A Favo(u)rite Canadian-ism

"Holiday Baking."

As in, "Bring a casserole to the potluck. And, of course, a plate of Holiday Baking."

In the States, we did the Holiday Baking, but we didn't give it the name.

Thinking about it takes me right back to high school. My mother and Aunt E, her best friend, always hosted the United Methodist Women's Christmas Party. The baking started on weekends just after Thanksgiving. The party itself was usually near the end of the semester (maybe mid-December), when the students were studying like crazy and my mother enjoyed a bit of calm before the storm of grading ("marking" up here) their final exams.

I helped, at times with cheer (don't judge; I was a teenager). I rolled balls of dough in orange juice and colored coconut. I packed minty cream cheese into rubber molds and later popped out holly leaves and bells. I wrapped maraschino cherries in some kind of white doughy stuff and then dipped them in melted chocolate. Aunt E (a good Oklahoma gal) made killer divinity and toffee, but she did that at her own home, so I didn't participate except as delighted audience.

The night of the party, the extra leaf went into the dining room table. The top was covered with silver trays, heaped (in my mind, at least) with baking. I helped keep the silver trays full. I ladled (usually pink) punch from the bowl into little glass mugs that fit into a spot on an oblong plate, which the ladies could load up.

All the ladies wore dresses and big costume-jewelry Christmassy pins. My mother wore one of her skirted-suit University Professor outfits, plus a Christmas apron -- the kind you don't wear when baking because you want to keep it clean. (Yes, even though it's an apron, a garment designed to keep the clothing underneath clean. It doesn't HAVE to make sense.) She favored red florals.

In spite of all this "helping," somehow the baking thing didn't really "take." I don't even own an apron. Fortunately, ladies in churches across North America still do and they bake like a house afire, as Aunt E would say. So at choir potlucks, I can count on sampling some serious Holiday Baking. I especially like it when there's a competition -- informal and friendly, mind -- over "best shortbread."

Before the end of the season, I may well make candy cane cookies, depending on interest from the Future Leaders of Our World (g-kids). Christmas dinner will include brownies and (store-bought because they're better) Nanaimo bars, as well as pumpkin squares, to appeal to the dessert preference of the gathered eaters. But that's not the same as "Holiday Baking." It's not "extra" baking, "for fancy."

And in spite of being generally too old for my years, I don't "do" Holiday Baking, even when asked to bring a plate to the potluck, and I don't even apologize. Instead, I bring deviled eggs, for three reasons. First, I'm (technically) an American and I can get away with doing whatever. It will be thought of as part of my unique heritage. Second, what party isn't improved by a plate of deviled eggs? And third, I have the attention span and equipment to make them. Unlike, say, cream cheese mints.

My mother has been gone for a decade. Aunt E is not fully present in the "home" where she lives. So I like to imagine them in a warmly lit kitchen somewhere, laughing and singing together as they melt chocolate in the double boiler or choose a color for the coconut for those orange juice/coconut things.

Because although those two ladies may have retired their aprons in this world, their legacy lives on in other ladies in another country. And this weekend, I get a crack at their Holiday Baking. I'll be wearing my mother's snowflake pin.

Don't get between me and that shortbread.