MACAROONS
Put half a pound of almonds in boiling water, remove the skins, then put the almonds in cold water, then put them in the oven to dry. Pound them to a paste, adding the white of an egg; then add a pound and a half of powdered sugar, again pound well, adding the whites of two eggs. Spread on a pan a sheet of white paper, pour the mixture into little rounds somewhat smaller than a fifty cent piece, place them on top of the paper in your pan, about an inch and a half apart. Put them in a gentle oven for twelve minutes, the door of the oven shut; at the end of that time, if they are well colored, remove them from the oven, let them become cold, turn the paper upside down, moisten it with a little water and remove the macaroons.

SWEETBREAD PATES
Boil four sweetbreads, and let them become cold; then chop them very fine, add about ten mushrooms, also chopped fine. Mix with these a quarter pound of butter, half a pint of milk, a little flour, pepper, salt, and a little grated nutmeg. Put upon the fire, stir until it begins to thicken, then put in puff-paste that has been prepared, and bake until light brown.

NESSELRODE PUDDING
Remove the shells from two dozen French chestnuts, which put in a saucepan with a little water, then peel off the skin, and put the chestnuts in a saucepan on the fire with a pint of water and one pound of sugar. Boil them until very soft, then press them through a sieve; the put them in a saucepan with one pint of cream, in which you mix the yolks of four eggs. Just before boiling put your mixture through a sieve, add an ounce of stoned raisins, an ounce of currants, two sherryglasses of sherry wine, and freeze it like ice-cream. When frozen, cut four candied apricots, four candied green gages, half an ounce of citron in small pieces, three ounces of candied cherries; mix them thoroughly into the pudding, which is put into a mould, a thick piece of paper on top, and the cover securely shut down upon it. Put some cracked ice, mixed with two handfuls of rock salt, into a bowl, in the middle of which put your mould, covering it entirely with ice and salt; let it remain two hours, then turn it out of the mould, first dipping it into warm water.

The 12 days of Christmas are the 12 days that separate Christmas day on December 25 from Epiphany, which is celebrated January 6. Depending on the church, January 6 may mark Christ's baptism (the Catholic tradition), or it may mark the day that the wise men visited the baby Jesus with their gifts. In the past, there was a tradition of giving gifts throughout the 12 days, rather than stacking them all up on the morning of December 25. The song, however, demonstrates that some people once stretched out their gifts (and gave some fairly elaborate gifts...) over the full 12 days. Meowmie says that at her work, they celebrate the "12 Gluttony Days" and people bring fattening, (but yummy)foods and she knows another lady who still practices giving 12 gifts (one each day) to her sister.

An old fashioned victorian porcelain boot for ladies can be filled with mum sprays and blue caspia, and trimmed with a champagne wired ribbon bow.

If you can find an old fashioned sleigh and fill it to the brim with goodies, tie with a bow and use to decorate the mantel or sideboard. Things to add might be a decorative fragrance bag, pump room spray, candle in a glass, wooden apples, cinnamon sticks,etc.

I learned that there's this holiday called "Boxing Day," and it is celebrated on December 26, the day after Christmas, in most of Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Nobody's sure exactly how Boxing Day got its name. Some people say it comes from the English tradition of giving boxes of gifts to their servants. Others say it was because priests opened the church alms boxes that day and gave the money to the poor.

From an internew with Professor Donald Gray, an English Professor who also edits a journal regarding Victorian Art & Literature, Rose McIlveen of Indiana University writes, "Victorian feasts were sumptuous. There would certainly have been a fowl of some kind, maybe a goose. There would have been a pudding. In a more affluent home, there might have been a clear turtle soup," said Gray.

Boxing Day ... was the day when those who had provided services were remembered. "Because the public aspect of the Christmas season was charitable, Boxing Day was a time to do things for people either dependent upon you or who were less fortunate than you," Gray noted.

We could celebrate Boxing Day by going to our local animal shelter or rescue group with a box of food or toys, as an example.

Meow mew,
For Victorian, a victorian born storyteller: Hans Christian Andersen. The life of Hans Christian Andersen begins when he was born in Odense, Denmark, in a one-room house on April 2, 1805. At 11 years of age, his father died and he was left alone. He went to school briefly instead hespent most of his time imagining stories. He memorized and recited plays to anyone who would listen and imitated ballet dancers, acrobats or pantomists. To put an end on this, his mother apprenticed him first to a weaver, then to a tobacconist and finally to a tailor. Hans Christian knew these occupations were not for him. The only things that held his interest were the theater, books and stories. When he was 14, he decided to go to Copenhagen, Denmark, to make his future.

For three years he was extremely poor. Hans Christian earned a little money form singing in a boy's choir. He attempted to work with his hands but was too awkward. It never occured to him to return home and admit defeat.

Finally, at 17, Andersen came to the attention of Chancellor Jonas Collin, a director of the Royal Theater. Collin had read a play by Andersen and saw that the youth had talent. He got money from the king for Andersen's education and sent him to a school near Copenhagen. His teacher, a bitter man, was mean to him, taking pleasure from taunting him about his ambition to become a writer. Finally Collin took the youth from the school and arranged for him to study under a private tutor in Copenhagen. In 1828, when he was 23, Andersen passed his entrance examinations to the university in Copenhagen.

Andersen's writings began to be published in Danish in 1829. In 1833 the king gave him a grant of money for travel and he spent 16 months wandering through Europe. His works were poems, plays, novels and impressions of his travels (he always brought a rope, since he was afraid of fire).

In 1835 Andersen published 'Fairy Tales for Children' - four short stories he wrote for a little girl, Ida Thiele, who was the daughter of the secretary of the Academy of Art. People, who had read the stories - adults as well as children - wanted more. Andersen published 168 fairy tales in all. He wrote the stories just as he would have told them. Although he never married and had no children of his own, he was at his best as an interpreter of the nature of children.

Andersen died on Aug.4, 1875.

One of the favorite stories by Andersen is The Fir Tree about the forest tree that wants to be a Christmas tree. He finally gets his wish and is all decked out in celebration finery. Children and adults are in awe of the elegant tree. But the moring finds the tree stripped of all the decorations and discarded, placed in a store room where he relives the splendor for the mice that come to him for warmth. The fir tree had heard one story about Humpty Dumpty and he also repeats this night after night. Finally, the trees days are numbered and he is taken outside where a woodsman chops him up where the tree for the last time is appreciated by the children as he provides them with fire.

The next morning, Bastet awoke first and got out her wrapped present for Eliot. Then she ran to wake up. "Eliot, wake up! It's Christmas, It's Christmas!!"

He awoke, sleepy-eyed, and pulled out the small white bag containing Bastet's Christmas present from under his pillow. "Merry Christmas, Bastet," he said, and gave her the bag. She opened it happily, but when she saw the buckle her face fell.

"You don't like it?" said Eliot anxiously.

"No, no! I love it, It's beautiful. But I...I sold my collar to buy you this." she offered a smile as she gave Eliot his package. He ripped it open and saw the box.

"But...but...I don't have the mice anymore. I needed the money to buy your buckle..."

The next ten minuted were an argument of who would be the one to return their present and go buy back the other's original item from Thomas. They both wanted to give up their gift, for they both wanted the other to have a complete Christmas heirloom.

"Wait," said Bastet suddenly."Let's just go see Thomas and see if he still has our things, alright?" Eliot agreed and off they went.

"Back so soon?" said Thomas with a wrinkled but kind smile.

"Well, I wanted to know-"

"We want to buy the collar"

"-the mice! Have you got the mice?"

"Did you sell them?"

"Have you got them?"

"Can we have them?"

"SHHH!!" said Thomas suddenly. "Silence. Let me talk." Bastet and Eliot looked to his wise old face and saw a twinkle in his eye.

"You both have learned that kindness is a gift which each wants to give, but you young ones think that kindness can only be expressed in gifts of objects. Owning a pawn shop, I see many things come and go and come back again. Everyone needs the money. But these things have stories, have feelings. They are missed. You see that my shop is almost empty, do you not?"

Eliot and Bastet looked around at the dusty shelves and, indeed, saw only a few trinkets on them.

"I do not keep anything I buy. There is always someone who needs it more. So I give them back. Under one condition: that you learn my lesson."

Thomas winked and slipped the cats each a small white bag with a red silk bow, and even without opening them the two cats knew that they contained the collar and mice. "And so you have. Merry Christmas to you both." And with another wink and a smile, Thomas disappeared. Neither of the cats ever saw him again.

But every Christmas, if you return to that street in that village, you will see a man with long white hair, smiling contently in front of the jeweler's. And you will see a boy with black hair and a girl with brown, sitting on a bench and eating fish sandwiches. And the girl will be wearing an odd-looking gold chain, set with diamonds. And if she lifts up her hair and lets you look, you will see that at the back where the clasp should be, there is a pure gold buckle. You will see this and look at the boy curiously, and he will only smile. And you may think it odd that at the boy's feet is a small metal box, and that around his neck he wears a small metal key.

If you walk further down this street, down to the very end where the street turns and becomes New York City, there is a little bus stop. And inside that bus stop is a small wooden bench. And on that bench is a man who is old, yet seems timeless. His smile is wrinkled, but kind. And if you look past his clouded glasses, you will see a twinkle in the old man's eye. You may wonder where he is going, you may wonder if he will ever return. But one thing is sure: Your paths will cross again, perhaps even in a single year--next Christmas.

"He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly." There's hardly a soul alive who couldn't identify this as the description of Santa Claus. These words were published for the first time on this day in 1823 in the Troy (N.Y.) Record (now the Sentinel). The poem we know as The Night Before Christmas or A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement C. Moore, was published anonymously under the newspaper editor's title, Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.

Moore's poem, which he had written on Christmas Eve one year earlier, took a circuitous route to the Troy paper. The story has it that Moore penned the poem, inspired by the bells on the sleigh in which he was riding, the sleigh's jolly driver, and the new fallen snow on the streets of New York City, as he was running a last minute errand for his wife. That evening, he read his now-famous words to his six children as they sat in front of their fireplace where "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hope that St. Nicholas soon would be there." The children were so delighted with their father's images of "a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer," that they saved the poem, showing it to a family friend, Harriet Butler, who was visiting from Troy. Moore allowed Miss Butler to copy the poem in her keepsake album.

Miss Butler was so taken with the charming work that she sent it in to the Troy newspaper shortly before the following Christmas, unbeknownst to Moore, who never intended to publish the poem as it was out of character for a strait-laced professor of classics.

The poem captured the imaginations of young and old alike . indeed, its popularity can be measured by the many editions still in print, and that the Troy Sentinel still publishes the poem annually . so Clement C. Moore finally consented to being recognized as its author when the poem appeared in The New-York Book of Poetry in 1837.

Some say Moore took his inspiration from his past readings of the Knickerbocker History and The Children's Friend, borrowing a little here and a little there. Others say that since he wasn't writing for publication, but for his own children, they can believe that the author of A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language, a linguist and an elite Episcopalian could also write: "More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name; Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now Prancer and Vixen! On Comet! On Cupid! On Donder and Blitzen!"