These two traditions are very simple. The first, the Birds' Christmas comes from Tasha Tudor's book "Take Joy!" Tasha says, "Birds, too, must be remembered at Christmas time, for these gentle creatures were much loved by the Christ child."
The Tudor family would make balls of peanut butter, raisins and chopped nuts and then tie them to trees on Christmas morning for the birds to enjoy. Growing up, we too wished the birds a very merry Christmas by leaving peanut butter treats for them on the branches of our trees.
Instead of making peanut butter balls we would do ours a little differently though, by making pinecone bird feeders:
1. Select several large pinecones. Any kind will do. Mine this year were a little small and thin, but if you can find fat, large pinecones they work a little better I think.
2. Tie a ribbon or string around one end of the pinecone.
2. Spread peanut butter over the pinecone. Remember to scoop out the peanut butter you will use into a dish or cup, so that you are not continually sticking the knife back into your jar of peanut butter. You don't want pinecone bits to get into it!
4. Roll your peanut butter covered pinecones in either birdseed or crushed nuts or even bread crumbs.
5. Hang your pinecones from the branches of a tree in your yard.
Then watch the birds come to enjoy your gift to them! Merry Christmas birds!
As part of this activity, my mom would also read to us "The Man and the Birds" (also called "A Christmas Story") - a short story retold by Paul Harvey that tells how some cold, frightened birds lost in a winter storm helped one man to find the true meaning of Christmas. You can find the story here.
CANDY CANES
For the second tradition, we would spend an afternoon all about candy canes. We would usually make a peppermint treat of some kind even if it was just putting a candy cane in a mug of hot cocoa, and read the book "The Legend of the Candy Cane" by Lori Walburg.
This year I made a peppermint cake! It quite possibly might be the easiest thing you'll ever make ...
Buy a store bought Angel Food Cake (or make your own). Frost with homemade whipping cream. Sprinkle with crushed peppermint sticks. (I put unwrapped candy canes in a ziplock bag and then gently pounded them with a hammer. They crushed very easily.)
Then, as a very special part of this tradition, my mom would bring out a small, fragile glass mug with a few peppermint candies in it. The mug belonged to my great grandma and was a Christmas gift to her when she was a little girl. Her family didn't have very much money. They lived and worked on a farm and my great grandmother was one of ten children. That year, the only thing she received for Christmas was this little glass mug with a stick of peppermint candy in it.
My mom shows us this little mug so that we might realize how blessed we are to have so much and to remind us, as we open all of our toys and gifts on Christmas morning, of the year when all my great grandmother got was one little glass mug and one little stick of peppermint candy. To this day, it is such a beautiful reminder to me to be grateful for all that I have- and to remember that there are so many who are less fortunate than me.
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