We have snow. It started around one with small flakes. Right now the flakes are huge and sporadic. I keep watching. They mesmerize me. We probably have a couple of inches, but some spots have less. I can see my walkway. Let it snow, let it snow!

I am a busy elf. I have started my Christmas goodie making. Yesterday I finished my toffee. While I was finishing the candy, my dogs sat below the counter drooling. I gave them a piece without the chocolate thus perpetuating their drooling.

When I was a kid, by this week, most of the Christmas preparations were finished. All that was left was the baking. My mother set whole afternoons away for the cookies. One of them was spritz cookies. My mother operated the press. You pushed the dough in the press down to the medal plate at the bottom. Each plate had a different design like a wreath or a tree. We never decorated them except my mother would add food coloring to the dough so the trees were green and other cookies were red. I have family stories about spritz cookies. My father only ate the non-colored cookies. He said the food coloring changed the flavor. We just smiled and nodded. One year I gave my mother an electric spritz maker. It went rogue. Dough flew all over. She never used it again. When my sister and her family from Colorado came for Christmas, she had made all sorts of cookies. I too had made cookies. We both made spritz cookies. They were part of our family Christmas lore. I have my mother’s press. I make the cookies every now and then. I color the dough.

Sugar cookies have always been my favorite. My mother had tin cookie cutters with a sort of handle on the top. Now they call them vintage. She had Santa with a pack on his back, a tree, an angel with wings, a reindeer and my favorite, a camel. She’d do the mixing and the rolling, and we’d do the pressing and the decorating. The kitchen smelled so wonderful while the cookies were baking. She’d pull the cookies sheet out of the oven and put them on the counter. We always begged for one. She’d give us one still warm from the oven. It never disappointed. We’d decorate after the cookies had cooled. That was the most fun.

Today I have some more Christmas to make. I won’t tell what as some of friends need to be surprised. Christmas is filled with surprises.

The morning is cloudy, and it will stay cloudy all day. The temperature is tolerable at 35°. It is winter after all. The air is perfectly calm, nothing moves, not even the dead oak leaves hanging off the ends of the branches. I made my toffee, almost. I just have to cover it in chocolate and nuts. I even made two batches. It is destined to be a Christmas gift though I might save a few pieces for myself.

We used to watch Santa Claus on TV. The program came from a New Hampshire station. Santa sat at a table and talked to us. He read stories and letters to Santa. Sometimes an elf joined him in the workshop. The elf looked liked a gnome. Santa was surrounded by shelves filled with toys. On Christmas Eve he’d say good-bye before his big trip.

We always took a light ride. We had favorite places. The block in Saugus was one of them. Every house was covered in lights. Every house was awesome. We went slowly in a line of cars and went up and down the streets. That is one tradition which has held over the years. I still take a light ride, and my sister does too.

We always wished for a white Christmas mostly because snow is always the backdrop for Santa and his sleigh. Over the year my sled was kept upright in the cellar. The runners would get a bit of rust but not the permanent sort. I remember leaving a reddish trail as I dragged the sled over the snow. It didn’t drag easily until the rust was gone.

I had the good fortune to live on a great hill. My house was on the corner almost to the top of the hill. I’d pull my sled to the top, plunk it down then run and jump on. I was always on my stomach with my feet in the air and my hands on the front steering bar. Only little kids sat upright. Sometimes we’d go so fast we couldn’t stop at the end of the hill so we’d hope for no cars as we crossed the street below the hill and ended up in the field. It was always a slog pulling the sled back up the hill.

I loved cocoa in the winter. My mother made it with milk and Nestle’s cocoa which came in a cardboard container with silver on the top where the opening was. Sometimes the container was a bank with a slit at the top for the money. My mother always put Marshmallow Fluff on the top of the cocoa. It would melt and spread across the top. I remember a marshmallow mustache.

My dance card is so full it’s groaning. Today is my fourth concert in a row. Next week I have five plus practice and my lesson. A four string instrument had taken over my life, but we’re singing Christmas carols which make the concerts fun for us. We all wear green or red and fascinators on our heads. We have music makers and bells. We are an enthusiastic bunch.

The morning is sunny. It is cold but not bone chilling. I’ve pulled my heavy, heavy sweater from the storage bin. On the coldest days I wear it instead of a winter coat. I still have nightmares of all those layers.

Last night was one of those nights. I had checked the mouse hotel for three days, no new occupants so I stopped checking. Last night I decided to bait the traps again. One poor mouse had taken his last breath in one of the traps. I took him outside. Jack, my cat, decided to throw up and not a little. I cleaned up the floor, gave Jack some pats and scratches then left and went to bed. I always give the two dogs a before sleep treat. Henry ate his, but Nala started coughing as a bit was stuck in her throat. I went to help her but she coughed it up and hit me with it. Yup, it was one of those nights.

I stopped playing with dolls when I was young with two exceptions. Both were Christmas presents. The first was a cloth doll with long legs and elastics on her feet which also went around my feet then we’d dance together, sort of toe to toe. I always lead. For years, after midnight mass, my grandparents would come to our house to watch us open presents. We opened them and played a little while until my parents would send us back to bed. That year I brought my dance partner with me to bed. My brother and I decided to sneak back downstairs to play with our toys. I left my doll in my bed under the covers. My father checked on us and saw my brother’s bed was empty. He checked my bed and saw I was sleep under the covers. He yelled down the stairs for my brother to go back to bed. I got to stay and play.

The other doll I loved was a Ginny doll. She was made of hard plastic and was not very tall. Her arms were moveable. One Christmas I got my Ginny doll and all her pink bedroom furniture. Ginny had a bed, a bureau, two chairs and a table, a hat stand and a wardrobe filled with clothes. Many outfits had matching hats. I swear Ginny had more clothes than I did, certainly more hats. I still have that Ginny but not any furniture. She is wearing a dress, sweater and, of course, a hat. She sits in a place of honor on the top shelf of the bookcase in my bedroom.

This has been a morning. First off I finished all the puzzles in the paper. That should have been a warning. In the jumble, I usually don’t get the final jumble if it is one word, but not today. I got it. I also got the cryptoquip, and I finished the crossword puzzle, a banner day. My next task was one which took nearly an hour and a half. I called about a medication. I needed one refilled and had several questions about others. I talked to two places and finally got answers I needed. The parade with bands and banners took a while.

We are still in the cold zone. It is only 27° and cloudy. Tonight we’ll go down to the teens. I have no reason to leave the house for which I am grateful. I am cozy and warm.

When I was a kid, my mother always dressed us in layers on the coldest days. She’d add a hat and mittens. I hated the hat. I liked that the mittens kept my fingers warm stuck together as they were, but mittens made my hands just about useless. I could hold my lunch box but wouldn’t have been able to open it, too delicate a task in mittens. What’s funny now is I still wear mittens though I do have a couple of pairs of gloves. I don’t wear hats, but I have a few. The only one I’d wear is 62 years old. It is a pink knit hat with a pompon. A friend’s grandmother made it for me when she saw I didn’t wear one. It is actually still fashionable.

My mother played Christmas records on her hifi. The favorite was always Bing Crosby’s Merry Christmas album, the one with a cover of him wearing a Santa hat and a holly bow. We always sang along. The other album we played was my album, Guy Lombard and the Royal Canadians Sing the Songs of Christmas with a Chorus of Children’s Voices. It was released in 1960. I am one of those children’s voices. I also had a solo, a one note solo which I consider my debut. I came in one note early on Winter Wonderland, and, because we had sung several takes, they kept it. We were there, in the town hall, all day. Kenny Gardner led us through the songs. The orchestra was in the pit under the stage. We only saw Guy Lombardo at the beginning and at the end when he thanked us. We got Hoodsies.

I still have the original album but the cover is in tough shape. All the lyrics were listed on the inside of the album jacket. It was, after all, a song-a long. My sisters loved to play that album so it got a lot of use. One year I hunted down copies of the album and gave each of my sisters a copy for one of their Christmas presents. I didn’t know if they had record players. It didn’t matter. I was giving them a memory.

The day is relatively warm at 42°. A bright sun is here but is sharing the sky with clouds. I can see a few hanging brown oak leaves swaying a bit. All in all, it is a pretty day.

Henry is doing better. He longer scratches his ear though he still shakes his head but hardly as often. Now I’m worried about Nala. She has been sick twice this morning. I hope it is a two on and done, perhaps an upset stomach as Henry blew my vet budget, nearly $400.00, and the vet is pay as you go. I’m keeping a close eye on Miss Nala.

My mother gave each of us a box of ornaments. They were some of the ornaments which hung on the Christmas tree every year when we were kids. They are colored glass, and each has a decoration etched in white. I always put them on my tree. They are memories.

The other day I saw a house with a picture window covered in white stenciled decorations. My memory draws flew open, and I remembered the picture window in our house when I was a kid. We’d tape on the stencils, dab them with a white sort of removable paint and carefully peel them off after everything had dried. The window was covered in Santa Claus, a bell, a tree, a snowflake and a candy cane. They seemed to shine in the sunlight. At night, the window and the stencils were highlighted in orange from the bulbs on the candelabra on the window sill below.

I remember the cardboard Santas and the cardboard trees. We’d tape them on walls or on other windows. Before taping, we’d peel off the yellow tape from years before. It came off easily but left permanent outlines on the back. They were like tree rings. We knew how many years we’d used those cardboard decorations.

Our tree stood in the corner between two windows. That was a good thing. I remember when the tree fell. My brother and I grabbed it and stopped it from falling completely to the floor. Our parents were out so we were forced to make-do. We each took turns holding up the tree until our parents got home. Then it was my father to the rescue!! He grabbed heavy duty string and wound it around the trunk while we held up the tree. He then attached the ends of the strings to each of the windows. The tree was safe, secure. Many, many years later my dog Shauna, my first boxer, pulled down my tree a couple of times. I knew the solution. I wound heavy duty string around the trunk and attached one end of the string to a window and the other end to a nail on the bottom of the fireplace mantle. My father had taught me well.

Today is more typical for December. It is in the low 40’s. The sky is cloudy with light grey clouds. They will hang around all day. I have the stirrings of a cold so I’m staying home. I have plenty of house and Christmas things to keep me busy.

Christmas always merited a countdown. The closer we’d get the more excited we’d be. We still shopped the Sears catalog just in case we missed something. We wrote letters to Santa. One year Santa sent us a telegram, a real telegram. On the top of it was a picture of Santa, his sleigh and all of his reindeer. They were flying over a house. Santa wrote it to the Ryan Children. We were reminded he was watching us to make sure we were good, as if we needed a reminder. He wished us a Merry Christmas and wrote he’d be seeing us. He signed it simply Santa. In a scrapbook somewhere in the eaves I have that telegram.

Back then, there were so many Christmas cards the postman came twice a day. We took turns opening the cards. My mother kept track of the senders making sure she had already sent one or needed to. We decorated with the cards. A string was hung across the wall over the couch. We’d put the cards on the string so you could see the fronts. We’d do the same on the wall behind the desk. My aunt used to send us kids a card. It was always Santa, and we’d place it on the tree mostly inside to cover the bare spots. I also remember a Coke-Cola Santa. He had a bottle of Coke in his hand. On the top of the card was an opening so you could hang it on the tree. He also covered bare spots.

I was always excited when my father spent a Saturday decorating the bushes in front of the house. I loved those lights. The bulbs were huge and always felt warm. The cord came through an open window to the plug, no timer back then. We’d race to plug in the lights as soon the sun started to go down. We’d also light the window lights, the candles. They didn’t have on-off switches. You had to turn the bulbs. They also got hot and turning them off burned your fingers a bit. I remember crawling under the tree to plug in the lights. I wonder now why we never had a fire as there were several plugs in only one outlet. I always thought the tree with its lights lit was the crowning achievement of Christmas decorations. I loved just sitting and looking at the tree. I loved that the house smelled of pine. I loved Christmas. Still do.

Winter is here, a colder winter, a colder December, than usual. The high today will be 28°. It is inside hoodie weather. I’m going to watch the world from through my windows. I have no reason to leave the warm, cozy house. The dogs too like the warmth of the house. I swear Henry runs into the house with his leg still in the air.

It is time for an update on the mice. I trapped over twenty from under the bed. The latest were tiny, babies I think. Last night was the fourth night of empty traps. Either I have them all or they have moved on with packed bags and a few cat treats for the trip.

I need a little Christmas. I haven’t even hung the outside lights to replace the ones the spawn chewed. I’m waiting for a warmer day. I think today I may bring up a few Christmas storage boxes from the cellar. I’ll do that for a couple of days. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.

My town where I grew up was always festive at Christmas. Lights outlined the fire station, and Santa was on a ladder to go down the chimney. The town hall too was covered in lights. Garlands hung across Main Street. Bells in the center of the garlands swayed in the breeze. A stage was set up in front of the Children’s Corner, one of the up town stores. Each night carolers, from different schools, stood on the stage and sang for the shoppers. I remember being so proud standing there and singing. I was in the fifth grade. We sang from the John Hancock carol book. I still have mine. It is certainly worse for the wear.

I have a list of goodies I’ll make this year. I just need a few more ingredients, like oranges and lemons and sour cream. I’ll make my toffee, probably the most popular treat I make every year. I’ll make orange cookies. There were my mother’s favorites. She used to save some cookies just for herself. My mother used to make peanut butter balls, my favorites. She’d hide some in the freezer then bring them out long after Christmas as a surprise. My sister still makes them and generously sends me a tin full. I don’t put any in the freezer. They don’t last long.