*singing* Trad-i-tion tradition......

I've recently posted a status on Facebook about Christmas Candy, family traditions - and my feelings about making the traditional candy and cookies to send out in the packages my husband and I have been jokingly calling "Care Packages" for years now.  Since I had such an interesting reaction to that post, I thought I'd share my feelings here in greater detail:

Let me start by saying that I was raised in a family that managed to keep the bills paid, but there was never an excess of cash.  My maternal grandmother, of French Canadian descent, and therefore called "Memere" (grandmother in the French Canadian slang), would make mittens all year round.  Raised in a family of 16 children in which the males went out into the fields all day while the women cooked, cleaned, and made all the clothing for the family, it was traditional to have new mittens each year, even if the old mittens from last year were still serviceable.  At my house, when sent outside to play, we would stay outside until our mittens were soaked with melted snow, then go inside, warm up for a bit, get a dry pair of mittens after putting the wet ones on a drying rack, and go back out to play until that pair of mittens was soaked.

When I moved out of the old homestead and spent my first Christmas with my then-boyfriend's family, there was a bit of culture shock, as his family believed in spending TONS of money on Christmas presents (and brand names had a special place in his mother's heart), but they also had some traditions involving food items.  Top of that traditional list was hand made candy and fudge, so I spent several days assisting the woman who would eventually be my sister-in-law, learning how to make the traditional candies.  Since my boyfriend and I didn't have much money to be able to go out to the stores to buy presents, I did as I had always done: I made gifts for everyone on our list.

That first Christmas was a bit tense when his mother didn't seem thrilled by the gifts we gave her, but his dad, a native Vermonter who had been raised similar to my Memere, understood the amount of love that went into the handmade gifts.  When my boyfriend and I got married and, still short of funds at Christmas, revived some other traditional gifts that had been allowed to fall by the wayside when his mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, such as the Princess Pine wreath.  (For those who've never seen Princess Pine, it's a variety of club moss that grows in shady areas of the woods.  If harvested gently, it will propagate, providing free material for a truly beautiful Christmas wreath that lasts for a long time after the holiday.)  And I continued to give my mother-in-law special presents that I made myself, like an embroidered piece of cross-stitched flowers in the shape of a heart that reads "Bless This Home" in the center.  (THAT piece, presented in a picture frame so she could hang it on her wall, was something that actually brought tears to her eyes, as it was a talent she had never possessed and seemed to finally make her realize that, in order to give her such a thing, I had been working on it for the best part of a year.  Perhaps it helped for her to see me sitting there, keeping her company while her husband and mine were both working, stitching on the angel tree topper I was making for my own mother.  She purchased a craft book for me to give me more ideas on what to make after that Christmas.)

So here I am, 32 years after that first Christmas when I learned to make candy, and although the "Care Packages" still contain the same traditional treats, I've modified a couple of things.  There will still be peppermint patties, spearmint patties and wintergreen patties dipped in chocolate, but after several years in which the boiled fondant centers failed to come out properly, I've changed the recipe for the centers to a never-fail method that is less time consuming, but just as tasty.  Peanut butter roll ups that had a tendency to fall apart during the dipping process have been changed to what I call "form candies" - meaning that I have little plastic forms that I bought at a craft store.  The chocolate gets "painted" into the form, allowed to harden a bit, then are filled with a creamier peanut butter center and topped with a little drizzle of chocolate.  (The result looks a lot like the miniature Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, but they don't taste the same as Reeses.)  Brand new cookie cutters I found last year will result in the addition of mini gingerbread cookies, the finding of a long-lost recipe will mean the revival of bite-sized almond cookies, and my husband has charged me with reviving a cookie that his grandmother, who'd had a stroke at the point I joined the family, used to make when he was a child.

The reason for my Facebook status mentioning the candies was simply this:  Some of the people who got leftover candies from last year's traditional candy fest kept asking for more, giving excuses that the recipient hadn't been able to taste the candies before they were gone.  The excuses were valid enough, I suppose.  One batch of candies, being taken home on a city bus, were stolen by another rider.  Another batch was set on the table and other family members ate them all, leaving just an empty box for the recipient. 

The problem on my end is simply this:  The candy making supplies have gone steadily up in cost since I first learned to do this.  Wilton Candy Melts, which were about $1 per bag when I first started doing this and were a great, easy alternative to melting chocolate blocks or chocolate chips with edible paraffin wax, allowing better control over the consistency of the dipping chocolate, are now between $3.50 to $6 per bag depending on where I shop and how many others happen to be making candy at the same time as I am.  Confectioners Sugar and Sweetened Condensed Milk have doubled in price.  The flavoring, most notably the Wintergreen Oil, has become nearly impossible to find on a grocery store shelf, so I have to go to a cooking specialty store and pay an arm and a leg for a bottle smaller than my thumb that makes about two batches of candy before it's gone.  In short, the "Care Packages" that used to cost less for me to make than it cost to buy the premade candies and cookies are now easily double what I would cost me to just walk into the grocery store and buy the same items to separate between the packages we send out.

There's also a time issue.  The dipped chocolates are mixed in my mixer, then dropped by the half-teaspoon onto waxed paper, flattened out, and then have to sit for one hour on each side to dry enough to make them solid enough to survive the dipping process.  With a special melter that keeps the chocolate at a steadier temperature than the old double-boiler method I used to use makes the dipping go very fast, but it's still an easy 4 hour process for each flavor of dipped candy with a yield of about 48 candies per batch.  In order to make enough for all the people who we send them to, it's an easy 2 batches in each flavor - or a solid 24 hours of work just on dipped chocolates.

The peanut butter cups, as mentioned above, involve melting the chocolate in a squeeze bottle, squeezing the chocolate into the forms and using small paint brushes to make sure the form is properly coated - especially the sides, as a thin chocolate side will result in a crushed candy when one tries to move it.  Then there's a short "dry time" so that the chocolate doesn't make the filling melt.  Then the tops need to be solidly filled with chocolate, which is brushed out to the sides to make sure that no leaks are left around the top of the candy and that the peanut butter filling isn't going to leak out as the packages travel to spots in Maine, Vermont, Colorado, Florida and other such points on the map.  A recent timing from start to finish was that it took 3 full hours to produce batch of 36 peanut butter cups.  I usually make about 5 to 6 batches, so that's another 15 5o 18 hours of candy making.

And that doesn't include the fudge my husband makes or the cookies, and each year, I've started the process a little earlier to allow for us to get the "Care Packages" mailed out so that they all arrive at their destinations by Christmas.  By the time the last package to family and friends leaves my hands and I'm distributing any leftover goodies to our work places, the words "candy", "chocolate" and "Christmas" have become cuss words that I don't want to hear for a while.

So what did I post publically to Facebook?

I noted in short form what I've just related to you:  The candy making is expensive, time consuming, and done only for the sake of Tradition, NOT because I enjoy doing so.  I only intend on making candy for the months of November and December, so if the "Care Package" is left on a bus, eaten by family, or allowed to rot, I WON'T be continuing to make candy to order this year.  I have two books that I need to work on, a public appearance to prepare for, my "regular" job and regular house duties to attend to......

And it's time for me to stop letting former co-workers bully me into spending my "free" time on things that they were already given, but didn't take care of.  The time that I have that isn't already spoken for needs to start being directed toward my children and grandchildren, making them gifts that come from the heart instead of from a store shelf.  I don't want the family traditions to die with me.