I am seven. Or ten. Or thirteen. And all of the years in between and the ones that will come after. There she sits in a chair in the middle of the kitchen with the yellow bowl in her lap and a fork in her hand and she is beating the egg whites. She whips them until they are stiff and stand up in peaks. I asked her once if I could help and she let me try it, but I quickly tired of the task and gave it back to her. Did we not have an electric mixer? Or even a hand cranked egg beater?  I think maybe we did.But this task she chooses to do by hand. Because that is the way she has always done it and for reasons only God (and she) know, it is the way it should be done. When they are stiff enough to suit her she will mix them with the cooked sugar and syrup mixture and beat it some more and after a long and arduous process, the end result will be a Christmas candy that was a tradition in my family. Divinity. Too sweet for my taste,  I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. But I loved sitting in that warm kitchen on a winter night, hypnotized by the rhythmic beating of the eggs and my mother’s voice telling me stories of my family and my history.

I learned about the year that she and my sisters spent a whole day making this time-consuming, labor-intensive treat only to have my brothers come in from their farm chores and devour the whole day’s worth of work. Now they would be required to spend  another entire Saturday with a fork and bowl of eggs. And so, as they sat there on their kitchen chairs, taking out their frustration on the egg whites in front of them, my sisters hatched a plan. They would hide the fruit of their labor someplace where the boys couldn’t find it and bring it out only on Christmas Day. They knew the perfect hiding place – the elephant cookie jar that sat atop the pie cupboard. As the story goes, the boys looked high and low for that divinity but apparently never thought to look for candy in a cookie jar. Which I always thought didn’t speak too highly of my brothers’ intelligence or scouting abilities . . . but what do I know? At any rate my sisters were delighted with themselves and so every year after they made the divinity under my mother’s careful supervision, sneaked it into the cookie jar, and there it lived until they produced the treat for the family on Christmas Day. When my mother died and we were dividing up her things, my sister Minnie said the only thing she really wanted was that cookie jar – to remind her.

I learned about the war years when sugar was rationed and so there was no candy-making and really no Christmas once word came of my brother: missing in action. Her voice grows quieter and she seems further away and finally there is only the sound of the whirring fork against the sides of the glass bowl, turning the egg whites into divinity.

Some traditions I took with me from my childhood and incorporated them into  our own family’s celebrations.  Divinity was not one of them.

Some of our holiday traditions came from Paul’s family: chili and cinnamon rolls on Christmas Eve. Long after the rest of his family had moved on to other menus, we held fast.  And now most,  if not all,  of our children celebrate Christmas Eve with chili and cinnamon rolls.

Some traditions we stumbled upon ourselves. The movie on Christmas Eve afternoon was birthed from a need to keep little people distracted and occupied through the long day before Christmas. Taking four little ones to see Cinderella in a real movie theatre and sitting in the front row and watching the three year old talk back to the characters and interact with the story on the screen is one of my  favorite Christmas memories. As the step sister assures the prince that it is indeed her slipper, the heroine’s young  advocate in the front row jumps to her feet: “She’s lying!!! She’s lying!!! It’s Cinderbrella’s”  and the whole audience cheered.

The Advent Calendar grew out of the need to bring structure to the growing list of all the Advent activities as we counted down the days. Who knew what secret delight one would find on the piece of paper with a 20 written on it or a 12 or a 15?  Maybe it will say “today we decorate the tree” and it turns the whole day into an event. Or maybe it is “go Christmas shopping” and you load up in the car and go to the discount store and find some awesome treasure for every member of the family – if you are the youngest you will be directed to the rolls of  Lifesavers that come in a box that looks like a book because that’s what the youngest always gives to the siblings. When you find “wrap Christmas presents” on the slip of paper, you head off to your own corner with your bag of treasures, a roll of paper, some scissors and a whole roll of tape all to yourself. Of course not every day was something big – sometimes it was the “filler” – the standby for when Mom & Dad hadn’t had time or foresight to plan an activity or come up with something creative: “get a candy cane off the tree”. Oooohhhhhh nooooooooo. And yet. As one of them explained many years later as an adult – “You do know, right, that NONE of the six of us liked peppermint?”  But because it was in the Advent Calendar that made it special enough that you took your candy cane, ate it, pretended it was a good thing, and hoped tomorrow would bring something better. And sometimes it did.  Like the little Snoopy notepads with little pencils in a little bag.  Jackpot!

It’s a little sad the day you realize that some of the traditions you initiated for your young family when you were doing campus ministry no longer work. In those days, all the busyness and craziness came to a screeching halt the week before Christmas as students finished their last exam and  left for home and you were left with that most precious of all commodities: time. But then those days give way to a healthy and thriving community church with three Christmas Eve Services and there is no time for Christmas Eve movies or chili and cinnamon rolls. But you adapt. You replace a movie with a breakfast at Waffle House and leave a $100 tip for your waitress who one year is a single mom and hasn’t been able to buy a Christmas present yet for her daughter and you offer a little prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to be a part of this. One year your waiter is named Jack and you learn that he is working on Christmas Eve because he wants to make as much as he can so that he can really party it up on New Year’s Eve and with a sinking feeling you realize where your tip money is going to go, but it leads to a new tradition of toasting Jack at every family gathering. You move the chili and cinnamon rolls to Christmas Day (and alleviate the need to fix a big Christmas dinner that nobody wants to eat anyway – a win/win) and you pass along your Advent Calendar to a young family who is glad for the excitement and anticipation it brings to their home. And life goes on. New traditions are born as old ones die off. . .  but the stories. The stories live forever – if they are told – and they bind us both to those who came before and those who will come after

Because here’s the thing. I don’t make divinity. I make (or more accurately made) cinnamon hard candy – the hotter the better. This, too, came from my childhood.  And now my daughter makes it and when she brings it we all eat it and say to each other – “it tastes like Christmas”.  She makes “Skyline Chili” for her family on Christmas Eve because that is her husband’s tradition. . .  and so it goes.

But the stories live on and are passed on and they matter. The traditions can change and  adapt and evolve. It’s the stories that ground us and remind us who we are, where we come from, and why we’re here. That’s why I keep the elephant cookie jar  (which eventually found its way to my kitchen) on top of my cabinet.  I don’t hide divinity in it. . . actually I don’t use it all.  But as the keeper of its story, I feel a responsibility to care for it and the memories that live there.