Middle aged musings from farm & hearth
It’s been a sad few weeks around here – horrible tragedies in the news, and my Aunt’s passing in the season she loved most. I needed something to remind me of the Joys in this world, and Christmas time for me is usually abundant. My cousin posted about a house in New Britain.. the Christmas House… and I knew I had to go. My daughter accompanied me, with pasta and canned goods in hand for admission… see story exerpts, taken from last years Hartford Courant article, below…
“Rita Giancola started putting up Christmas decorations in October. Transforming eight rooms, a hallway, a stairway and the front lawn into the region’s biggest Christmas shrine takes time. It’s a labor that Giancola has been doing every year since 1978, and it’s a tradition that she’s determined to keep going. “I’m never going to retire,” the 87-year-old great-grandmother said. “If I’m 90, I’ll still be doing this.”
Giancola’s rambling Lexington Street house is a landmark for generations of families who show up to see hundreds of Santas, Nativity scenes, plastic snowmen, red-and-green elves — all lit up by thousands upon thousands of holiday lights. The first floor of Giancola’s century-old, three-family house is covered floor-to-ceiling with Christmas décor, dancing angels, mechanical Santa models, ribbons, tinsel, bows and seemingly endless strands of garland.
To get the full tour inside, bring along some nonperishable food donations. Giancola runs an open house for five nights every December to benefit the Prudence Crandall shelter and the local Salvation Army, filling cartons with canned soups, pastas, cereals, paper towels, cleaning supplies and similar items.
She’s lived in the house across from the New Britain Museum of American Art for more than a half century, and recalls that she decorated all the first-floor rooms every year. In 1978, she started the open house and has kept it up ever since. It’s been the topic of a New York Times feature and TV news reports over the years, but Giancola still frets about the chances of few people — and fewer donations.
“The children’s eyes go everywhere. The grandparents are almost crying with joy,” she said. “People come through and say ‘My parents brought me when I was little’ and now they’re bringing their own children.”
Giancola’s children and grandchildren pitch in decorating the more difficult-to-reach spots, but she figures she still does about 90 percent of the work herself.
“I’m up and down ladders all days,” she said, “and this year I didn’t decorate the second bathroom. I
got lazy.”
I struggled with what to say… what DO you say when you know this is the last of your conversations with this beloved person, this beautiful soul who loved you unconditionally, has given you so much to cherish. What do you want to leave with that person as they begin the journey to where ever we go when we die…. what do you want to take away?….
Due to popular demand, I’d like to propose another Project 24. Our last “24” was on Halloween. This assignment will be for Christmas Day, December 25th. Beginning at the 1:00am time slot, I will need participants for each hour of that day –
What you have to do to participate:
1. Pick a time slot that is not already taken – you do this by reading the comments below this post to see who has already picked a time.
2. Pick an available time, and leave a comment telling me what time slot you have chosen. There are 24, obviously.
3. Put a post it note somewhere that will remind you to take your picture within the hour of the timeslot you have chosen.
4. On the 25th, take the picture of your choice, something – a scene, an object, an event… outside, down the road, in town, in your house, out in the yard… that depicts something about Christmas to you. Let’s make it as interesting as possible. If you are out and about on Christmas day, take a snapshot of something in your town – a display, a store window, a diner, your neighbors tacky christmas decorations, your grandmothers yule log recipe… etc.etc.
5. Within a day or so, e-mail me your photo, the state it was taken in, and your time slot. A caption would be much appreciated too.
So!.. what time are you taking? I’ve got 8am (yeah, I’m a stinker, took one of the good spots).
•1 package (12 ounces) yolk-free noodles
•2 tablespoons butter
•1/2 medium apple, peeled and thinly sliced ( I added more apple)
•1-1/2 cups (12 ounces) Sour Cream
•1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, cubed
•3/4 cup sugar
•3 eggs
•2 egg whites
•1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided
•1 teaspoon vanilla extract ( I add just a little more vanilla)
•2 cups milk
•1 jar (10 ounces) apricot preserves
Directions
•Cook noodles according to package directions; drain. Toss with butter and apple; set aside. Meanwhile, beat the sour cream, cream cheese, sugar, eggs, egg whites, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and vanilla until well blended. Beat in milk. Stir in noodle mixture.
•In a 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish coated with cooking spray, layer half of the noodle mixture, all of the preserves and the remaining noodle mixture. Sprinkle with remaining cinnamon. Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 55-65 minutes.
YUM!
What to post today… anything seems trivial, especially holiday cheer, when I can’t get the thought of all those families in Newtown, all those bodies at the morgue….out of my head. All those funeral arrangements to be made just before what is normally a joyful family holiday. Their gifts are probably wrapped and hidden in closets or under the tree. The weight of the loss just beginning to crash like waves in the hearts of those affected…
Father of 6 year old Emilie Alice, Robbie Parker – has a message for the family of the gunman who killed his daughter and 19 of her school mates.
“I can’t imagine how hard this experience must be for you, and I want you to know that our family and our love and our support goes out to you as well,”
He’s a better man than I.
Ofcourse, the shooters mother is dead, by the hands of her son and her own guns. I don’t think any of this guy’s family saw it coming either. Details will surface.. but how can anyone ever truly believe their child is capable of such horror. And yet it happens. You almost always hear later.. there were signs along the way.
People all over are using this tragedy to bolster their causes… “SEE??… that’s why we need tighter gun control”…or… “Where was GOD when this happened? They don’t allow GOD in schools anymore, remember?”….
My personal take? I hate guns. I do think they are necessary in the hands of the right people and for the right reasons. There-in lies the biggest problem. There’s no real way to keep them out of the hands of the idiots who will use them for evil. And there will always be those idiots. There’s no way to known when a slightly unstable or mentally ill mind will snap. Making it harder to get guns might deter some, but honestly if a deranged person has it set in his mind that he’s going to plaster innocent childrens bodies across a classroom to soothe his hatred or make his mark in this world, he’s gonna find a way to do it without any of our permission.
Whether prayer was allowed in school or not would not have deterred him either. The saddest truth of all is, there is probably nothing that could have been done to prevent this… no real way to know it would happen. There will always be evil in the world and people who will execute it.
What alarms me the most?… it seems to be happening more and more frequently. In so many ways, the integrity of the people of this world is beginning to self-destruct.
SO! What to post today? Surely there are enough of us out there to offset the evil. Many of my fellow bloggers and readers do just that on a regular basis. Let’s counter the evil with plenty of good will – and whether religion is a part of your life or not, send healing thoughts out into the universe, say a prayer in whatever form has meaning for you – for those all over the world who are hurting today.
In this… I wholeheartedly believe.