Moultrie

Our family holiday season began with a couple gunny sacks and a visit to a walnut orchard. Farm workers filled the gunny sacks with unshelled walnuts. Dad hefted the sacks into the trunk of the car and headed towards home, where Mom would begin her holiday baking magic. First, the task of shelling the walnuts.

This was an all-out, family project. We covered the kitchen table with newspaper, then handed out nutcrackers. (Not decorative nutcrackers, but sturdy metal ones.) What fun! Crack the shells with vigor and it sounded like a gunshot, with nut shrapnel shooting across the table and onto the floor.

Next, a contest to see who could produce the most unbroken half-shells. My brothers and I saved those to float in puddles and ponds — miniature boats with toothpick and paper sails.

In time, the fun of cracking nuts and picking out bits of walnut turned to monotonous labor. Parents urged us on. The extra nuts they froze so they wouldn’t turn rancid by the time Mom used them in summer baking.

To rally the kids to keep cracking nuts, Dad collected several empty, unbroken half-shells. He gathered a handful of change, stuck a coin in a shell, and glued on a top. To keep the coins from rolling around inside, Dad wrapped each coin in a small piece of paper. With his arsenal of coin-filled shells, he mixed them in with the uncracked walnuts. The troops (my brothers and I) rallied to the challenge with renewed vigor motivated by money.

No one went barefoot during walnut-cracking time, the floor littered with sliver-sharp shell pieces. Even after sweeping, a few shells escaped detection for days.

With a bowl filled with nut meats, Mom began her baking at Thanksgiving time. First, and the most significant — Christmas bread. That’s what I call it. To label it “fruitcake” is to invite jokes and rejection as a food from others. While Mom baked, the aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves filled the house. After loaves cooled, Mom wrapped each loaf in waxed paper, gave it a covering of foil and, lastly, wrapped it in a clean dish towel with Mom’s embroidery work in one corner of elves among garden flowers. Tucked away in the hall linen closet, the loaves’ flavors blended into our supreme holiday treat.

One evening I sensed this might might be the moment we got to sample the Christmas cake: Our Christmas tree — perfect even though a smidgin lopsided, covered with colored-paper chains, Christmas balls and twinkly lights; the Nativity set is displayed; a list of charitable projects chosen; dinner dishes cleared.

Mom unwrapped a loaf. With a sharp knife, she cut pieces so thin that when held to the light, the slice resembled a stained-glass window. We savored the moment. After I finished the last bit of my slice, I moistened my finger and dabbed up the last of the crumbs.

Years later I’m away at college; December drags as I wait for winter holiday break. Sleet darkens the skies. A package arrives from home. Inside, a loaf of Christmas cake. A whole loaf! What generosity from family. My dorm roommate and I don’t have a knife. We borrow a butter knife from the cafeteria. The knife mashes the delicate texture of the loaf.

My roommate offers a solution. She grabs the loaf and tears off a hunk as though it’s a chunk of French bread to dip into olive oil. I’m speechless as she chews away, debates which dress to wear to a dance while brushing crumbs into the wastebasket.

A bolt of insight hits me. The holiday isn’t a baked loaf or a gunnysack of walnuts. It’s enjoying family, friends and even strangers that we serve.