The Storyrain Blog

 In Japan, large fires called bon-bi are set to welcome the return of the spirits of the ancestors. Though the two terms are not etymologically or historically related, they serve similar purposes and indicate the universal importance of large fires.

Various holiday postings, particularly about Christmas cookies, have made think of one of my fonder childhood memories. Before she left to go live on a beach in Jamaica, my mom made Christmas cookies with us (these would be pre-six year old memories for me). Of course, we were nominally Jewish, but only my sister and brother even went to Hebrew school; I only went to Sunday School (consequently learning only what to eat, what to sing, and how to dance for Jewish holidays). My mother is extremely iconoclastic (she also taught me to read tarot cards when I was twelve) and my father is more intellectually Jewish than religiously so. Between his objections and her laissez-faire, some mainstream Christmas stuff snuck in; I personally was most impressed with glitter and festivity--like the beautiful displays with the huge lions at Wannamaker's in downtown Philadelphia. Hanukkah candles were great by me, but so were garlands and tinsel and lights and all the miniature wonderlands in downstore department stores like Wannamaker's.

So, the cookies. She always made a basic refrigerator dough, then rolled it out and we took cookie cutters in the shapes of trees, gingerbread men and women, reindeer, stars, and snowmen to the dough. She baked them and mixed up an artist's pallete of colored powdered-sugar icing which we then decorated the cookies with. Some silver ball sprinkles and colored sugars completed the materials. I was always most focused on color combinations and designs, and on mixing shades of icing to come up with new ones...and on planning the next star, next gingerbread person, next reindeer. The cookies were always really really good.

Another thing I always remember is that, again, Jewishness and Hanukkah observance despite, on Christmas morning my sister, brother, and I gathered on my sister's bed in the early early, waiting until it was late enough to get mom and dad up. Then we all went down to the living room, which was sans tree, but had stockings on the fireplace mantle, and opened our modest piles of presents. And the two years that stand out most (again, pre-six years old, cause it all went south after that) are the ones when I was given exactly what I asked for: once, my first pets, two white mice--I was beyond excited when I saw the bars and their little feet under the edge of the wrapping paper; and the other time when they found me a beautiful marionette in answer to my newly born (and life-long) love of marionettes and puppets.

The last thing is evenings all winter sitting in front of the fire with my mom. I was fascinated with and comforted by fire, and could watch it (somewhat autistically--I was similarly mesmerized by light on water) for hours, until the last embers finally stopped coalescing like live things every time I blew on them.

Nothing material from that time of my life remains, except a couple of photos, cause mom went off to find herself--and never had much care for material things anyway--and dad just never had a clue, so when that house was sold, nothing but a few big pieces of valuable furniture were kept. The mice only lived for a year (and I almost drowned them in a Barbie boat once, much to my mother's disgust and chagrin), but I do miss that marionette sometimes.