It’s funny when small things in our day-to-day lives remind us of who we are and where we’ve been. This category includes holidays and traditions that we have grown up with. Since we’re just a handful of days away from Christmas, I thought I’d share three reminders I had as I started to prepare for Jesus’ birth later this week.
Although it might sound a little Christmassy, the first is a pink Florida grapefruit. Just after Thanksgiving every year, my then-last living grandfather (on my mom’s side) would send our family a box practically overflowing with fruit from the Sunshine State — massive grapefruit, the biggest oranges I’d ever seen, and a few juicy pears nestled in between. While the citrus fruit was simply wrapped in light-colored tissue paper and stuck in the green-colored bed of confetti (sort of like what you’d find in an Easter basket), getting to the pears was like digging for treasure because they came enrobed in some crinkly gold foil stuff,
But it’s the grapefruit I really remember the best. When you’ve only grown up with the regular kind, pink grapefruit just seemed so exotic.
Support customers like you are our best! These Florida grapefruits were gifted to us by Jaspo Inc., and we loved them!😋#food #foodstagram #yummy #fruit pic.twitter.com/6K3F1vfMxQ
— PSPinc Software Development (@PSPINC) December 21, 2021
The box provided a welcomed respite to our family from the cold, rainy winter in southwestern Ohio. The box looked almost like a candy store for children. It seemed like the box couldn’t run out of things.
This week I bought a bag of pink grapefruit for around $6 when I went to the grocery store.
Then on my dad’s side, there was my grandma (my dad’s mom) whose favorite thing to cook (if you asked my dad, he would claim it was really the only thing she could cook well) was homemade pies. Pumpkin pie was my favorite, according to me.
This is what I meant when I tweeted it last night.
Both pink and pumpkin pie are available in my house right now. Officially, it’s #Christmas.
— Becca Lower (@BeccaJLower) December 22, 2021
Pumpkin pie isn’t just another dessert, at least for me. It’s Grandma asking if you got enough to eat while you’re staying over on Christmas Eve, and that way she would add softly, “and if you didn’t, it’s your own darn fault.” Except she didn’t say darn.
The third thing also is a memory about my dad’s mom, who lived in a small Indiana town about an hour outside Cincinnati. Every year, a relative would inevitably bring her a box of chocolates; the nice kind, which to me mean something like Russell Stover’s, not the candies you could get for a few cents from the Brach’s “mix and match” display in the grocery store. Us grandkids were allowed to pick one piece out of the box — and that’s how I learned that my favorite candy is a square piece of caramel covered in dark chocolate.
Now, to round things up, the headline comes from an early dance track from “Material Girl” Madonna — back in the miniscule part of the ’80s when she acted somewhat normal. Yes, that was quite a while back.
“See, I have given you a single of great quality. You can play it. #MadonnaReleased Sept. 7, 1983 as “HOLIDAY”.🎶 pic.twitter.com/Bf9dcTV9Pu
— Rhino Records (@Rhino_Records) September 7, 2021
Now, trust me when I say I’m not trying to start something by using the word ‘holiday’ so close to Christmas. The singer or songwriter was probably thinking of the British meaning of vacation. But “retreat” is just as good a word. “Relief” and “respite” work, too. I hope this time period will be that for you and your families, and that you all can revive traditions from your own past — or decide to forge new ones together this year that stretch far into the future.
All readers, Merry Christmas!
Anyway, put on your dancing shoes… From 1983, here’s “Holiday.” https://youtu.be/muaX1vdUY78
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