Handmade gifts – share your memories
When I get the creative urge, I will attempt some handmade gifts. I made tiny little books for every family member one year, with a story of how one of our family traditions began. The tradition is eating toasted Panettone Christmas morning with hot cocoa and opening our stocking stuffers.
Panettone is that Italian “cake” that you see during the holiday, often in a shiny red box (that’s the one we like, by Perugina).
I wrote the story, typed it out and printed it out and constructed a little book and glued on a shiny red cover. I looped a little gold string through it and tied it to a box of Panettone for everyone (by then we were all living apart).
I’ll add a “how-to” on little books soon. Now I’m a little better at it than I was those many years ago. But another good idea would be to type your story in Word or whatever program you use. Type it in a column that is only 3″ or so wide – make the font small enough to fit in that column so that it fits the length of a regular size sheet of paper you can print out.
Trim, roll and tie with a ribbon. What a nice surprise for a gift or to tie to a gift!
• If you aren’t a writer, just pretend you are writing a letter and write your thoughts about your happiest holiday memory.
• Or fill it with funny memories of “Do you remember when….!”
• Let everyone know why you love them.
• Give them your favorite recipes.
The thing about these is that you can make one or a dozen different ones. Have fun with it!
Here is my story of how our favorite tradition began:
(written through my dads eyes…)
______________________
Our Story of the Panettone
by Julie Howell
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a land far away, I was a young man with the world on a string, money in my pocket, a wife and three beautiful children. Our first Christmas living in Africa was sure to be a new experience. We wouldn’t have our friends and relatives or old comfortable traditions.We settled for a silver foil Christmas tree with a floodlight that projected red, yellow, blue, green, red, yellow, blue, green. Complete with sound effects … errrr … errrr … errrr … errrr. I promised myself I would toss that silver tree whenever we returned to the states.
On Christmas morning, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. Gabriel Pollera, an Italian contractor that worked for me, strode in.
“I have for you a special cake!” he beamed, holding a shiny red box in the air. “This Italian cake is only made at Christmas time. Is wonderful toasted for breakfast or for a desert!” he explained.
He told us how it was his family’s tradition every year. It made them feel connected to home and family, though they were far away. With a final “Buno Natale,” he was gone.
Cake for breakfast? Hidden in a shiny red box, topped with a red ribbon handle and the word Panettone beautifully printed on the outside, we found the strangest looking cake. More like a giant muffin with paper wrapped around the edges. Where do you start? How do you slice it? We finally just sliced from the top down through the paper and toasted it in the oven. Then we all enjoyed it around the breakfast table with our hot cocoa and stocking stuffer’s.
What a delightful taste! More like bread than cake. Pale yellow in color, light and airy with a bit of raisins and candied oranges and lemons. With a luscious aroma it’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before. What a wonderful surprise it was.
The next Christmas, while still overseas, we bought our own shiny red box and saved it for Christmas morning. Oh, the anticipation of waiting for it to toast and spread it liberally with butter! Somehow it happened that we couldn’t open our stocking stuffer’s without our cocoa and cake. Oh, how the taste brought back memories. We remembered how funny the silver tree was at first. Now it almost seemed normal. Almost. I am still going to toss it, I reminded myself.
It’s now many years later. The kids have lives of their own. Not one year has gone by that one of us hasn’t shown up Christmas morning with that familiar shiny red box. We still wait for it to be toasted before opening stocking stuffer’s. Sometimes I laugh at how the kids insisted on having their silver foil tree up after we moved back to the states. To them, that was their tradition. Oh, we haven’t always been able to spend the holidays together. But knowing that we are all toasting the Panettone and drinking hot cocoa, brings up together in some strange way.
Hidden in the recesses of my memories, rests a time when we were without our family and traditions. We leaned on a borrowed tradition and it became our own. Toast the Panettone this Christmas morning . . . and we’ll all be together.
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