Christmas Nuts

My Mom was 59 years old when I came to live in her home.  She had weathered two world wars and the Great Depression.  Her parents were farmers who immigrated from England for a better life and she was actually born on the ship between England and Canada.  My Mom told the most amazing stories!  I would sit spell-bound listening to her great adventures.

It was always tradition in our home to have bowls of oranges and nuts in the shell at Christmas time.  I told the story of why the Christmas orange was so important to my Mom last year.  You see she grew up without a lot of the commercialism that surrounds Christmas.  Oranges were extremely expensive so for a poor farming family with many mouths to feed, an orange in the Christmas stocking was a sacrifice her parents made to give their kids a special treat at Christmas.  It would be the only orange they would enjoy all year so just imagine how treasured that treat was! 

Somewhere along the line my Mom added Christmas nuts to our traditions.  It was the year after her husband died but I would have been too small to remember.  We had a fancy nut bowl.  The nut cracker and two pics stood in special holes in the centre then the nuts over flowed around them.  The bowl was very much treasured, a gift from her Mom shortly before she passed on.  Oh how I wish I had that nut bowl now or even just a picture of it.  My Mom was so very proud of it!  Her face would light up as she filled the bowl with nuts.  I never did figure out how she could hum a tune while grinning ear to ear walking the nut bowl from the kitchen into it's place of honour in the livingroom.

Off to buy Christmas nuts... 

Garden Gnome
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