Christmas Tins

My father’s mother, a matriarchal women presiding over a WASPy tribe from her kitchen in Madison, Wisconsin, had plenty of recipes. She would make meatloaf, butterhorns, and all kinds of Midwestern dishes I had never eaten and didn’t really understand. There was one tradition, though, that absolutely spoke to me.

Every year in December, I would eagerly await the arrival of the Christmas tins in the mail. I would crack each one open, taking note of the bucolic scenes on each lid, and inhaling the sweet, warm, comforting scent escaping from inside. I would run my fingers over buttery piped swirls—golden brown on the ridges; crackly twills of caramelized sugar and nuts; puffy peanut butter domes collapsed in the center from the press of a Hershey’s kiss, chessmen cookies with shiny chocolate feet. There were up to thirteen varieties, each one homemade and individually wrapped in a waxed baking cup. In a house where junk food was taboo, these Christmas cookies felt like secret resistance, a recognition of something important within me by an outsider’s soul—even more so because I knew almost nothing of my grandmother beyond a birthday check once a year and one visit to Wisconsin for my grandfather’s funeral.

I pictured her in her kitchen, delicately packing up each tin to send to her children and grandchildren scattered around the country. I longed for the day when I was old enough, living in my own house, able to receive my very own assortment. I even dreamed of one day asking her for the recipes and continuing the tradition.

My stepmother, however, was pathologically repulsed by dessert of all kinds. She made the misguided decision to call my grandmother one November and request that we no longer receive the annual delivery. I don’t think my grandmother ever recovered from the insult.