finding a recipe that was conceptually close to this one. 

Despite these challenges, I've managed to create a recipe that my family likes. The extent to which it is authentically Danish is probably debatable. Just the same, it's at least intended to be in the spirit of the Danish butter cookie. Here is our recipe along with a few pictures.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup ground oats
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• Additional ground oats
• Maraschino cherries cut in halves or quarters

Note regarding the oats: You can use either whole or quick oats. Remember, though that you are going to grind them up. I have found that the quick oats are a little easier to work with to get the desired coarse oat flower texture to stir into the cookie dough and then to roll the balls of cookie dough into before baking. I typically use our small countertop food processor to grind the oats.

Here are the instructions

1. Cream the butter, shortening, and brown sugar together

2. Mix in the egg and vanilla

3. Fold in the flour, ground oats, baking powder, and salt

4. Form the dough into small balls and roll them in the additional ground oats, allowing the ground oats to stick to the cookie dough.

5. Place the cookie dough on a baking sheet and lightly press a maraschino cherry portion on top of the cookie dough.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. The baking time will vary based on how big you make the cookies. Because these are a shortbread variant, the can burn rather quickly so you will want to watch for the edges to start to turn brown.

Here is what a pan of cookies looked like before I put them in the oven. I tried to make our cookies a little smaller this year. I was able to fit 21 cookies on a cookie sheet. I also used a silicone sheet on the bottom of the cookie sheet. Silicone sheets are the best.

Here is the outcome of our 2023 Christmas cookie baking day. The recipes for the molasses cookies on the right and the craisin puff cookies on the left can be found here. My family isn't entirely keen on raisins so, in recent years, we have switched the raisins in raisin puff cookies to craisins and now call them craisin puff cookies.

Whether you enjoy Christmas baking or not, wishing you all the best blessings of the season.

An Advent Sampler and Memories of Sunday School

Although the church I grew up in didn't celebrate the Advent season in the same manner as those with liturgical traditions, December always shifted to a season of anticipating Jesus' birth. This was especially true in the children's Sunday School lessons during the month of December.

Sunday School has always had a very special place in my life, and several of my limited memories of living in Alaska are tied to Sunday School. To be honest, I really don't have a lot of memories of the specific things I learned given that I was not quite 4 years old when we left. I primarily remember church as being a special place and that I liked going to Sunday School. I remember having a little black purse in which I would carry a small red New Testament. I also remember going to some type of Christmas service and being able to walk up to the front and see baby Jesus in the manger. 

The fall of 1974 found me in Sunday School for the first time in over 3 years. From the summer of 1971 until our move to Corinne, Utah, in August 1974, we lived in a very remote area of Utah and did not have access to a church to attend regularly. Looking back now, that little 1st through 3rd grade Sunday School class has had a central influence on my life. As we entered the month of December, the lessons shifted to the Christmas story. I still remember the sense of wonder and amazement as I learned about the prophets who foretold Jesus coming. While the story of baby Jesus being born in Bethlehem was familiar, this aspect of the Christmas story had me in awe. I also remember the kindness of my teachers, a husband-wife team, and how each Sunday morning, they had a small Christmas craft for us to complete - nothing particularly fancy but a little something special as we came in the door each week of December.

Through the years, I've come to love the Advent-themed hymns even more. In this post, I'm sharing a sampler from my favorite stitching shop, Shepherd's Bush, in Ogden, Utah. This is a project that I began working on a number of years back and finished in 2021. Earlier this fall, I finally brought it in to be framed so that we could enjoy it this Christmas season. The hymn featured on this piece, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, reflects the message of the prophets for Emmanuel, God with Us, to come here to earth to walk among us. Here are a few additional close up pictures of this piece.

Wishing you all the best blessings of the Advent season as you prepare to celebrate the fulfillment of the message of the prophets. Here is what the prophet Isaiah foretold.

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign; Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth a son, and she will name Him Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14