On the tenth day of Christmas

I finally rolled out the rest of the dough and finished baking Swedish pepper cookies. The recipe, rich in the goodness of melted butter, molasses, sour cream, and all kinds of spices--including black pepper, along with the allspice, ginger, and cloves--is so wonderful that I found myself eating bits of raw dough this past week. [Kids, do not do this at home, the uncooked dough has eggs in it.]

The recipe also makes lots of dough and that means lots of rolling it out. So we will have traditional ethnic cookies for our Twelfth Night party.
No, my cookies do not look like this. They are thinner, crisper, and are not adorned with sugar on top. They are just thin little ginger crisps. They may be iced or decorated with colored sprinkles but I prefer them plain. I did not locate my cookie cutters this year, so they are all small and round. Very boring, I know. Usually I have bells and wonderful crosses and Christmas trees along with round ones, but not this year. I have some copper cookie cutters that my mother used to make these same cookies--somewhere in the house or garage. They will turn up.

I may make another type of cookie but no promises. We also have my best friend's fruitcake, made according to his great-grandmother's recipe. I love it and those of you who don't care for fruitcake... all the more for me! I have the last little bit of last year's fruitcake (yes, I dole it out, not as thinly sliced as my Uncle Virgil used to do but not frequently). So we each get a small bite of last year's before enjoying whole slices from this year.

We shall celebrate the conclusion of Christmas. Twelfth Night, the Eve of Epiphany, is also the anniversary of my mother's death in 1985. The next morning I rode the train to Fresno, thumbing through my hymnal and singing hymns and weeping a lot. Somewhere around 1996 or 1997 (perhaps even 1998?) on January 5 we were having a party at our home and I got word that our next door neighbor Betty had died. I grabbed a white stole that I had been making and a prayer book, walked next door, and led the Litany at Time of Death.

Betty and I had a funny relationship. We were neighbors who chatted over the fence in the best ancient manner. Her upbringing as a Catholic was so entrenched, however, that when she wanted to say "shit" or actually slipped and said it she would say, "I'm sorry, Father." I kept telling her, "I'm your neighbor, Betty, not your priest." But those nuns had brought her up proper, don't you know?

I had been making that stole with the Baptism of Christ in mind and actually made two of them. I still have one. It is an off-white silk with bright turquoise blue silk lining, evocative of water in my mind because it is not only blue but suggestive of blue swimming pools in southern California. The orphreys on the front include shades of blue and green. I wore the stole when I was invited to participate in her Requiem and when I laid her to rest in the earth. Whenever I put it on I think of her.

On Christmas Eve I wore another white stole, one that was part of my "hope chest." It had been given to me by Vyolene Henry, a dear woman of the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Los Angeles (the old cathedral, long since replaced with a bank). Her birthday was Christmas and I remember when we had dinner with her on Christmas Eve many years ago. She gave me the stole before I was even fully in the "process." When I put it on last week it was to honor and give thanks for her.

Everything comes with a story. In a few moments I am going to eat the unshaped cookie, the one made with the last bit of dough rolled out and untrimmed. I shall eat it in honor of my oldest nephew, who never cared what shape his cookies were when he was a child, and in honor of my Aunt Ruby Victoria who died this week, and in honor of Kazan the cookie-loving dog with whom I shared my pepper cookies.

I hope you all have been having a blessed Twelve Days of Christmas. Though it is not how I was raised--God knows--I am now quite old-fashioned about the Twelve Days. I don't really begin to enjoy and savor Christmas until the second day. Too much hustle and anxiety until all the Christmas services and Christmas dinner are over. This has been my time and I have enjoyed it very much.

Peace and joy to all.
--the BB