Happy Boxing Day Eve from A Book of Cookrye!

Is it just me, or has Christmas been more laid-back this year? It seems like fewer people are whipping themselves into a holiday frenzy. I haven't seen nearly as much desperation to create the perfect cheer this year. Despite retailers frantically waving doorbusters in our faces, Black Friday came and went like any other holiday-season weekday. The annual squawking about The War On Christmas just... faded into the background. I didn't even see a single sign of the traditional moral panic over Starbucks winter cups.

There wasn't a run on baking ingredients at the supermarket, which tells me that unlike previous years, few people were trying to cook an elaborate feast from scratch when they've never cooked before. I think we're collectively tired after the last couple of years. After everything came crashing down around us, I think a lot of us decided that the outside world was hard enough without inflicting bonus stress on ourselves.

Here at A Book of Cookrye, Christmas is merely the leadup to one of my favorite holidays: Boxing Day! It's the day when the background music on the supermarket PA stops drilling cheer into our ears, and (most crucially) the day when everyone calms back down! Though as aforesaid, it seems like the holiday is far quieter this year.

This year, someone up the street erected 12-foot skeleton in the yard for Halloween. When I saw it was still standing a couple of weeks into November, I sent over a note begging them to leave the skeleton in the yard until the end of Christmas. I wrote that we would bring cookies if they left the 12-foot skeleton proudly standing in the yard until the holiday was over. About a week later, they slipped this into the mailbox:

They also put little candies in the envelope.

Soon after, Al CaBone was repositioned so that he was hanging lights onto the house (he's tall enough to reach the eaves). Later, the house was fully trimmed with lights and Al CaBone was saluting everyone who drove past. We had to deliver on our promise.

Note that we did not use a container that someone would have to wash and bring back.

I swear, cookies can hear you saying they're for giving away. When you're just cooking at home, even the most notoriously finicky recipes come out unfailingly perfect. But if you're baking for someone else, the cookies decide to embarrass you. You end up saying that they're not a crunchy, they're snicker-biscotti.

When I delivered the cookies, the woman who answered the door was just too charming. She said that her husband had texted the note to her, and that she had initially feared that the neighbors (some of whom already had inflatable Santas staked to the yard) had started writing in complaints. But after she read our note, she gleefully showed it to everyone else at her office. 

She told me they purchased Al CaBone online in July. But with the world still discombobulated from the pandemic (whether people want to admit it's still ongoing or not), Al CaBone barely arrived in time for Halloween.

So that was our charming holiday! Whether you like Christmas, or whether you like just staying at home where it's quiet, we hope you have a lovely day.