Advent Calendar Dec 1 Christmas Tree

OK, I know I am a day late, but have been out helping friends with no power, so I'll do 2 posts today!
We always got and decorated our tree on Christmas eve.  I thought it was an old family tradition, until one year when I was a teen, I learned that my folks did that because they could get a tree cheaper on Christmas eve, and budget in a large family in the military was always important.
Since I got married, the trees have varied over the years... from tabletop small trees with cloth and wood ornaments impervious to pets and small children, to very large and elaborate.... but one thing has always remained the same... it's always a REAL tree.... no artificial trees in our house!!! I love the smell and the sight of the tree and the beautiful sight...
We have set up a tree every year, even when going to Texas to in-laws... with a siphon watering system, and not lit, they last! And we set them up early, not on Christmas eve. I want to smell the noble fir for the whole month!
We moved into this home 17 years ago, and it has a 10& 1/2 foot ceiling.  The first year we put our normal 6 footer, and it looked very sorry, so our son asked if we could buy a larger tree, now our big extravagance each year is the 9 1/2 foot real tree.  here's what last year's looked like!

Each year, our children get to pick out a new ornament, and then when they leave the nest (perhaps in the next year or so), they will have a whole collection of ornaments to take with them! There are Bambi & Thumper, Garfield & Odie, Santa on a trike, penguins, etc.... It will be hard to part with them, as memories flow as we decorate the tree each year.  Dad & James do the lights , then Katie (when she's home) & I put up the ornaments...

Advent Calendar Dec 2 Christmas foods

In our house growing up, food has always been associated with the holidays, especially Christmas! Unfortunately, I haven't found old pictures of any of the Christmas feasts....
The Christmas tree decorating on Christmas eve was always accompanied by Hot Cocoa (not from a mix!!!), along with cookies and popcorn.  Christmas dinner has always been turkey and all the side dishes, and I can still remember the turkey roaster on the counter, so the regular oven could be stuffed with all the side dishes. As we moved all our lives due to Dad's military career, I never got to taste my grandfather August Fessia's Christmas polenta, but heard about it from my Mom. She never made it, so I assumed she hadn't watched or asked about how to make it....  One of my cousins who owns a restaurant does make it and has promised to send me the recipe.... Think I'll call and remind him!
Mom did made a bûche de Noël that was similar to one made in her household. The area in Italy where my grandfather came from borders on France, so the mixing of cultures was very apparent especially in foods! I got to help make the meringue mushrooms, and mine were always the weirdest looking ones!
With my children, we have always made "Jesus' Birthday Cake" on Christmas eve day... and left it on the coffee table overnight right beside the Nativity.  It's simpler than a Yule Log cake, and the design and decorations have changed over the years as they have grown up.  And it's one of the desserts on Christmas day at Jesus' birthday party aka Christmas Dinner.
Even when we spent Christmases in Texas at my mother-in-law's home, we always made the cake, but I don't know if the tradition has transferred into the aunts' and uncles' families yet!
Mom tended to make goodies as Christmas gifts for neighbors and friends, as that was an inexpensive way to give gifts.  The gifts changed depending on the year, and where we were stationed.... I remember rum balls, cheese straws, and several different types of cookies, all placed in tins or boxes with pretty ribbons!
I have continued the tradition, at first making a pumpkin bread, and now making a Date-Walnut cookie from a recipe given to me by a friend in the DAR of german ancestry.... the neighbors all know to return the tins if they want cookies the next year! 
Well my mouth is watering at the thought, so time to go dig out the bowls and mixer!

Treasure Thursday- John Robinson letter to the Pilgrims

Was so amazed by  the History Channel's broadcast of the Mayflower history, called Desparate Journey, taken mostly from Bradford's "Of Plymouth Plantation" on Thanksgiving,  that I decided to read it... In it I found a transcription of the Farewell letter written by my ancestor, Rev John Robinson to the Pilgrims. He was torn about whether to go or not, but it was decided that if the majority of the congregation were to remain in Holland, that at least for a while, he would also stay. I have visited Leiden, and walked where he walked, and was deeply affected. I debated whether this should be on Treasure Thursday, or Faithful Friday, but it is a treasure....
So here it is!


Loving and Christian Friends,
I do heartily and in the Lord salute you all as being they with whom I am present in my best affection, and most earnest longings after you. Though I be constrained for a while to be bodily absent from you. I say constrained, God knowing how willingly and much rather than otherwise, I would have borne my part with you in this first brunt, were I not by strong necessity held back for the present. Make account of me in the meanwhile as of a man divided in myself with great pain, and as (natural bonds set aside) having my better part with you. And though I doubt not but in your godly wisdoms you both foresee and resolve upon that which concerneth your present state and condition, both severally and jointly, yet have I thought it but my duty to add some further spur of provocation unto them who run already; if not because you need it, yet because I owe it in love and duty. And first, as we are daily to renew our repentance with our God, especially for our sins known, and generally for our unknown trespasses; so doth the Lord call us in a singular manner upon occasions of such difficulty and danger as lieth upon you, to a both more narrow search and careful reformation of your ways in His sight; lest He, calling to remembrance our sins forgotten by us or unrepented of, take advantage against us, and in judgment leave us for the same to be swallowed up in one danger or other. Whereas, on the contrary, sin being taken away by earnest repentance and the pardon thereof from the Lord, sealed up unto a man's conscience by His Spirit, great shall be his security and peace in all dangers, sweet his comforts in all distresses, with happy deliverance from all evil, whether in life or in death.
Now, next after this heavenly peace with God and our own consciences, we are carefully to provide for peace with all men what in us lieth, especially with our associates. And for that, watchfulness must be had that we neither at all in ourselves do give, no, nor easily take offense being given by others. Woe be unto the world for offenses, for though it be necessary (considering the malice of Satan and man's corruption) that offenses come, yet woe unto the man, or woman either, by whom the offense cometh, saith Christ, Matthew 18:7. And if offenses in the unseasonable use of things, in themselves indifferent, be more to the feared than death itself (as the Apostle teacheth, 1 Corinthians 9:15) how much more in things simply evil, in which neither honor of God nor love of man is thought worthy to be regarded. Neither yet is it sufficient that we keep ourselves by the grace of God from giving offense, except withal we be armed against the taking of them when they be given by others. For how unperfect and lame is the work of grace in that person who wants charity to cover a multitude of offenses, as the Scriptures speak!
Neither are you to be exhorted to this grace only upon the common grounds of Christianity, which are, that persons ready to take offense either want charity to cover offenses, or wisdom duly to weigh human frailty; or lastly, are gross, though close hypocrites as Christ our Lord teacheth (Matthew 7:1,2,3), as indeed in my own experience few or none have been found which sooner give offense than such as easily take it. Neither have they ever proved sound and profitable members in societies, which have nourished this touchy humor.
But besides these, there are divers motives provoking you above others to great care and conscience this way: As first, you are many of you strangers, as to the persons so to the infirmities one of another, and so stand in need of more watchfulness this way, lest when such things fall out in men and women as you suspected not, you be inordinately affected with them; which doth require at your hands much wisdom and charity for the covering and preventing of incident offenses that way. And, lastly, your intended course of civil community will minister continual occasion of offense, and will be as fuel for that fire, except you diligently quench it with brotherly forbearance. And if taking of offense causelessly or easily at men's doings be so carefully to be avoided, how much more heed is to be taken that we take not offense at God Himself, which yet we certainly do so oft as we do murmur at His providence in our crosses, or bear impatiently such afflictions as wherewith He pleaseth to visit us. Store up, therefore, patience against that evil day, without which we take offense at the Lord Himself in His holy and just works.
A fourth thing there is carefully to be provided for, to wit, that with your common employments you join common affections truly bent upon the general good, avoiding deadly plague of your both common and special comfort all retiredness of mind for proper advantage, and all singularly affected any manner of way. Let ever man repress in himself and the whole body in each person, as so many rebels against the common good, all private respects of men's selves, not sorting with the general conveniency. And as men are careful not to have a new house shaken with any violence before it be well settled and the parts firmly knit, so be you, I beseech you, brethren, much more careful that the house of God, which you are and are to be, be not shaken with unnecessary novelties or other oppositions at the first settling thereof.
Lastly, whereas you are become a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil government, and are not furnished with any persons of special eminency above the rest, to be chosen by you into office of government; let your wisdom and godliness appear, not only in choosing such persons as do entirely love and will promote the common good, but also in yielding unto them all due honor and obedience in their lawful administrations, not beholding in them the ordinariness of their persons, but God's ordinance for your good; not being like the foolish multitude who more honor the gay coat than either the virtuous mind of the man, or glorious ordinance of the Lord. But you know better things, and that the image of the Lord's power and authority which the magistrate beareth, is honorable, in how means persons soever. And this duty you both may the more willingly and ought the more conscionably to perform, because you are at least for the present to have only them for your ordinary governors, which yourselves shall make choice of for that work.
Sundry other things of importance I could put you in mind of, and of those before mentioned in more words, but I will not so far wrong your godly minds as to think you heedless of these things, there being also divers among you so well able to admonish both themselves and others of what concerneth them. These few things therefore, and the same in few words I do earnestly commend unto your care and conscience, joining therewith my daily incessant prayers unto the Lord, that He who hath made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all rivers of water, and whose providence is over all His works, especially over all His dear children for good, would so guide and guard you in your ways, as inwardly by His Spirit, so outwardly by the hand of His power, as that both you and we also, for and with you, may have after matter of praising His name all the days of your and our lives. Fare you well in Him in whom you trust, and in whom I rest.
An unfeigned wellwiller of your happy success in this hopeful voyage,
John Robinson