Luster Kaboom

There are two types of holiday meals: the kind I'd like to make and the kind I actually make.

See also:
- Nine Baked Goods in Metro Phoenix to Order for Your Holiday Table
- Artist Creates Cities Made Entirely Out of Jell-O Because Cities Made Entirely Out of Jell-O Are Really Cool
- "Eating Christmas" archives

It's not that I'm bad in the kitchen. I'm actually pretty good, considering that I spend so little time there. Holidays are the one day a year when my husband and I reverse our reversed roles: Gary does the traditional husband thing -- watch football, eat dip and nap -- while I hunt for the knives and try to remember the old rhythms of cutting-chopping-basting-tasting. (Well, I never actually forgot the tasting part.)

Luster Kaboom

Growing up in Las Vegas, you're not allotted many of the Christmasy traditions of cooler climes. Snowmen are hard to make when it's 60 degrees, and you could only organize a neighborhood snowball fight if you shaved the ice yourself.

See also:
- "Eating Christmas" archives
- Nine Baked Goods in Metro Phoenix to Pre-Order for Your Christmas Table

So, around Christmas 1996, my father got the notion that if we were going to have any traditions at all, we would have to make our own. But family customs, like nicknames, have to arise organically -- you can't make them up yourself, or the universe will correct your mistake with hilarious consequence. So it was with the chestnuts.

Luster Kaboom

To me, Christmas is Kansas roads, drifting snow and corn casserole, a down-home dish that gets no respect until you taste it.

When I was little, we would drive for hours across the flat farmland to get from one house of grandparents to another, the beams of our headlights catching only snowflakes and the unending yellow centerline of a Kansas highway.

See also:
- Kim Porter's Ham Taco Christmas
- "Eating Christmas" archives

Luster Kaboom

Last Christmas Eve, no one who came to my house for dinner knew Dad was dying except me. He didn't want knowledge of his cancer diagnosis to project gloom over the evening. He wanted the holiday, his last Christmas, to seem as "normal" as possible.

See also:
- "Eating Christmas" archives

Although I was hosting 22 people for dinner, all night my attention was on Dad. I mingled as I cooked, but always, out of the corner of my eye, I was watching him. He's laughing and chatting, that's nice... He still seems to have some energy.... He looks so frail....

Ah, the holidays. Christmas is all about love, sharing, sweetness and light -- and keeping the antacids handy. In keeping with the spirit of the season, Chow Bella presents "Eating Christmas," in which some of our favorite writers nosh on the real lessons we learn this time of year. Today, Cynthia Clark Harvey draws some meaning from on Christmas cookies.

Comic by Cynthia Clark Harvey

Click on the image (or right here) for a full-size version.

Luster Kaboom

One holiday season, I stumbled across an inspiring magazine article. The glossy photo showed a cashmere-draped, model-thin mother beaming at her husband while he trimmed the Christmas tree. All of the ornaments were homemade. By the tree sat a curly headed toddler, proudly clutching her crooked tinfoil star. What children treasure most about the holidays, this article proclaimed, are unique family traditions.

See also:
- Five Christmas Pinterest Trends to Avoid at All Costs
- For Sativa Peterson, Nothing Says Christmas Like Glitter on Your Toast

Luster Kaboom

Please join us tonight, Wednesday, December 12 at 7 p.m. at Crescent Ballroom, as we present Chow Bella's first-ever public reading, featuring several entries from the "Eating Christmas" series, read by the authors, including Peterson.

See also:
- Monday Night Martha: The Croquembouche Chronicles
- Eating Christmas: Valley Writers Nosh on the Holidays

My Grandma and her sisters liked to try and out craft one another.

A new craft project would start with one of them, but spread like wildfire to the other sisters once they had been exposed to the craft du jour. One whole year when I was a kid they began making Christmas ornaments. The ornaments were "people" made out of two brightly colored silk Christmas balls stacked on top of one another, the lower-ball forming the torso, the upper becoming the head. They each had different hats and feet and hairstyles made out of felt and push pins and chenille pipe cleaners, and pom-poms, and sequins, and yarn, and sticky tacky craft glue and the magical ingredient - glitter.

Luster Kaboom

Please join us Wednesday, December 12 at 7 p.m. at Crescent Ballroom, as we present Chow Bella's first-ever public reading, featuring several entries from the "Eating Christmas" series, read by the authors, including Pela.

See also:
- Eating Christmas: Valley Writers Nosh on the Holidays
- 10 Favorite Cookie Shops in Metro Phoenix

It's the week before Thanksgiving, and I am making eighty dozen Christmas cookies.

Surrounded by metal contraptions that resemble waffle irons, I am cranking out hundreds of flat, round, paper-thin Italian holiday cookies that signal--at least to Italian Americans from northeastern Ohio--that Christmas is nearly here.

Luster Kaboom

Please join us Wednesday, December 12 at 7 p.m. at Crescent Ballroom, as we present Chow Bella's first-ever public reading, featuring several entries from the "Eating Christmas" series, read by the authors.

See also:
- A Saturday Night with Tania Katan
- Eating Christmas: Valley Writers Nosh on the Holidays

Being Chosen to be in covenant with God is not as glamorous as it sounds. Look, it wasn't my choice to be chosen, it was God's! And let me tell you a little something about being one of God's favorites; it sucks. It's like being your Boss's favorite or your Teacher's favorite; everyone hates you and you get more work/assignments/pogroms thrown at you because your Boss/Teacher/God doesn't want co-workers/fellow students/Christians to think that you're getting any special treatment.

Please join us Wednesday, December 12 at 7 p.m. at Crescent Ballroom, as we present Chow Bella's first-ever public reading, featuring several entries from the "Eating Christmas" series, read by the authors.

See also:
- Laurie Notaro's Army of Foodies, the Amuse Douchers of the Culinary World
- Five of the Most Expensive Cheeses in the Universe

At the mention of the word "brie," I was immediately terrified for my sister.

For the first time in our lives, Christmas Eve was not going to be at my mother's house, and my sister had stepped up to the plate.

"I've done it for forty years," my mom had announced suddenly. "Figure it out on your own."