It’s been three years since my hometown’s winter winds have bitten my nose, frozen my hair, and reddened my cheeks, and it will be one more when December 25th comes and goes again this year. This year, my holiday will be spent watching Santas surf Cocoa Beach, attending the Orlando Ballet’s The Nutcracker, and proving to my granddaughter that her globetrotting grandmother does indeed know how to shop at a grocery store.
My hometown is known for the Mayo Clinic, a world-class medical facility built in a cornfield and made famous long by the revolutionary-at-the-time choice to require surgeons to wash their hands before performing surgeries, not just after. Visitors buy postcards of our Ear of Corn Water Tower. Built back in 1930, it stands 151 feet tall. Residents and visitors to my hometown enjoy strolls along Silver Lake. If you go, mind your step, or you might get goose poop on your boot.
I know. It’s gross. But one local man became world-famous for his goose poop art. I am not kidding. By now, you’ve probably guessed, thanks to our special water tower and unique art, that my hometown is Rochester, Minnesota.
White Christmases are the norm in Rochester, and white Halloweens, though less common, have occurred. When blizzards make roads undrivable, all the Rochester Dance Company ballerinas still make it onstage for their Nutcracker performances, thanks to dancer dads with snowmobiles and three-quarter-ton trucks. Back in 2000, Mother Nature matched Santa’s Ho-Ho-Hos with some Ha-Ha-Has by dropping the temperature on Christmas Day to precisely 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Before windchill, of course.
While the weather binds the city’s citizens in a common complaint, their holiday traditions differ. How? I’m not sure. Rochester, as I’ve shared, is a city in Minnesota, which means it’s in Minnesota Nice territory. If you’re Minnesotan, you don’t need to know that Minnesota Nice means “polite and friendly, yet emotionally reserved.” But if you’re not from there, you might need to be told, so there you go. My point is Minnesotans don’t ask a lot of questions, and most of us refrain from arguing if we can. How well do Minnesotans know each other? Well enough.
Christmas at Home
While I can’t tell you our Minnesota neighbor’s holiday traditions, I can share my family’s.
My mom always took the week before Christmas off from work to get her holiday to-do’s done, like wrapping presents — so many presents. And to bake. She’d bake loaves of banana, lemon, and pumpkin bread each year. Her annual cookie list included cutout sugar cookies (some with frosting, some with sprinkles, some with both), spritz cookies, chocolate-covered Ritz cracker sandwich cookies, double chocolate crinkle cookies, peanut butter blossoms, and butterscotch haystacks. Sometimes, she’d add in another recipe from Taste of Home magazine. One year, she made Chocolate and Peanut Butter Crispy Bars. They’re brownies topped with marshmallows, peanut butter, and Rice Krispies. Then, that layer is topped with melted chocolate. I loved it so much that she made it every year after. For a savory treat, she’d make Ranch Oyster Crackers and Chex Mix. My little brothers would shake the bags of oyster crackers to get them seasoned right. According to Mom, “They had all the moves to mix the crackers well.”
On Christmas Eve day, we ate Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch. In the afternoon, we did one round of present opening. This kept presents from our parents from getting confused with presents from Santa Claus. We posed with each unwrapped gift, smiling at Mom as she snapped photos with her professional-grade Canon camera. Dad gathered up wrapping paper and assembled new toys with instruction booklets better left ignored.
That night, at my grandparents' house, a Subway sandwich brought by my Uncle Kevin stretched from one end of their dining table to the other, sweets surrounding it. Most of the treats were made by my mom and her sister, Teresa. When it comes to the treats my aunt made, I remember sunbuckles, Christmas sandwich cremes, pumpkin bars, and candy cane cookies. My Grandmother’s specialty was gingerbread cookies. Those were on the table too.
At St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church’s Midnight Mass, my family took up more than a pew, maybe even more than two. There were my grandparents, several of their ten children, and their children’s wives, husbands, boyfriends, or girlfriends. And their children’s children.
On Christmas Day, there was always ham (and turkey on my Dad’s side).
As life moved on and I moved out, it never occurred to me that there would be years that I didn’t make it home for Christmas. Or that Christmases would change. Naive, I know.
Christmases Away
The first Christmas that I couldn’t claim I’d be home for was in 2020. My husband and I had moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Crossing back and forth over the border wasn’t allowed at that time unless you were a truck driver.
While there, we hiked across the 460-foot Capilano Suspension Bridge festooned with white twinkling lights as part of the Canyon Lights Christmas lights display. Our next December was spent in San Diego, where I ice skated beachside with the glamorous Hotel del Coronado on one side and ocean waves rolling in on the other. Palm trees swayed all around. But our third Christmas away lit up cherished memories of Christmases past.
Like Rochester, the city we spent our third Christmas away in, has a famous tower. Built between 1887 and 1889, it stands 1063 feet tall. It is also on postcards. There are lovely walking paths along the water there, too. It does not have a world-class medical center on par with the Mayo Clinic, so far as I know, but it does have a few world-class museums that people like to visit. Our Christmas there wasn’t white or particularly cold. But, like home, there were plenty of pastries to consume. Unlike home, the people of this city have a reputation for not bothering to even pretend to be nice*.
Paris. We spent our third Christmas away in Paris. On Christmas Eve, I ate a ham and butter sandwich made with mustard butter, pickles, Comté cheese, and a generous portion of sliced ham from Ritz Paris Le Comptoir. Of course, it tasted divine. But, more important to me, it brought me back to Christmases from decades ago.
I ate Bûche de Noël (also from Ritz Paris Le Comptoir). That night, before Midnight Mass at Église de la Madeleine, my husband and I ate ham and raclette sandwiches and drank mulled wine at La Magie de Noël. It’s one of Paris’s best Christmas Markets, located in the Tuileries Garden near the Louvre.
Lest you think Bûche de Noël was the only sweet I indulged in during our holiday stay in the city of lights and pastries…
I ate a croissant from Poilâne’s, ice cream at Berthillon, Laudurée macarons, and shared Crêpes Suzette with my husband on Christmas Day at Le Train Bleu. I also drank the most exquisite cup of hot chocolate I have ever had at Angelina’s Cafe.
Ham, sweets, Midnight Mass. Christmas. Voila. Just like home.
Finding Home in the Holidays
I may not make it home for the holidays, but the holidays are a home for me. Holidays are the songs sung together, some voices stronger than others, but all coming together. They are the magic we bake and make for one another out of love.
Holiday spirit and cheer are found more readily in some places. Like Rochester, Minnesota. And Paris. At least for me.
*I have found Parisians to be pleasant enough, and if there’s been rudeness, my tourist senses have been too busy taking in my gorgeous surroundings to notice. When I enter shops, hotels, and restaurants, I say my bonjours. If we have reservations, I am able to say so in French. Beyond those basics, I struggle, but I think speaking those bits and pieces softens those around me. This American is at least trying.