Forget the Cookies

It’s T minus 48 hours until the big guy comes down the chimney with some presents.  Hopefully, leading with my shiny new Keurig.  Then, if I’ve been very good, perhaps he’ll ban Lady Antebellum forever.  And maybe he’ll even force all website articles to default to “view as a single page.”  Hey, we all have our Christmas wishes.

Meanwhile, it’s crunch time in Fordeville.  Not a single gift is wrapped.  I am cooking for 20 people on Sunday — and I lose all of Saturday because we are celebrating at my in-laws’ place that day.  Also, I’m considering throwing some Christmas lights on the dumpster and a port-a-john in my driveway — just to make sure I welcome my guests with holiday home renovation cheer.

But don’t worry.  I am fortifying myself with spiked egg nog, Christmas cookies and caffeine.  It’s all good.

As we approach Christmas Eve, I thought I’d recycle this post from last year, so that anyone getting stressed about baking for Santa can feel free to take a less traditional approach.  I mean, the guy can’t eat cookies all night.

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Santa’s Sandwich {originally published December 16, 2010}

{Photo courtesy NYC Food Guy}

I was thinking about Christmas traditions.  This, of course, brings my mind to cookies (it’s easy for me to bridge quickly from any given topic to baked goods). Did you all leave milk and cookies for Santa as a kid?

We didn’t.  In our house, we were raised to leave Santa an Italian hero on Christmas Eve.  Seriously.

If you’ve never had a real Italian hero, well — that’s a whole other discussion for another day (and you have my sympathy, by the way).  But my mom used to make them a lot when we were kids, mainly because my father loved them.  She piled up the meats, the cheese, some shredded lettuce, oil and vinegar.  Amazing.

So how stupid were my sisters and I not to put the pieces together?  It’s like a basic 2nd grade workbook problem:

• Dad loves Italian heroes. 
• Santa loves Italian heroes. 
• Dad and Santa were under the same roof Christmas Eve. 
• Therefore, Santa must be…
• (Come on, girls, you can figure this out)

Nope, we were clueless.

Maybe my parents billed it that Santa couldn’t run on cookies all night and needed a real meal (or sandwich) at some point in his travels.  Maybe it was about food for the reindeer.  But, if I’m really honest with myself, I don’t think they had to sell it at all.  I think we just believed them because leaving that Italian hero on Christmas Eve was what we always did.

 And that’s what I like about tradition — you don’t question it because it’s just the way it’s done your family.  It’s not until we’re older that we compare notes with the real world and realize that our way might have been wonderfully different, a little quirky, pretty naive or — in some cases — just a bit off kilter (see Competitive Post-Thanksgiving Gaming).

But I like the story of Santa’s sandwich and, as my kids grow up, I wonder what variations we’ll bring into our own Christmas traditions — and whether I should buy some sopressata, cheese and a 6-foot roll this week.