Yesterday, we had a little snow storm. We got several inches of light, fluffy snow, enough to make the roads slippery and enough to make the woods and the yard pretty. Soon the dog and I will head outside so that I can finish with the clean-up. (Clif got up early and used Little Green to clean most of the drive way.) If this were March, I wouldn’t bother with so little snow. But this is December, and much more snow is likely to come, which means keeping up with the snow is very important.

The countdown to Christmas has begun. We are 10 days away, and I have devised a cooking schedule for myself. Some things, like squash bread and the chocolate ice-cream pie made with homemade ice cream can be made ahead of time and frozen. The same is true for wheat bread, and I always like to have a few loaves stashed in the small chest freezer in the cellar. French toast is ever so much better with homemade bread, and the same is true for grilled cheese sandwiches.

Other things—cookies, peanut butter balls, and hand-dipped chocolate covered pretzels are best fresh. From Sunday, December 22 to Tuesday, December 24, we will be cooking fools at the little house in the big woods. Fortunately, Clif will be able to help me this year. Last Christmas, he had broken his arm, and all he could do was roll peanut butter balls. This year, he’s not only going to roll peanut butter balls, but he’s going to dip the suckers as well.

Next week, I’ll be making lots of gingersnaps from a recipe of my mother’s, and these cookies are good keepers. They can be made several days ahead of time, very helpful this time of year. I plan to give colorful bags filled with gingersnaps to various “elves” who make this town a better place.

This morning, I read a blog where the writer made a case for not celebrating Christmas or buying a presents. He is not a Christian, and he is put off by the commercialization of the holiday. The writer has a point. Christmas has become commercialized, and with all the cooking and cleaning and getting ready, it is also a lot of bother.

But I don’t care. I love Christmas anyway. I love the bother and the presents and the decorating and the cooking. I love celebrations in general—birthdays, baby showers, anniversaries, whatever—and it seems to me that this country could use more celebrations and less nose to the grindstone. It feels as though there is too much drudgery and not enough fun in the United States. Work, work, work for too little pay. No maternity leave. Very little vacation. You actually want a day off? Bah, humbug!

As always, explanations are in order. I come from an ethnic group—Franco-Americans—that places a high, high value on hard work and cleanliness. In the past, Franco-Americans were all too often accused of being stupid, but nobody ever  accused them of being lazy or dirty. Whether it was in the factory or at home, Francos were (and still are!) organized and energetic.

But, boy did Francos know how to have a good time. (And still do!) On Christmas Eve, my mother’s family would go to midnight mass, come home, have tourtière pie, unwrap presents, and party until dawn. Now that’s what I call celebrating.

So give me Christmas and birthdays and all the other celebrations that give sparkle to life. There are plenty of days left to work hard.

Correction: My daughter Shannon quite rightly pointed out that there are 15 days until Christmas. What a good thing it would be if I could count correctly 😉

A rainy day in the neighborhood, and outside it looks like dreary March rather than crisp December. Never mind! At least there aren’t power outages and freezing rain, and for that I am grateful. At Chickadee Place—my new “old” name for this house—it is no fun when the power goes out. We have a well, which means no water when there is no power, and we have to use buckets of water to flush the toilets. Since our house nestles in the woods—so cool and pleasant in the summer—we don’t get much natural light, and without power, the house is dark. And, we have an electric stove. So although I always am prepared for power outages—big buckets of water in our cellar, a gas camp stove, oil for lamps, a wood furnace—I never look forward to them.

A busy weekend coming up. On Saturday, there will be the town’s Christmas parade, and the library is actually going to have a float this year. The theme of the float will be books, of course, and I am looking forward to seeing it. After the parade, a bunch of us are gathering at Margy and Steve Knight’s house, where we will come together for one of their fabulous potlucks. Margy and Steve have such a warm, welcoming home, and it’s always such a pleasure to go to one of their potlucks. I will be making a ginger-carrot soup, and I’m also going to try to slide in some homemade bread. No sleeping late tomorrow.

On Sunday, I’m meeting my friends Susan and Joan for brunch in Portland at Petite Jacqueline. We’ll be celebrating not only the holidays and our friendship but also Joan’s birthday. After that, I’ll meet my daughter Shannon for tea and then we’ll meander to the Portland Flea Market. Somewhere amidst all the fun will be a trip to Trader Joe’s to stock up on supplies for the holiday.

Despite all the folderol and frivolity of the season, I have been thinking about more serious matters. Striking fast-food workers have been much in the news lately, and even though I seldom go to fast-food places, my sympathies are squarely with the workers. (No surprise there. I come from a long line of blue-collar Democrats. Where else would my sympathies be?) Working people deserve decent wages, and nowadays, it is impossible to live on $8 (or even less) an hour without government subsidies. Through our taxes, we citizens are helping these workers, and, in effect, subsidizing the fast-food restaurants. As a progressive, I am all for helping workers and society, but do those fast-food restaurants, which make billions of dollars in profits each year, really need my tax-dollar assistance for their workers? I don’t think so.

The same is true for most retail jobs. Wal-Mart is the symbol for all that is big and greedy, and they deserve it. However, they are not alone in their Scrooge-like behavior, and it is the rare job in retail that pays a decent wage. (Even $11 or $12 an hour is not really enough to live comfortably.) Unfortunately, this is also the case for small businesses as well, even when they are making a good profit. (I know this from personal experience.)

Therefore, as we move into this season of Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All, my thoughts are with all the exploited people, not only in this country but also in the world—people who work too hard for too little; people who make it possible for us to buy cheap stuff and to eat cheap food; people who deserve better than what they get but are under the thumb of such an oppressive economic system that their prospects are bleak.

There are glimmers of change. Workers in this country are starting to protest, as well they should. And we should be in solidarity with them.

These glimmers of change give me hope. After all, a great man who just died spent 27 years of his life in prison. He lived in a wicked, wicked regime. Finally he was released and eventually went on to become president of his country.

If Nelson Mandela could achieve the nearly impossible, then our country should be able to come up with a fair and decent economic system for its workers. All of them. Not just those at the top.

This morning, I woke up to find a light layer of snow on the ground. Time to get the last of the wood stacked. Time to bring in the the fire pit. Everything else is pretty much done, which means that Clif and I can hunker down and get ready for the holidays.

As it is only two days away, Thanksgiving, of course, is utmost on my mind. Today is a day of preparation—baking the squash for squash bread, cooking the green beans for the green bean casserole, and cleaning the house. Tomorrow, I will make squash bread as well as green bean casserole, and I also hope to make yeast rolls. We’ll see. I broke down and bought store-bought bread for the stuffing. We all love stuffing, and I’ll be making a double batch, one to go in the turkey and one in a casserole dish. I have leftover stock from the gravy, and I’ll use that stock for the casserole stuffing, which is never as tasty as the one that goes in the turkey, but it will be good nonetheless.

Nowadays, it has become fashionable, on Facebook and elsewhere, to give thanks for the many good things in life. I happen to think that counting one’s blessings is a fine idea, good spiritual practice, if you will. This does not mean ignoring the painful or the negative. Far from it. However, most of us dwell quite enough on the negative parts of life. We need no reminders to count our misfortunes.

So I am going to follow suit and give thanks for a lesson my Franco-American parents taught me, a lesson about poverty and respect, two words that are so far apart in today’s society that there seems little hope in bringing them together.

Both of my parents grew up in very poor families. My mother lived with her mother and grandmother in a tiny apartment whose floors were so cold in the winter that they all had to wear their boots to stay warm. As there was only one bedroom—for her mother and grandmother—my mother had to sleep in the hall.

My father lived with both his parents, but money was still tight. He went to school with patches on his clothes and nearly died when his appendix ruptured because his parents didn’t have health insurance. (Thank God for the family doctor who demanded that my father be admitted and treated in the hospital, despite the lack of insurance. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this today.)

Neither of my parents starved, but neither of them had quite as much to eat as they would have liked, and they often weren’t able to have exactly what they wanted. For my father, store-bought whoopie pies were an unaffordable treat that he longed for. My mother often commented on how my grandmother could put together a meal when the cupboards seemed bare.

Both my maternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather worked in a factory, but this was before the days of strong unions and decent pay. My grandparents worked hard, but they were still poor, and the lesson my parents taught me was this: people, through no fault of their own, could indeed work hard and still be poor. My parents felt strongly that those who lived in poverty did not deserve our scorn. On the contrary, they deserved our respect, and in our house, we never looked down on people because they were poor. Never. (Laziness and lack of cleanliness were another matter, but my parents did not associate these traits with poverty.)

As Thanksgiving approaches, I give thanks that my parents taught me to respect those who are poor, to understand that hard work, cleanliness, and poverty are not incompatible. It is a lesson I wish the rest of the country would take to heart.