Lane Cakes & Papier Mache

Originally posted on Tuesday, December 23, 2008.

So it's the holiday again. I'm trying to do it right this year. I hope it's charming of me to actually think there is a way to do it right, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'm just being neurotic. Okay nuts. As with most things in life I've never found a happy medium for my Christmas celebrating. When I started in show business I usually had to work on the holiday --sometimes we shot the actual Chirstmas show in advance so we had the big day off, but most years we were doing the soap sturm und drang over a holiday punch bowl on the 24th. In those days my yuletide ritual consisted of tossing a couple of ornaments on my snake plant and joining the crowd of hostile travelers on New Haven line as we all headed toward our loved ones in Connecticut -- in my case my mom's house. A couple of days later I'd be back on the set shooting the buildup to the obligatory Miserable Soap Opera New Year's Eve. Hey, it was a living. Cut to: a few years later I got married. I was what was called, back in the Paleolithic Age, a feminist. Which meant you didn't read romance novels or those glossy magazines that told you how to run a home. Let me confess now to my consciousness raising group that I read everything Georgette Heyer ever wrote, and I was the guilty consumer of Redbook, The Ladies' Home Journal and McCalls. When I married Roger, who loved Christmas, I had years of unbaked cookies and uncrafted decorations pent up in my brain. I made several holiday seasons hideous with my Lane Cake which took two days to bake if you insisted on using the original recipe which called for one to "choppe ye raisins into Perfecte thirds." My handmade icicles for the tree resulted in my husband having to have a premature discussion with his two young sons about the meaning of the phrase "phallic symbol." At some point during the holiday I would find myself screaming at the dog who had played with the papier mache for the Father Christmas and glued herself to a light socket. So this year I'm trying to make it all easy. After all - it's the thought that counts. Right? So this time no fancy food, no handmade decorations, I'm doing my minimal shopping on the internet. If I can figure out how to use the @$%!! thing. Happy Holidays!