12 Comments

The year my mom passed we celebrated Christmas with every food that she always served for the family supper. The dreaded Tomato Aspic (I actually started to look forward to how much more than a teaspoon I would consume). You must eat everything on your plate. The Pistachio pudding salad (is it dessert or salad?) no one cared as long as we made tons of it😆. Christmas carrot pudding with Almond sauce. The sauce had been my job to make for decades but I always had to check her recipe. Darn it now the memories are running down my face🥲

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One of the finer things that makes Christmas Christmas. This one made me smile. A lot.

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I loved this story!

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Love it! 💞

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Those crackers have been a Mattey tradition for as long as I remember (and the silly wearing of those paper crowns). I'm sure my parents brought the tradition over from England. I think in the early days they used to have relatives there ship over packages with boxes of crackers, and tins of Christmas cookies and Quality Street chocolates. All are readily available here now (though the English 'biscuits' are still better!). And all are a part of every Christmas. These days we use the Quality Street chocolates to fill any little vacancy in folks stockings.

I'm blaming the tomato aspic and jellied salads on Saskatchewan. I'd never heard of these atrocities until I met my now wife. Her parents hailed from Saskatchewan and they were a feature at all the big family gatherings.

Hoping you, Blake, and Trip have a great Christmas and a very Happy and Healthy New Year!

Love from Winnipeg - Ian & Trudy

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Dec 24, 2022Liked by Belle Plaine

Christmas without our moms is not easy, I love how you have kept your moms tradition alive with the silly hats! I felt that my moon popped into my body this year as i I found myself making the crowns from tissue paper and some home made poppers ( not saying they will be perfect but it’s the thought right?!) Have a blessed Christmas with family and all the best in the new year! Xo

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Dec 28, 2022Liked by Belle Plaine

Had to giggle at this one...I too, gifted my daughters with a funny Christmas story. Lonny and I loved Stuart McLean and miss his Christmas shows so much. I was feeling nostalgic and decided that I would read the forward from the Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe book for grace before Christmas dinner...of course I could not get through it without getting verklempt and sobbing through the whole thing...making a bit of a "fool" of myself, quite appropriately, as it turns out.

"But we are all foolish in our own little ways. And never luckier than when we can admit it to ourselves, and to the others around us. Never more loved, nor more loving, than when we come together in foolishness and say to one another, I love you all the same. There are many good times, but those are the best. And there isn't a better time for foolish love than during these dark days of winter." Stuart McLean

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