Sunday is the winter solstice – the shortest day, and the longest night of the year. I hope you are all bundled up and ready for the holidays. We took the last packages off to the post office on Wednesday, mailing our love tokens of books and socks, and Christmas cookies. We stood in the conga line of similarly festive folks, patiently waiting, and smiling, listening to the clock tick. It’s almost time to settle in for a long winter’s retreat in the living room. We have books, and movies, and popcorn, and some of the remaining homemade Christmas cookies. This year we will have an actual fireplace for a proper visit from Santa! There is a turkey thawing in the fridge, potatoes in the larder, and the ingredients for a family favorite flourless chocolate cake. Cue the snow.
I like to have a little pot of something boiling away on the stovetop during the Christmas holidays. It fills the house with cozy, childhood aromas. Wafting clouds of orange, cloves, and cinnamon linger in corners, reminding me of homey scenes from Little Women, or the Little House books. Remember the year that Laura and Mary found oranges in their stockings? The snow was deep out there in the vast, lonely Dakota Territory, but Santa still located the deserving Ingalls girls. What a wonderful Christmas that was.
Christmas movies and old television specials easily toy with our vulnerable, sentimental hearts. There are Christmas commercials that make me cry. All these holiday feelings are easily triggered by singing about the Who Hash and the rare Who roast beast. Listen to that squeaking as the Grinch easily separates little Whos from their candy canes. What an outrageous, Grinchy thing to do!
I love The Bishop’s Wife, with its chaste romance and its debonair angel-in-business-suit. No Christmas tree since has been covered by that much tinsel, and so quickly. Oh, for Dudley to keep my glass full with warming, inspiring – though never inebriating – sherry. I’d love to have luncheon with Dudley and Julia at Michel’s, without the paprika.
Clarence, the endearingly clumsy angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, is more my speed. I, too, would stumble into Nick’s rough Pottersville joint and attempt to order something inappropriately fey, like hot mulled wine. And could I have some tasty nibbles, too?
In honor of Clarence, and the whole Christmas season, the Spy Test Kitchen researched hot, mulled wine. And considering we are about to spend lots of time on the sofa, it’s nice to have choices. Let’s start simmering with the queen, Ina Garten: Hot Mulled Wine
Martha has a white wine version: and a red wine version – which she says is, “like Christmas in a glass.” I wonder what Snoop thinks? As much as I like a cheap white wine, I think mulled wine calls for a nice red. It’s winter, and Christmas, and it’s cold outside. Give me something that is full-bodied and heart-warming. Like this: Erin Clark’s Mulled Wine
Even Reddit has an opinion about the best wines to use for mulled wine: Reddit Mulled Wine
And the young folk on TikTok have a genius approach – to use a slow cooker! Finally, we can pull ours out of the pantry and use it for something other than beef stew or chili! Tiktok slow cooker recipe
Our stockings are hung by the new chimney, in hopes that St. Nick finds them there. Oranges are welcome, but I would like some new colored pencils, too. Courtnei wants a hot glue gun, Santa. (I hope he delivers.) Ho, ho, ho.
Merry, merry, gentle readers. Enjoy the holidays.
“You must be the best judge of your own happiness.”
—Jane Austen
Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.
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