The Endless Promise of Christmas Magazines

'Tis the season for a baking plan and here I sit, surrounded by 25 years of Christmas magazines. The oldest ones date from 1980 and the newest one, well, I bought it last week. That means I've been optimistic about Christmas baking for more than a quarter of a century, and I'm no Martha Stewart. I can't believe it. I'm sicker than I thought, and that's saying something.

For one thing, why in the world am I still buying these things? If I preheated the oven right now and started sifting flour, I would die of old age before I could make half the recipes in this pile. And I still have several hundred cookbooks, including God only knows how many specifically about Christmas.

This massive 25-year stack, which lives on top of the cabinets in the breakfast room, is obscene, Christmas porn. Bad enough that I’ve saved them, which probably puts me in some twisted packrat category. But check out these cover taglines: "500 Merry Ideas." One-upped (well, 130-upped) by "630 Merry Ideas." Only to be outdone by "Christmas Magic: 705 Ideas." But the 1993 Women's Day blows them all out of the water with "1104 Ideas."

What is it with numbers? Do we really think they hold the key? Why else would I buy issue after issue with promises like: "Rooms that Say Christmas 65 Ways." "150 Easy Holiday Tips." (How easy would it be to do 150 anythings?) "160 Ways to Make Yours a Holiday Home." "200 Ideas for the Best Christmas Ever." "Over 200 Ideas for Your Best and Happiest Christmas Ever!" "Over 250 Ideas for Your Most Memorable and Heartwarming Christmas Ever!" "250+ Ideas to Make Your Holidays Merrier." "400 Ideas to Make Your Holidays Happier." "400+ Ideas to Light Up the Season." "456 Holiday Ideas." "508 Christmas Ideas." "557 Glorious Ideas." "The Glory of Christmas: 935 Ideas." "Hundreds of Magical Ideas."

We all know ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the time, energy and creativity to implement ideas that make them valuable. To pretend you could even process all the information behind hundreds of ideas—“magical” or not—is to buy into the true meaning of Christmas: unmet expectations. You know what I really need? One great idea and a kitchen assistant.

I love the back covers of the magazines from the ‘80s that feature cigarette ads from More, Now, Vantage, Virginia Slims...do they still make these? Heck, maybe those represent the 41 ways to stay thin promised by one cover: two packs plus an extra will certainly keep you away from the cookie dough.

Who am I kidding with this stash of Christmas past and present? I make the same things every year, and very few come from magazines or cookbooks. They come from index cards my mother gave me, back when she still baked. They're for coconut-honey balls, which I rolled in confectioner's sugar back in the '70s and still do, every year. If I make nothing else, I always make those. (They have no honey in them, but that's the name on the card and I’m sticking to it.)

It’s almost enough to send me to the recycling bin. But I can’t dump them now; they’re part of my Christmas tradition. And as any self-respecting Christmas magazine cover will tell you, it’s all about Tradition. Or, more likely, "247 Ways to Celebrate Your Traditions."

Originally published on December 1, 2006. Since then, I have finally dumped a lot of the magazines described here. Sunday I made seven dozen coconut-honey balls from the recipe on that ancient index card. These days a friend and I share the load, baking together over the course of about five hours. But that's a hellish story for another time.

"Fear of Flying" on Thanksgiving

This year I'm spending my Thanksgiving alone. I had plans to join a friend's family and was assigned dessert. So I baked three pies (see below) and got a manicure.

But various medical situations put the bulk of her family out of commission, so here I am, halfway through the apple-cranberry.

Sure, there were other places I could have gone. I'm not a pariah. But after the events of recent weeks (all around swirled death, medical emergencies, breakups, job loss and substance abuse relapse), I chose being alone and reading. I sent my son off to his father and settled in for pie and Fear of Flying.

When I was babysitting in the mid-'70s, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong was on every mother's bedside table. A zipper opening to reveal a naked woman's torso, a salacious blurb by John Updike -- the cover was definitely compelling, but the fact that middle-aged women were reading it meant it wasn't for me.

Now that I'm middle-aged myself (OK, 20 years older than those young mothers, but never mind), I decided to give it a shot when I found it at a yard sale. And oh my. Even today, 40 years after its initial publication, it is shocking. Filthy. As Updike promised, "uninhibited." Also a perfect of-the-moment snapshot of the early '70s implementation of the late '60s decree to let it all hang out. Women's lib, sexual freedom, the foundation of the '80s "Me Generation" - it's all here.

So I'm making my way through a bevy of Thanksgiving baked goods and the sexual adventures of a fictional feminist favorite. In the back of my mind I'm worrying about the problems affecting those near and dear to me and trying to feel grateful things aren't worse than they are. In the front of my mind, though, I'm in Vienna and Heidelberg and the Upper West Side with the shrinks and the lustful Isadora.

Party Planning

I love giving Christmas parties--to be specific, tree-trimming parties. I started having them right after college, when I was living in Manhattan and buying a Christmas tree for the first time on my own. And every year when we decorate the tree, I remember who gave me each ornament, the apartment I lived in, the person I was at the time. (I also remember the after-Christmas sales where I bought plenty of ornaments at half off.)

I love being with a group I have personally curated: people who mean a lot to me, with a few I want to know better mixed in for freshness. I love the aha moments when friends of mine who haven't met each other discover something they have in common. I love the way a party flows, from welcoming the first arrivals and assuring them they're not too early, to the crunch time in the middle, to the quality time spent with the last to leave.

For the most part, I also love the planning: invitations, menu, baking plan, shopping. It's the last few days before the event when everything takes an inevitably hellish turn. It doesn't matter how far in advance I've started or how airtight my plan. Party panic comes over me like a fever and I'm convinced it will all come crashing down.

Here are my main areas of pre-party anguish:

Number to plan for. How many to expect? It's always a moving target:

Those who don't RSVP. Do I call them and ask if they're coming, or just try to figure out who'll show and who won't?

Cancellations. Some percentage of those who said they were coming call to cancel (a better offer?).

Extras. The flip side: Guests ask if they can bring extra people (usually visiting relatives or houseguests). I used to worry that these extras, who always seem to be women, would throw off the male-female ratio. Now I just worry about having enough chairs.

The Great Unknown. They say "maybe" and never follow up. Will they or won't they?

No Shows. Anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of expected guests--people who actually took the trouble to RSVP--don't show up. Maybe half of these will call and explain themselves. The others, who knows?

The final crowd at any party always contains some surprises, whether the person I couldn't wait to see who mysteriously never made it, or the friend of a friend who pitches in and helps when things get busiest. Besides, in Los Angeles, or maybe just in the times in which we live, you can't expect even a simple commitment without second-guessing. This is the area I worry about the least because I usually have too much food anyway.

Food. I like to do everything myself (except the Honeybaked ham), so I start early and cook all week. Since I don't bake too often during the other 11 months of the year, I have to adjust to the issues that arise anew:

Over- and Under-Cooking. Recipe-given baking times with no basis in reality ("It's still not done?" or "How can it be burned?").

Tedium. How long it really takes to roll out dough and cut out shapes and then roll out more dough and cut out more shapes and then decorate the shapes...I usually end up with at least one or two Ziplock bags of dough in the refrigerator at the end of the week because I just couldn't face the rolling pin again.

The Time Suck. Discovering part of a recipe I hadn't noticed before that keeps me up past midnight. For Christmas, I mostly make old familiar things, but even those are not without pitfalls. It's amazing how I can block out the time-consuming parts.

Running out of Ingredients. Shocking how this happens despite the best planning efforts. Can I substitute yogurt for sour cream? What if I only have vanilla yogurt?

Dishwashing. There's something about washing the same things over and over again that gets to me after a while.

Injuries. It happens to me all the time: I cut open a finger. The most recent time, I was slicing bread right before a party and cut right into my thumb. It wouldn't stop bleeding, and bled right through the band-aid to put a drop of blood on a dress that had only had the tags cut off minutes earlier.

Cleaning. Here we have the crux of my party-planning problem. I know many people who say they like to give parties because it gives them an excuse to clean up the house. Well, my situation is to that as full-blown pneumonia is to the common cold. I live in a house where the word "clutter" is not just an understatement but a distant memory. What we have are teetering piles, the kind of excess that makes news when it buries the packrat who wasn't able to let go of anything and was crushed by his own newspapers. As much as I'd love to pull a dumpster up to the driveway, I have to be satisfied with hiding stuff in closets. Sometimes I hide things so well that they disappear for years.

I love the post-party honeymoon period when the clutter is still hidden away and the dishes are all clean. Just don't get me started on the next phase: back to normal.