Christmas Resources – Cherry Shortbread Cookies Recipe

The oldest known custom, which dates back to the ancient Mesopotamians is whitewashing the house. This predates Christian and Celtic civilizations and used to involve whitewashing the entire farm, inside and out! It is believed that originally it was an attempt to assist the ancient gods in the battle against chaos. It was the women’s job to clean and polish everything and the men would paint the building with whitewash to purify everything in honor of the birth of Christ.

Some less strenuous Christmas traditions are delightful, such as placing a lighted candle in the window on Christmas Eve to welcome Mary and Joseph when they are looking for shelter. They are usually red candles, decorated with sprigs of holly. Ireland’s Christmas tends to be more religious than some other countries and lasts from Christmas Eve until January 6th, which is the feast of Epiphany. Another significance of the lighted candle was that here was a safe place to perform mass, which was not allowed during Penal Times.

Another tradition involves baking a seed cake for everyone in the house and also three Christmas puddings, one for Christmas Day, another for New Years Day and the third for Twelfth Night.

Known in England as Boxing Day, St. Stephens day is the day after Christmas. This is quite an important day in Ireland, with football matches being played and meetings held. The children take part in a ceremony called The Wren Boys Procession. The boys go door to door, singing accompanied by horns, harmonicas and violins, carrying a model wren on a stick. They ask for money “for the starving wren”, which is of course for pocket money! The origins of this are from when a village plotted against the local soldiers in Penal Times. The story goes that the soldiers were about to be ambushed and the plot failed when a number of wrens pecked on their drums and woke the soldiers.

Women actually get their own Christmas in Ireland, this is on The Feast of the Epiphany, also called ‘Nollaig na mBean’ or Women’s Christmas. On this day by tradition, the women get the day off and the men have to do all the housework and the cooking! Women take the opportunity to meet in each other’s homes and chat. This is becoming very popular and many Irish women now meet up on the Sunday nearest Epiphany, for tea and cakes, and to enjoy some quality time together.

As in many other countries Irish people are spending more money each year celebrating Christmas. In 2006, the total amount spent at Christmas in Ireland was €16 billion, this averages an amazing €4,000 for each person in the country! Christmas weddings, often celebrated with the exchange of Celtic wedding rings, are also popular in Ireland and with the change in the law imminent that will allow weddings to take place at venues other than churches and registry offices will become more so. Some of the stunning castles will be the perfect setting for combining both Christmas and wedding celebrations and will ensure that the happy couples and their families enjoy this special time of year even more.

Image courtesy of celtic-weddingrings.com

About the author: Steven writes for Celtic Wedding Rings, an Irish company that specializes in Celtic jewelry and handcrafted wedding jewelry.

Click on the image below to get a close up look at Christmas shopping stats.

Finding a basket to fill with stuff is easy enough. If you rack your brains you know you’ve probably got one lying around somewhere. So where to start? Well, what’s your man into? Mine loves baseball, so a mug, a photo of his favourite player, a couple of beers, nachos, dips, a DVD, I can think of tons of things. It keeps the budget low and I know he’ll love it. And it shows you’ve been thinking of him and you know they love that!

You’ll come up with tons of ideas too once you know your theme. Sport, beer, books, cigars, just think of his favourite thing and go from there. I stuck a few cut-out hearts on mine and got the kids to help me colour them in. With the holidays coming up I’ll probably get them to put together a basket for Dad with all his favourite candy and a movie they can watch together. There are plenty of gift basket reviews out there for ideas. I’m sure Hubby will end up with more of the kids’ favourite candy than his but he’ll be cool with that. That’s if they don’t eat it first!

Image courtesy of www.giftbasketreviews.net

About the author: Diane is a blogger on GiftBasketReviews.net, a site that provides gift basket reviews. She enjoys writing about crafts, gifting, and many other topics.

If you are looking for a great Christmas movie look no further. This list includes modern Christmas movies, non-traditional Christmas movies and Christmas classics. Whether you are looking for comedies or dramas there should be something for everyone on this list.

A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Story
Bad Santa
Edward Scissorhands
Elf
Fred Claus
It’s A Wonderful Life
Miracle On 34th Street
The Holiday
The Nightmare Before Christmas
White Christmas

Still in the mood for Christmas? Sometimes the holiday season is over too soon. There is a little something for everyone here. You can still enjoy this list of Christmas albums now and all year long until next Christmas.

Amy Grant A Christmas Album
Chanticleer Sing We Christmas
Joan Baez Noel
John Denver Rocky Mountain Christmas
Mannheim Steamroller Christmas
Peter, Paul & Mary A Holiday Celebration
The Chieftains The Bells Of Dublin
Vince Guaraldi Trio A Charlie Brown Christmas

However not all are successful, sometimes tradition is best, and as chefs search for new twists, we ruin what could have been a perfectly good dinner by following their lead.

Tried and Tested

Here are little bits from each combined, invented, tried and tested by Martina Mercer, not just over the Christmas season but over the entire year to ensure that you feel safe in the knowledge that you will have the best turkey this year, and that turkey will be moist and delicious, not dry and hard to swallow.

The first tip is to buy the bird. Although many people advise against cheap frozen birds in this economic climate, a lot of us can’t afford to splash out on a free range Norfolk black turkey that costs more than our car tax. This recipe will ensure that no matter what bird you use, it will be tasty succulent, and so moist that there will be no leftovers for a turkey stew. (This can be a good or bad thing).

If frozen allow 3 days before Christmas for the turkey to defrost thoroughly. Pick the coldest room in the house, or even the shed if it keeps frosts away, and take a big DIY bucket.

Fill with ice cold water (don’t freeze the turkey again, fridge temperature is best) and then plonk the turkey in.

Now for the Fun

Using herbs from the garden pick as many as are in season as possible, add them to the water along with some fallen apples, pears, anything the garden has left behind. (Make sure they’re thoroughly clean).

Add spices from the larder too, such as star anise, garlic, cinnamon sticks and nutmeg, then leave the turkey to bathe in the cold water for at least twenty four hours.

On Christmas morning remove the turkey and dry thoroughly. Make a herb butter and mix in a good dollop of mascarpone. Add favourite flavour combinations such as lemon and thyme, sage and chive, or rosemary and garlic, and then gently poke under the skin making sure the whole turkey has butter covering it.

Turkey Treat Time!

Give the turkey a treat and massage well as you would a partner, don’t worry about splitting the skin as it’s much tougher than chicken.

Then sit your turkey in a roasting tray on a bed of celery, onions, carrots, garlic and parsnips. Fill will boiling water to the top of the veg (not touching the turkey) and bring to the boil on a stove.

Cover with foil and cook according to taste, remembering to baste every 30 minutes.

When cooked, bring out of the oven and leave to rest for at least an hour, allowing all those lovely juices to permeate and the herbs to do their magic.

You will see that this is the best turkey every created, and guests will want your recipe. It’s up to you whether you share the Martina Mercer secret or not!

About the author: This blog post was written by Martina Mercer. When she is not cooking or tending to her herb plants she can be found at her desk writing about both!

The best Christmas dinner my family and I ever enjoyed was two years ago when my mom and Michael made chicken enchiladas. My family spent my early childhood in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I grew up with an appreciation for Hispanic culture, traditions, and food, which included Mom’s enchiladas. She still makes them from the recipe a friend gave her more than two decades ago, the cursive handwriting still strong against the yellowing index card. Preparing the dish is a multi-step process which allowed my family to spend time together. Michael sautéed the onions, Mom and I rolled shredded chicken and cheese in tortillas, and Dad roasted green chilies on the stove. My parents, who have long held allegiance to Whirlpool refrigerators, prepared and stored a second casserole for later in the week when no one would want to cook. I remember joking that I felt like I was on the set of a cooking show, complete with ingredients in small, white bowls and a fridge full of pre-made foods seemingly put there by a magician’s hands.

While the enchiladas baked, we sat around reliving Christmases past (minus any pesky visits from ghosts or Ebenezer Scrooge), including singing along to Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” while driving around town looking at farolitos as they lit up walkways and walls. Now that we’re all getting older and my beloved grandparents have passed on, having the family back together again is especially nice. We always mean to call, visit, and write, and yet time slips away seemingly before we realize it. The dinner was a special treat because we’d left the southwest years earlier to be closer to family and it was a fun time to hearken back to the Christmas gatherings of my youth, long before life moved us away from each other.

We served the enchiladas with a nice green salad and balsamic vinaigrette dressing, making sure to save room – hours later – for pound cake made from my grandmother’s recipe. The four of us fondly remembered the winters we’d spent in the Land of Enchantment, sledding down the hill outside our house and shopping for Christmas gifts in town and in nearby Albuquerque. It was wonderful to blend the traditions of my Michael’s homecoming with a look back at our respective childhoods and earlier years, all enhanced by one of my favorite childhood meals that I hope to make someday with my own children.

About the author: Chi Norris is a writer and visual artist who likes painting, poetry, and reading memoirs. She also blogs on behalf of Sears and other quality brands.

That’s roughly $11 billion spent per day, primarily on consumer electronics and the accessories and media that make them hum. Throughout the entire holiday season—essentially Black Friday through Christmas day—more than $450 billion was spent last year in the United States. This, on top of the billions we spend the other 360 days of the year on the same products.

It’s hard not to pass judgment on this type of frivolous spending, particularly when there are so many needy people in the world, in our own neighborhoods. To be sure, many of these purchases are intended to brighten the holidays for a lot of unfortunate children and families, which has given me and my family time to reflect on just what holiday giving is all about, and how we could change our pattern to better reflect our personal desires to live in a better world.

For a lot of years we made “Christmas Angel” purchases at our local shopping mall, helping to meet the specific requests for underprivileged kids. We don’t have a lot of money, but we certainly have more than so many others and knew we could easily help a child or two have the same bright and cheery Christmas morning as our own child. This form of giving brings our family a lot of happiness, but we’ve always wanted to do more.

We started looking for charitable organizations that were already helping children around the world, primarily to see if we could find a really good fit. In short, we want our charitable donations to do the most good.

Our search yielded a great deal of exciting and even inspiring information. Did you know that for a measly $4,500 nearly 500 people in Sudan and Sierra Leone, Africa can drink clean water from their own well? For $6,500 the same number of people in Uganda and Kenya can get the same clean, fresh drinking water so badly needed.

The amount of money spent on one holiday weekend in the United States could build 10 million freshwater wells.

Now, they don’t need that many wells, but that’s the point. If we spent a mere 10% less on just Black Friday weekend and put that $4.5 billion into a charity like The Water Project or the Advent Conspiracy through its partnership with Living Water International, we could effectively end the very serious and lethal water problems in these four African countries, which include drought and contamination.

We looked further into this and discovered that $10 will provide fresh drinking water for one person for an entire year. Ten lousy bucks! $50 will help an entire family, and $250 will provide fresh water to an entire classroom for a whole year.

Less than a twenty-five percent of what is spend over Black Friday weekend, and approximately two percent of what is spent throughout the holidays–$10 billion—will solve this problem once and for all.

Can you imagine these Central African nations with no water-related problems? So can we, which is why we’ve made a couple of important choices this year. As in years past, we’ll eschew Black Friday and all its trappings, and we’ll ensure that we help an entire classroom have fresh, clean drinking water for an entire year. Won’t you join us?

Imagine what we could do for hunger!

About the author: Tim is a marketer for Cabledeals.org. He is an avid promoter of global issues and prayerfully wishes there was more he could do to help those with true needs. To learn more about Tim and to see what he is up to follow him on Twitter @TimLCooley

Maybe I should push the boundaries of my budget and really get something that I know will be loved and appreciated. Instead of a silly coin counter for £15, I would prefer to take my father in law to an observatory in Arizona. Instead of a pair of furry slippers for my sister, I would like to treat her to a trip to Shanghai.

The only thing is, much as I would love watching the awe on their faces, in the back of my mind will be the nagging thought that I now can’t afford to eat for the next six months. Is it worth it, running up a huge credit card bill in order to get something that will actually be appreciated and enjoyed rather than some useless old tat? The furry slippers will become annoying clutter by the time it gets to summer and will be straight in the bin, but the trip to Shanghai will last with my sister forever. Meanwhile, I will be struggling with my bills for the next six months and what have I gained? I would like to be known as the person who always buys the perfect present, who gets it right and whose generosity goes above and beyond expectations. After all, Christmas is about giving – it’s about making other people happy. Making other people happy will also make me happy – on Christmas day – and for at least a week afterwards. Then the reality of how much I have spent will undoubtedly kick in and perhaps I won’t be as pleased with myself as I had first thought. In fact, perhaps I will be regretting my stupidity and wishing I had bought a box of chocolates instead.

I ought to be mindful of how it has made me feel when I have been bought very expensive presents in the past. Although these presents were fabulous and of course I loved them, I was also embarrassed to receive them. My thoughts were on whether the person giving could really afford them and also whether the present I had given in return was expensive enough to match their generosity. These uncomfortable feelings are probably not what the gift bearer intended. They would have preferred for me to be over the moon with my gift and appreciative of their thoughtfulness rather than being slightly worried that the gift was beyond their means and that my offering was not sufficient.

When presented in this light, I can see that perhaps the trip to Shanghai isn’t the most appropriate gift for my sister after all, and perhaps she would rather have the fluffy slippers. At least she then won’t feel obliged to match my generosity with something equally beyond her own means and she won’t be consumed with guilt going on a trip that she knows will leave me broke. Christmas is about giving, but it’s not about showing off or outdoing others. With the over commercialisation of Christmas by hungry retailers, it’s easy to fall into that trap, but someone who really cares will appreciate a gift that cost £2 as much as one that cost £2000 – isn’t it supposed to be the thought that counts at the end of the day?

There must be a middle ground though. As retailers are trying to get the most sales possible out of Christmas in order to combat the current lack of spending due to the financial climate, they are fighting one another to provide the best discounts. I have the lucky position of working for a voucher codes website and managing the addition of thousands of discounts and offers to the site daily and have noticed a huge increase in the volume and size of the discounts coming through from merchants. What I have realised this Christmas is that I can get very good presents for people this year for the price of slippers and socks. With flash sales coming through daily of 30%, 40% and 50% – sometimes up to even 70% off, these deals are just too good to be missed. They are also from well recognised stores. It does mean that I can treat my loved ones within my budget and without going over the top.

I don’t want to take the fun out of Christmas this year. My brand new nephew who doesn’t know what money is yet can be spoilt rotten, but for everyone else it’s bargain cameras, bags and overnight stays. Plus of course, good food, drinks and laughs as that is what Christmas is really about, isn’t it?

About the author: Linda Firth works for www.vouchercodespy.co.uk and enjoys blogging about her dedication to finding the best voucher codes, deals and discounts available online.