Cranberry Liqueur: The Spirit of Christmas

Reader Contribution by Shirley "rodeo" Landis Vanscoyk
Published on December 21, 2009
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This year, I am trying to reclaim Christmas.

The last three Christmases I took a pass – 2006 it was just three weeks after Charles died, and I was pretty much in a fog. One of the last things he did on this earth was put up Christmas lights. I remember watching him teetering on a ladder, tweaking the weather beaten strings in the crabapple tree and wondering if he was ever going to come in for dinner. I’m looking out the same window now and I can see those strings of lights blowing in the wind, nobody in the family having the heart to cut them down. He was obsessed with Christmas lights – we are still finding boxes of vintage bulbs he hid in the attic and bags of brand new strings he forgot in the barn.

In 2007, we were still adjusting and making it good for the kids, but feeling our way, and making a lot of jokes about getting to pick out trees WE liked. An oft quoted Charles anecdote was of Christmas tree hunting in the snow on a bitterly cold day in a local tree farm. Daughter-In-Law and I found ourselves standing in a cold, bleak field with darkness sifting down around us, not knowing where Charles and the kids were. The lights went out in the vendor’s shack, only a few cars left in the parking lot. After about two hours, an ancient school bus lurched into the lot and Charles and the two boys fall out the door, laughing hysterically. They had taken a BUS to a distant field in search of the perfect tree and … didn’t find one. This was funny to them at the time, but not funny to DIL and I for another five years.

The upshot of this is that I have a PINK fake tree covered with girly ornaments. The lights are already on it, and you just plug it in.

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