The Rookie Mama: Tidings of comfort and joy and Mod Podge

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

We’ve got this, Mamas – Let’s close out this calendar year on a note of hope.

We’ve got to cross this holiday finish line together before we then jump to next year’s track, which from this vantage point might look ahead to be a big ol’ confetti blast of unknown.

But in this final stretch, I’d like to assure all that you can be the joy in this time of uncertainty.

Joy to the world, sure, but joy for your household is also an important endeavor.

And oh, what an endeavor during the month where it’s already easy enough to monumentally stress over the holiday season, let alone give a thought to the unknowns to come in the new year like bonus Yankee swap gifts you weren’t expecting.

Many of us polar plunge directly into this festive season with warm intentions to pace ourselves with a holiday head start, but the Sisyphean extraneous tasks find a way to tack on to our lists, along with concern for things beyond our control, beyond our immediate homes.

In this whirlwind world that at times may feel more like a Christmas ball of nerves, you can be the peace and hope in your own household for your littles.

In your home is where you can be the comfort and joy.

My ensemble of six spends December days steeped in sweet time-honored traditions that are not extravagant in cost, but rich in core memory-making.

A touch of frugal to our fa-la-la.

We make salt dough ornaments to frame small photos for loved ones – one of my favorite excuses to go bananas with Mod Podge – and we movie-marathon the heck out of our favorite holiday films as we eat microwave s’mores made with leftover Halloween chocolates.

Because those things have got to go.

I have enough musketeers in my household.

Another time-honored custom of ours is decorating gingerbread houses.

In the spirit of simplifying to be kind to ourselves during this time of year, we buy prebuilt.

Trust me on this.

As much as I pride myself in scratch-making lots in the kitchen, I have no shame in buying prebuilt gingerbread houses prior to SweetTarts and gum drop madness – Too many tears were once shed over royal icing and caved in walls years ago, and that solitairy ho-ho-ho hum incident was more than enough for us to walk away from that sticky disaster forevermore.

Lesson learned, just like the time our family declared ourselves independent from hunting down a suitable live tree and permanently migrated to faux fir, in all its pre-lit artificial glory.

But I digress.

Many simple Cote customs have become beloved over the course of our decade-plus of boy-raising.

We relish the magic (though it’s mustard for pork pies – a column for another day).

But the frugal tradition I love most is spending a day baking up a winter storm of fudge, cookies and reindeer chow to box up gingerly and deliver to friends and neighbors as we tour the local lights we’ve mapped out.

For more years than I’d like to admit – okay, 13, a whole teenage worth of ‘em – we’ve referred to this night as ‘platzing and the schussing,’ because it’s how Bing Crosby wondrously describes anticipation for snow when headed to Vermont in “White Christmas.”

It sounds like a beautiful way to describe ‘plotting and planning’ so ever festively, as if you had, say, magical sleighbells attached.

But as it turns out, ‘platzing and schussing’ are actually German words to describe skiing, and have nothing whatsoever to do with twinkling lights and delivering buckeye fudge.

Nonetheless, we’re sticking to the phrase like wet snow on sealcoating because we’ve invented the quirky new context for it.

Platzing and shussing – Catchy, right? – is about much more than those beaming lights.

It’s about our beaming kiddos as they become instilled in the work of creating something and giving to others.

It’s about spending our time, warming hearts, counting blessings – rather than sparkling gifts – and does not cost much to do.

It’s about a means to keep connected, to share emotions via warm conversations, not via social media posts for a moment.

Tidings of comfort and joy, in uncertain times around us.

So let’s close out this year on a hope-filled note.

Here’s to peace on earth, buckeye fudge, and platzing and shussing for all.

Be that joy for your little ones, and have the merriest holiday season yet.

And don’t forget the Mod Podge.

­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time! <