Christmas Week: A Home Journal
Hello my dear friends! It is Christmas week, and our kitchen is bustling with life and with warmth. Our mornings are early and bitter cold, and met with a hot cup of coffee and daily advent readings. There are tree-clippings tucked into every corner, lights strung, candles burning, and the oven heating as there is a lot to bake this week! I thought I would bring you along for some of my “ing’s” during the days leading up to Christmas - what I’m reading, what I’m making, and what I’m listening to.
what i’m reading:
Although there are many advent devotionals out there, I always find myself returning to simplicity and reading the book of Luke. To me, Luke is the perfect book to read for advent because it starts with the Christmas story and has exactly 24 chapters, which by reading a chapter every day, puts me at finishing the book on Christmas Eve. If you have never participated in advent before, advent is a special season that begins a month before Christmas day and is meant to help center our hearts on the true meaning of Christmas. It is a time of reflection of the nativity (birth) of Christ and a time to wait, expectantly, for the sweet celebration on the 25th. Daily Bible readings are a simple and practical way to celebrate advent, and it’s never too late to start!
Another addition to my morning Bible readings, which I started this year, has been reading or singing hymns. Hymns are so theologically rich and filled with solid, Biblical truth and unfortunately, have been a bit lost in our generation as newer “worship” music has emerged. If I don’t know the tune, I love to read a hymn as poetry.
what i’m making:
It has been a busy and fulfilling week working with my hands! Here is what my to-do list, as far as things I needed to make, looked like this week:
Make peanut butter balls
Make chocolate and peppermint chocolate fudge
Make chocolate dipped pretzels
Put together Christmas treat boxes for our neighbors
Bake a cranberry, orange, and walnut loaf for our Granny and Pa
Put together 12 hot cocoa jars to give as gifts to friends
Bake two big batches of cinnamon rolls and pack up to give as gifts to mine & Blakes coworkers.
This was the first year I have ever made fudge and it was so simple to make. I melted 18oz of dark chocolate chips, 14oz of sweetened condensed milk, 2 tbsp of butter, 1/2 tsp sea salt, and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract over medium heat until it was fully melted and combined. Then I poured into a parchment-lined 8x8 pan and sprinkled with toppings, covered it, and put it in the fridge to set for about 3 hours. We did a batch of plain chocolate and a batch with crushed peppermint on top!
For the pretzels, I melted chocolate gently in a double-boiler then dipped half of the pretzel in the chocolate and covered with Christmas sprinkles. Let them sit in the fridge until the chocolate has hardened, about 30 minutes.
I packaged some of the peanut butter balls, fudge, and pretzels up in little boxes I got from the craft store and we delivered them to some of our neighbors, boxed up my cinnamon rolls and tied with twine and a tag and gave to our friends, baked and wrapped the cranberry orange and walnut loaf in a little plastic wrap and twine and gifted it to two people we love, filled 12 half-pint jars with our favorite hot cocoa recipe to give as gifts over the next few days, and stocked our own treat supply in the kitchen. I still have more baking to do this weekend for our family! Because of the nature of our season of life, preparing to buy a house in the next few months, we decided not to do gifts this year, but I sure do love this season of giving, so I’m finding small ways to spread a little Christmas cheer. Gifts which you made instead of gifts that you bought, like baked goods or hot cocoa jars, are always more meaningful anyway, no matter how humble they might be.
“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”
what i’m listening to:
Christmas music filling the house, as we’re going about our day, is a kind of warmth I look forward to every year. My favorite kind of Christmas music is the kind that gives that olde-fashioned-Christmas-feeling. Why are the older things just, always better? I have compiled a list below of some of the playlists I love - some on Youtube and some on Spotify depending on where you’re listening!
This week, I was sitting in the kitchen with my mom as she was sharing some of her most treasured childhood memories from Christmastime. She told me how each year she couldn’t wait to get over to her Mamaw’s house because “her house was always so clean and tidy and felt comfortable to be in” and “you could smell the roast she was cooking right when you walked in the door” and “there were homemade treats on the countertops, and she always had the table decorated pretty.” These were the things my mom remembered most from her childhood Christmas, about 50 years later. It reminded me, once again, of the meaningful work of the homemaker. It reminded me of all of the women who labor over their homes in cleanliness and decoration, over stovetops and ovens, over gifts which need to be wrapped and preparations made - all to create the magic for others that is felt at Christmastime, and remembered for generations. This is important work. This is our ministry. Let it be said of our homes that by the honest and faithful work of one woman, memories were made and preserved and comfort and joy were had. Merry Christmas!
