A couple of years ago, a friend of mine asked her Facebook friends to send her a Christmas card. She was a new Mom, isolated at home in a small Western town during a pandemic, desperate to have something to look forward to every day. I was happy to add her to my Christmas mailing list and now send her a card and our family newsletter every year.
Very few people still send Christmas cards in the mail. I think that’s sad. There’s something special about getting a card in the mail, especially at this time of the year.
Even though the number of cards we get each year is dwindling, I look forward with anticipation to reading each card and note, seeing the kids’ school photos or family holiday photo, and catching up on all the news from friends who live far away who aren’t on social media.
This week’s #HappyAct is to kick it old school and send a traditional Christmas card. It might just make someone’s day.
I’ve decided each year I’m going to try to resist the trappings and wrappings of the commercial side of Christmas and embrace a homemade yuletide celebration. Here are some easy, simple ideas to bring Christmas home:
Make your own egg nog. If you’ve ever had homemade egg nog, you’ll know it’s the BOMB! Check out Jaime Oliver’s egg nog recipe.
Try making a gingerbread log cabin or house from scratch instead of buying a store-bought kit.
A great craft to do with kids is making glass Christmas ornaments. Buy a dozen basic plain glass balls and a selection of paints. Pour the paint in the balls and swirl it around so it covers the whole surface, then turn them upside down to drain in egg cartons. If you choose any colour mixed with white, you get a beautiful hand-blown glass look.
Go for a hike and cut down some grapevine and cedar to make your own wreaths and garland.
If you’re not a great baker or cook, you can still make some simple yummy homemade treats to give as gifts. Check out this recipe for Spicy coated nuts and my recipe below for homemade caramel corn that Dave and I make every year
Be environmentally friendly and make your own holiday wrap using up that stack of plain brown paper bags sitting in your back closet. Make them festive by gluing pretty pictures from a magazine or old Christmas cards on them or spruce them up using sprigs of pine, ribbon or candy canes.
I’m not very crafty, but here are some of the treasured things I’ve made over the years for Christmas that bring me joy. Happy holidays!
Homemade Caramel Corn
2 cups popped corn (to make 30 cups of popcorn) 1 cup butter or margarine 2 cups firmly packed brown sugar 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pop the corn and place in two large roasting pans. In heavy saucepan, combine the rest of the ingredients. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves about 5 minutes. The butter won’t look like it’s blended in, but don’t worry about it. Remove from heat and stir in baking so it foams a bit. Pour over popcorn, stirring constantly, then place in a 250 degree oven for 45-60 minutes. Stir every 15 minutes.
This summer, my best friend Leslie and I toured the “It’s a Wonderful Life” Museum in Seneca Falls, New York. I fell in love immediately with this wonderful little museum said to be the inspiration for the town of Bedford Falls in the Christmas classic.
As the story goes, Frank Capra, the film’s director visited Seneca Falls in 1946 after returning from the war. He loved the town with its beautiful bridges so much, he based Bedford Falls on it.
While in town, Capra no doubt also heard the story of Antonio Varacalli, a young 19-year old Italian man who jumped off one of the town’s bridges in 1917 to rescue a woman from drowning. While Varacalli successfully saved her life, he drowned, sacrificing his own life for another.
There is a plaque dedicated to Varacalli on the bridge and today people from around the world place bells on the bridge helping to give angels their wings in tribute to the film and its message of hope, friendship, love and self-worth.
The museum, which is currently in a temporary location on the main street as the main building undergoes renovations has photos, memorabilia and quotes from the film and the actors. Every year, the museum hosts a “It’s a Wonderful Life” Festival weekend on the second weekend of December with gala dinners, the chance to meet cast members and people associated with the film, special screenings, parties and more. The dates are Dec 8-10 this year and you can see the full list of events here.
What struck me the most as I was wandering around the exhibits and listening to the marvelous old songs from that era was the lessons on life and happiness from the film, both woven into the dialogue of the movie itself, but that has also become part of the lore and culture surrounding It’s a Wonderful Life.
Old Man Potter in the film says, “I am an old man, and most people hate me. But I don’t like them either so that makes it all even.” Lionel Barrymore, the actor who played Mr. Potter was quoted as saying, “The older you get, the more you realize that kindness is synonymous with happiness.”
From Angel Clarence: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends” and “Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
In an interview of the film, Capra once said, “It’s a Wonderful Life sums up my philosophy of filmmaking. First, to exalt the worth of the individual. Second, to champion man, plead his causes, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit or divinity. And third, to dramatize the viability of the individual, as in the theme of the film itself. There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see we only have to look. I beseech you to look.”
This week’s #HappyAct is to watch this holiday classic in the next month and make plans to visit the museum in Seneca Falls (you won’t want to miss the National Women’s Hall of Fame and Women’s Rights Museum which are also undergoing renovations).
I’ll leave you with a famous interview Capra did in 1976 that beautifully summarized the meaning and appeal of the film.
“I like people. I think that people are just wonderful. I also think people are equal in the sense of their dignity, their divinity; there’s no such thing as a common man or uncommon man.
To me, each one is actually unique. Never before has there been anyone like you. Never again will there be anyone like you.
You are something that never existed before and will never exist again. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that something pretty exciting? So I look at you as something that plays part of a great whole, an equal part of everything, or else you wouldn’t be here.” – Frank Capra
Black Friday and the holiday shopping season is upon us. Canadians are being lured by savvy marketers with promises of up to 70% off, Black Friday Deals and Super Savings you can’t pass up.
While some people refuse to cave to the consumerism of the season, most of us succumb to varying degrees to the shopping craze this time of year.
Which begs the question. Does retail therapy make people happy? The science shows the answer is yes.
Even just the anticipation of making a purchase or treating ourselves to something we desire releases dopamine, the hormone neurotransmitter in our brain that makes us feel good.
The choices we make when shopping can restore a feeling of personal control and autonomy which helps in fighting feelings of sadness and anxiety over the things that are outside of our control in the world.
In another 2014 study by University of Michigan, researchers showed that purchasing things you personally enjoy can be up to 40 times more effective at giving you a sense of control than not shopping, and those who actually purchased items were three times less sad when compared to those who only browsed.
Shopping also stimulates our senses, creating pleasure, especially this time of the year when the stores have festive displays and merry music playing.
But before you go filling up your virtual or actual shopping cart, remember these caveats. For every instant hit of pleasure, there is a corresponding pang of potential regret when it comes time to pay the bills. You need to calculate whether the pleasure from the purchase would exceed the pain from the cost, and whether you can afford the purchase at all.
The Journal of Consumer Psychology study showed that even just the act of filling up your online shopping cart, then abandoning it, can create the same pleasure as if you had actually made the purchase.
In the end, spending less money may be more rewarding.
This week’s #HappyAct is to be a smart, savvy and happy Black Friday shopper. Find a few bargains and enjoy the small hit of dopamine, but don’t do anything you’re going to regret later.
Special #HappyAct Experiment: Go online this week to one of your favourite retailers and fill up your shopping cart with a bunch of items, then close down your browser without making the purchase. Did you feel happier just browsing? Leave a comment!
I’ve been sporting a new look this past week. Dave and Clare too. We’ve been going to work and school all glammed up with tiny pieces of dainty silver glitter on our faces and outfits.
No, it’s not a new fashionable holiday trend or a case of a family craft night gone bad. Let me explain.
It started a few weeks ago at Halloween. Grace and her boyfriend Devon dressed up as the Impossible Dream, the Maple Leafs hoisting the Stanley Cup. Devon was wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs Jersey and Grace was wearing a cute silver party dress she bought off a cheap online retailer. Here is a picture of them with the Toronto skyline in the background.
A few days later, Grace came home for a dentist appointment, and like a typical teenager, dumped all her laundry on the floor. After she left, I put on my hazmat suit and swept her room for suspicious substances, dirty clothes and garbage, then loaded the laundry machine with some towels and her clothes, including the glittery silver Stanley Cup dress.
You can guess the rest. When I went to fold our laundry, all the towels and clothes were covered in little grey sparkles and we’ve all been very glittery ever since.
We’d been styled by a cheap party dress and a dryer.
The reactions at work were priceless. People looked at me with a slightly bewildered look and asked if I had done something to my make-up. My friend Peggy said I looked like an angel. It resulted in a few laughs to brighten up the early dreary days of November.
The holiday season is soon upon us. This week’s #HappyAct is to add some glitter and glam to your life.
I’m a huge fan of TedTalks. Recently, I stumbled across one on the science of smiles by Ron Gutman, a professor from Stanford University whose mission is to help everyone live happier, healthier lives.
Gutman talks about a 30-year old study from the University of Berkeley, California that looked at old photos in school yearbooks and measured the success and well-being of the graduates throughout their lifetime based on their smiles. The students with the biggest smiles tended to lead more successful, well-rounded lives.
Another study involved looking at old baseball cards and the longevity of the ball players in correlation to the smiles on their cards. The ball players with the biggest smiles lived the longest.
Gutman says one-third of people smile more than 20 times a day, but sadly 14% of us smile less than 5 times per day. Children smile more than 400 times per day.
He claims smiling creates the same positive brain stimulation as eating up to 2,000 bars of chocolate!
Smiling is one of the most basic expressions of humans and something we all do every day.
This week’s #HappyAct is to make a conscious effort to smile at least 20 times a day this week and if you see someone sad, struggling or frowning, ask what’s wrong, tell them a joke, or do something to put a smile on their face.
Tis the season of obscenely priced beverages at our favourite retailer, the LCBO.
Yesterday, I was in the liquor store shopping for wine, and a lovely sales representative asked if I wanted a sample of single malt scotch as part of Whiskey Month. I immediately said yes, abiding by the Swinton golden rule: never turn down free stuff, especially alcohol or food.
It was purely medicinal of course. I was just getting over the worst cold I’ve had in over a year. There’s nothing like a good shot of whiskey to clear the head and chest.
They were serving two options: an Irish whiskey called Roe & Company at the bargain price of $55 a bottle and a $109 bottle of Lagavulin 8 Year Old Single Malt Scotch. I naturally went for the $109 bottle.
It was warm, smooth and surprising, with a strong campfire taste, smoky, infused with hints of nut and oak like no other whiskey I’ve tasted before.
My love of Irish whiskey goes back to my twenties when Dave and I went to Ireland for a friend’s wedding. Just about every night, after we left the bars, we’d end up in someone’s kitchen until three in the morning with a bottle of Bushmills on the table.
I’m always surprised how smooth a straight shot of whiskey is and the wonderful warm feeling you get as it swirls around your nose, throat and chest. It’s like drinking a warm blanket.
But even though I’m Scottish, I have to confess I’ve always been partial to Irish whiskey and now I know why. I learned as I was taste testing that while both spirits are distilled liquors, Scotch is distilled twice while Irish whiskey is distilled three times. This extra distillation gives it a smoother finish and some say make it the best in the world.
Johnny Carson once said, “Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.”
This week’s #HappyAct is to enjoy a wee dram of your favourite scotch or whiskey. If you buy a bottle at the LCBO before November 8 and are an Aeroplan member, you can be entered in a contest to win a round-trip ticket for two to anywhere Air Canada flies.
While you’re there, check out the Kurayoshi 18 Year Old Malt Whiskey, named Japanese Whiskey of the Year for a mere $654 a bottle or an $845 bottle of Macallan Sherry Oak Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whiskey.
This week, I received an unexpected gift. It was a beautiful piece of artwork of red leaves in the fall sent to me by our good friend Jon Begg.
Jon lives in the Great White North but always comes for dinner and a fish whenever he is back in southern Ontario. On his last visit, we talked photography and he showed me pictures on his phone of images he had taken of the fall foliage that he had photoshopped to look like artwork. They were simply stunning.
Fast forward to this week, and I now have one of his beautiful creations hanging in my dining room. I’m not sure if that will be its permanent place of honour but every night at the dinner table, I find myself admiring this unexpected gift.
This week’s #HappyAct is to bring some joy to someone special by sending them an unexpected gift. Leave a comment and share what you did. Here’s another one of Jon’s treasured gifts, a mock magazine cover of one of the boys’ 2008 fishing expeditions on the Moira River.
Reflections of Who I am Who I want to be Personified in Perfect symmetry
Lines blur and blend Bending to my will Distorting where reality ends And make-believe begins
I drift in and out Amongst the reeds and the trees My memories floating Dancing on the surface
Reliving the past Without absorbing What might have been What still could be
Filling an aching void Always reproachful Always critical A bright light Thrown back from the surface
If only we could change To reflect a better version of ourselves A flawless mirror Illuminating the beauty And light within our soul
Ed. note: The idea for this poem came to me after spending time looking at the beautiful reflections of the trees on the water on my lake. At first, it was going to be a photo essay, but it morphed into a poem after I visited a sculpture called “Reflections“ last weekend in a park in Pickering. The sculpture was erected in memory of those who lost their lives to COVID. Here was the description:
“Amongst the panels sits a solitary void to the open sky. The mirrors encourage us to see ourselves from different perspectives and contemplate the personal and collective experience of self-reflection and solitude. The missing mirror examines themes of loss and grief, representing those we lost to COVID-19. Every day as the sun crosses behind the sculpture, the bright spot created by the void cuts through the shadow as it swings across the ground. This light is a reminder that although our loved ones may be gone, they are not forgotten and will continue to be present in our daily lives, drifting in and out, both in influence and memory.”
A few weeks ago, I attended a “Meet a Farmer” night hosted by South Frontenac Township as part of the Open Farm Days events.
It was a lively, informal and highly illuminating discussion of the trials, tribulations and joys of small-scale farming in eastern Ontario.
I learned I have a lot to learn about the food that goes on my table.
One of the panelists was Sarah Winney from The Rise Farm in Godfrey. Sarah and her partner Rob sell farm fresh ducks, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and eggs along with bread and kitchen pantry staples, such as seasoning salt, farm fresh garlic, and marinades.
You would think it would be a relatively simple process for small-scale farmers like Sarah and Rob to get meat butchered and prepared, but it’s not. Sarah and Rob have to take their meat to five different abbatoirs, some as far as 300 kms away. That’s because there isn’t enough abbatoirs to meet the demand, and the big ones are dominated by the large meat producers.
They could prepare their birds and rabbits themselves, but they aren’t allowed to. Regulations stipulate the meat needs to be taken to a licensed abbatoir (they can kill their own birds, but only for their own consumption, not for retail).
As a result, it’s very expensive to get their ducks, turkeys and chickens prepped—it can cost them as much as $9 a bird, which leaves very little profit margin.
The cost is even higher if they have the abbatoir label the packages with weight and other information which is a requirement if they want to sell their meat at farmer’s market (which is why it’s rare to see meat farmers in local farmers markets by the way).
Another thing I didn’t know is when you buy a pound of beef, it can actually be parts of 20 different cows in the package, as opposed to just a single cow when you buy beef directly from a farmer.
A few years ago, a local farmer looked into building a new abbatoir to serve small-scale farmers in our area. There was huge interest and he even had the support of local officials, but the costs ballooned past the $5 million mark and they just couldn’t make it work.
I walked away that night with a new, deep-founded respect for farmers and the obstacles they need to overcome to put food on the table for their own families and other families.
Before you pass around the mashed potatoes, turkey, ham and squash this weekend, be sure to thank a farmer.
Happy Act 