Advent Calendar of Memories - Day 8 - Christmas Cookies

Christmas cookies - what memories I have of sugar cookies baking in my mother's kitchen!  Throughout the year, we called these cookies "tea cakes."  But at Christmas, the tea cakes took on a different look when their normally round shapes were transformed into "Christmas" shapes.  First, my mother mixed the ingredients, including hand-sifted flour, real butter, and pure vanilla.  Next, she rolled out the cookie dough with her wooden rolling pin until it was somewhat thinner than "tea cake" dough.  When the dough was just right, my mother allowed my brothers and me to cut it into "Christmas shapes" using shiny little cookie cutters with slightly sharp edges.  We chose our favorite shapes - reindeer, star, Santa, and Christmas tree.  After the cookies were all cut, we sprinkled them with colored sugar before my mother delicately placed each cookie into the baking pans. The wonderful aroma of sugar cookies baking in our mother's oven was like no other, for it meant Christmas Day was right around the corner.


When I began making cookies in my own kitchen, I continued my mother's tradition of making Christmas sugar cookies.  And after I had children, I allowed them, too, to help cut out the Christmas shapes.  But my cookie cutters (which I still have) were not shiny metal like my those from my childhood - they were made of a new material called "plastic" that was much safer for little hands and fingers.  Early on, I added a new tradition to the Christmas sugar cookie making process - icing the cookies with a homemade glaze made of confectioners' sugar, something the children thought was really special. We added food coloring to the icing and decorated each of the cookies with sprinkles and colored sugars, turning them into edible ornaments.  (I think the children, when they were really young, thought colored icing was something akin to edible finger paint!) Decorating the cookies was the messy part, but the colorful and unique cookies and my children's happy faces far outweighed a messy kitchen.  

Wordless Wednesday - Reading

FOUND: Mary Ann Ragland and Elizabeth Ragland

Just today, I discovered information about two of Robert W. Ragland's daughters.  The discoveries were "almost" accidental.  Over the past several days, I have been corresponding with a Ragland descendant who read my blog posts, and I was attempting to clarify some information we had discussed.  During my research, I stumbled upon a census record  for Elizabeth Ragland, the oldest of Ragland's children, and a marriage record for her younger sister, Mary Ann Ragland.  Since I had no leads whatsoever about who the young women married, I had almost given up on finding either of them. Not surprising, the findings were almost under my nose.  Look for more information about Mary Ann and Elizabeth Ragland here soon.

There's One in Every Family - The Perfect Aunt

Note:  This post was written for the Carnival of Genealogy, 100th Edition, sponsored by Jasia at Creative Gene.


Every woman I knew in my family growing up was married or widowed. But only one had remained single past 21 years old. In our family, she was known as an "old maid." At the time, this now very much outdated term really meant nothing to me - I simply accepted that it meant "older and still unmarried." The woman in this story is Vertie Porter, my paternal great-aunt and one of my grandmother's two sisters. Vertie was a teacher, a career woman before her time. When she was a young woman, she taught in rural schools in Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi. A petite woman, her size defied her strength and determination in dealing with being a woman in a man's world Pre-1960. But possibly it was also that strength and determination that allowed her to overcome the intense grief that she experienced early in life. According to my family's account of the story, Aunt Vertie was engaged to a fine young man who had stolen her heart and presented her with a beautiful platinum diamond engagement ring. But the wedding never occurred - her betrothed died in an automobile accident before they could be married. It was after this tragic incident that Vertie made a choice to never marry -- anyone. She continued to wear the gorgeous engagement ring given to her by her suitor, and she immersed herself in her life's work, teaching. In her later years, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee to work and lived with her widowed sister until her sister's death, when she returned to her native Mississippi.

Throughout her life, my Aunt Vertie was the perfect aunt. Since she had no children of her own, Aunt Vertie always remembered my brothers and me with cards and gifts on our birthdays and at Christmas. I still remember the tiny china tea set that she gave me for my 6th birthday. I thought it was the most precious gift in the world, something beautiful and fragile that she must have purchased in some exotic far-away place. As a young girl, I was fascinated by Aunt Vertie's perfect make-up, jewelry, and the beautiful dresses and hats that she wore when she visited us. And I will never ever forget that beautiful diamond ring! Although she would allow me to look at it and turn it on her tiny finger, she would never ever allow me to try it on - no matter how many times I asked. Oh, how I wanted to see what it would look like on my hand! Since neither my mother nor my grandmothers owned diamond rings at the time, Aunt Vertie's ring was the first diamond that I ever saw.


My Aunt Vertie died of complications of Alzheimer's disease when she was in her late 70's. Without a doubt, her last years were difficult, but she had lived a productive and happy life. No, it did not involve a husband or children, but she always remained close to her family. She may have been known in our family as "an old maid" and my father's "maiden aunt," but I will always remember her as a beautiful, kind woman of strength and character who was unafraid to make her own way in the world.

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 4 - Christmas Cards

Christmas cards have always been part of our family's Christmas tradition. My parents and my grandparents  enjoyed writing and receiving cards and displayed them in various ways during the Christmas holidays.  Most often, the Christmas cards were taped around a doorway or displayed on something that resembled a small clothesline.  I still recall the many colorful card designs of nativity scenes, holly, candles, and snow scenes.  As a child growing up in Mississippi, I really didn't understand why anyone would send a Christmas card with a snow scene.  I had seen a snow flurry only once, when I was ten years old, and we certainly had never had a White Christmas! 


My grandparents especially cherished the cards they received from cousins and other relatives who had moved out of state and would not be home for the holidays. Of course, keeping in touch during those years meant writing a card or a letter.  We did not have a phone until I was nine years old, and the age of the Internet was still dozens of years away. Although e-cards and emails have now become part of our culture, for me there is no substitute for the genuine paper Christmas card that I can feel and touch. I am a keeper of cards, and my Box of Memories contains many precious Christmas cards from years past that included handwritten notes from close family and dear friends.


Our family's Christmas card tradition has endured, and my adult children now send cards, too.  I especially like cards that depict religious art, children, and nature scenes. At our house, we always wonder whose Christmas card we will receive first - will it be from old friends who now live a thousand miles away, from one of the grown-up kids, or will it be from a neighbor down the street? I suppose this is just part of our overall anticipation of Christmas and the joy and wonder the season brings.  

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 3 - Ornaments

This post was modified from the original post entitled Merry Christmas From Our House to Yours, published on December 23, 2008.


One of my favorite things to do at Christmas is to decorate the tree. I absolutely love placing each ornament on the tree, reserving the best places for the ornaments that hold a special meaning. Two of those ornaments are the ones pictured below. The heart is symbolic of love - love that we have of God, for each other, and for our family and friends. Christmas is not Christmas without love. The other ornament is a tiny bell, decorated with shamrocks, a Belleek treasure that came from Ireland some years ago. The bell's tiny tinkle reminds me of the Bell Choir in the church where my children grew up that performs such beautiful music before Midnight Mass each year.

The twin angels with bugles is an ornament given to me by my children when they were still young. They always knew the gifts that would pull my heartstrings, and this ornament will always have a special place in my heart and on the Christmas tree. The red ornament here is a cardinal, one of my favorite birds.  But what makes it memorable is that it is the only Christmas ornament that I ever made, a product of an unsuccessful ceramic class, like many of us took during the 70's. With no chips and with its color still unfaded, the cardinal appears to be in flight and occupies a place near the top of the tree. 


The picture of this beaded Christmas Nativity star does not do it justice. Just like the stars that shone over the manger in Bethlehem that Christmas so very long ago, it seems to twinkle each evening during Christmas. Our ornament collection would not be complete without the moose. This fun and unique Christmas moose, made of delicate mercury glass, was given to us by one of our daughters. Needless to say, she has a slightly wicked sense of humor, and it shows in her selection of this ornament! The ornament hangs in such a way that we have had somewhat of a problem with keeping the moose's rear end from facing outward into the room.

The gingerbread man here is an original work of art made by our youngest daughter when she was about ten years old. That year for her was the year of crewel work, counted cross-stitch, and needlework of any type. It started with a Christmas gift of a "beginner's kit," and by the next Christmas, we had all been gifted with at least one hand-made treasure, including this one. I was so proud of her!

Without a doubt, the ornaments that are the most sentimental for me are those made by my children, and two of them are pictured here. Each ornament is a reindeer made of old-fashioned clothespins, a tuft of cotton for a tail, and a red dot for a nose. The result of a family project during Christmas of 1982, each ornament bears the name of the child who made it. There is even one made by someone named "Mama."

No tree in our household would be complete without the Christmas angel gracing its top. 

This particular angel holds a candle in each hand and lights the way, hopefully, for many more Christmases to be celebrated, many more ornaments to be hung, and many, many more memories to be made!

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 2

Special Christmas food is the topic for the second day of Geneabloggers Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories.  This is a difficult topic for me, since my mother and grandmother prepared so many many wonderful, southern holiday foods.  But I suppose my all-time favorite would be the delicious coconut cake that my mother made, a fluffy white confection, filled and iced with seven-minute frosting and freshly grated coconut.  Even as a young child, I was aware of how much effort it took to make that cake.  When I was growing up, my mother did not own a power mixer of any kind - she beat the egg whites with the old-fashioned hand-cranked mixer and added the moist, white coconut that she had grated by hand - hard to imagine for most contemporary cooks. Standing tall on its crystal cake stand, my mother's masterpiece towered over the other Christmas desserts, beckoning young and old to taste it.