The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1902-12-05
THOUGHTS OF CHRISTMAS
Come to Housekeepers, With
Thanksgiving Day Gone
Nothing is Now Like it Used
to be, and Old-Fashioned
Way Was Better.
A writer in the Baltimore NeUs


Christmas. And yet not so light
ly after all, for Christmas is not
festival that one can run into
carelessly and enjoy without pre-
paration, as one can the Fourth
of July, for instance. Indeed, if
one buys single bunch of fire
crackers the day before the Fourth
he has done all rejoicing nation
can expect of him and is esteemed
quite patriotic enough for noisy
purposes. 1t is not so with the
queen of childhOOd's holidays.
The preparations are undeniably
the best part of Christmas-Or
used to be. just now house
keepers are little to erudite to
enjoy seeding raisins, and the con-
fectioner is too near to make cake
making a necessity. Rut the old
fashioned Christmas was best.
In those days when men had good
digestiOns and women did not
scOrn to be known as champion
cooks rather than as fluent takers
on the subject of the entrees
served to Rameses the Second,
the holiday spirit appeared in the
house early in December, for now
it was time to make the fruit cake,
the mince- meat and the plum
padding. These were three things
of phenomenal Importance. Of
course, Christmas might go off all
right if they were numbered with
those absent, and certainly its
effects would be much less lasting,
but it couldn't be a very Christ
mas-y Christmas without them.
Then what a beating and stir
ring was here, my countrymen;
with what delicious odor of
spices, and what an aroma of
baking sweetmeats! Indeed, it
was a very important occasion, so
important that the scholar did
not disdain to put down his book
and bend his noble mind to the
difficult task of extracting three
small seed from a rasin without
getting what was left of the fruit
in his hair and on his newly
BACKED shoes. Father chopped
the mince-meat and mother
creamed the butter and sugar for
the fruit cake. The other mem
bers Of the family, without regard
to age, sex or previous conditions
of servitude, bent their energies
to furthering the task of the hour.
The task of the hour took time,
mind you. All these things were
no more to be built in day than
was Rome. There were nuts to
be cracked and blanched, suet to
be shredded, citron to he chopped,
currants to have their bushel of
dirt extracted from them, and
the various goodies to be mixed
into a delicious whole.
BY Christmas Eve everything
was done On the shelf in the
pantry repOsed some dozen cakes,
the dean of the assembly beng
the luscious "black" cake. The
plum-puddings, in the whitest of
flour bags, hung in the cellar;
mince pies, brown and exuding a
wicked odor of brandy, sat to cool
Oh the highest shelf of the kitchen
cupboard, and the eggnog was
under way.
If this were a Southern house
hold the apple toddy was also
now declared "ripe," and it's dem
John was put with the aristocratic
assemblage in the pantry. In
those early part-of- the last cen.
fury days it was deemed a sacri.
lege to taste Christmas cheer be-
fore Christmas day dawned, and
far be it from the writer to even
hint at the surreptitious breakings
off of edges to taste when mothers
back was turned. Twas enough
to tempt an anchorite.
Look on that picture and then
on the one that the Christmas
household of today presents. The
grocer is good fellow, but he
commits some curious mistakes in
the name of mince meat. When
one comes to think of it, it is not
his fault that there are more APP
pies than there are plums in the
mixture he sells under that name.
Neither can he be blamed that his
plum buildings sometimes taste of
tallow-sOmetimes, not always,
mind, for the grocer of this day
and age is a progressive chap,
who has things just as much like
those mother made as they can
possibly be without that lady hav-
ing made them. However, the
Christmas good things in the
average household nowadays are
obtained somewhat in this fash
ion: ''Charles, go the confec-
toners on the corner and buy two
OF his dollar fruit cakes, and stop
by the grocery store and bring
home a large sized plum-pudding
and two quarts of mince- meat.n