“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” Harriet Beecher Stowe

A Christmas 2020 deja vu feeling may have many of us sighing together this year.  Maybe we think we’re not in the mood for holidays, but if we carry on with holiday traditions, it does get us into the Christmas spirit.  The British saying, “Keep calm and carry on” is good advice after all and even inspired Christmas television specials from the comic film series that lifted people’s spirits.

In this holiday season, for those who are flying (not on a 2020 flight of the imagination, but an actual plane), “carry on only Christmas” may have a particular resonance.

While driving around recently looking for cookie ingredients and candy canes, which was at first frivolous and fun, it finally dawned on me that we were in the middle of a candy cane shortage. This was a crisis which heretofore had happened only in holiday movies.  Where was I when the actual news headline was happening? 

With life imitating art, these Peppermint Snowball Cookies, selected for their cheerful holiday colors, are everything but peppermint. Vanilla and white chocolate chips substituted for the peppermint ingredients with apologies to the generous culinary creator. Still hoping for a happy ending, that is, enjoy!

Despite planning glitches this season, even with the radio off, still found myself singing Christmas songs. Some bubbled up from “wassailing” or caroling days with wonderful friends from a church folk group:

…Love and joy come to you

And to you your wassail, too:

And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year.

May God send you a Happy New Year.

Though “wassail” in “Here We Come A-Wassailing” can mean “caroling” in English tradition or a drink that warms the bones, it is also a toast to one’s good health from the Norwegian “ves heill” or “be well”.

Christmas wishes: Hope that “pandemic” becomes a word that we have to look up online, if not in an actual dictionary. (And snow, always snow, lots of snow.)  New Year’s wish: Maybe not so many TikTok videos extolling the virtues of unwashed hair, though to each his or her own.

Limited test run readers are available on Christmas Eve Day, but this got two laughs from one, so running with it. Carry on, Christmas, and may everyone’s Christmas dreams come true.

While you are waiting for Santa, enjoy revisits to: The Christmas Customers, Christmas at Heart: Mary Mapes Dodge, Smithville Holiday Cheer, Happy Hannukkah!, Christmas in Stockbridge, and Cape May at Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

(Sources: amp.heraldmailmedia.com: Dawn M. Carbaugh recipe, merriam-webster.com, Wiki, and added credit to “Carry On” films)

“Carry on, Christmas” @ 2021 Kathleen Helen Levey.  All rights reserved.