The day’s Ceres menu included sole with spinach, shitakes and goat cheese. And lentil soup with beets and coconut milk. Food designed to lift the spirit as much as provide healthy nutrients to bodies that need some special tending.

The meals that went out that night and every week, delivered to homes throughout Sonoma County, were created by volunteer teenagers in white smocks, guided by volunteer professional Wine Country chefs. Hopefully the kids also get hooked on eating local and organic and understand why slow food trumps fast food.  Then there’s the bonus of being part of a community doing something nice for others.

Those being people who have cancer or other serious illness, who need to eat as healthy as possible but whose palate may be off from strange new meds and whose families have other priorities than creating something enticing in the kitchen.

This is the Ceres Community project, which teaches young people to cook nutritious  inspired meals for sick people and which is becoming a national model for food  programs around the country.  The Ceres kitchen is in my neighborhood, housed in a bright new building painted spinach green with carrot colored trim. But I never got inside the operation until the other night when I accompanied my husband, who started driving for Ceres after a sick friend joined the list of clients.

It was one of those cold inky black nights when you’re glad for a car with a good heater and a radio with a strong classical music station. Lovely aromas came from the back seat. I guessed it was the soup.  Ceres operates year round but given the season it felt like the best thing to be doing, taking very fine food to very important regular people who are not out doing the eat, drink and be merry thing. Someone had also donated fresh wreaths with red ribbons to be included with some deliveries.

We drove down the highway against the commute traffic, remarking on how many years we had been part of that string of slow moving impatient drivers.  With our gift bags of food we crept through unfamiliar neighborhoods twinkling with reindeer and Santas,  trying to read obscure street numbers.

They were waiting. One woman introduced her grandson and we talked about the charm of two-year-olds. Another, her smiling face framed by a knit cap, seemed as thrilled to see the wreath as the meals.   She hadn’t done much decorating, she explained. This was her chemo week.

You can’t help but wonder how you would be if everything changed and you were trying to keep the holiday spirit, do the tree, wrap presents and imagining what the new year might deliver. Is it harder to be sick at Christmas? Does it feel like a milestone to reach another holiday?

I never did much volunteering when I was working full time. People who do say that it provides a sense of satisfaction and purpose and helps balance your karma. It’s a reminder that even if you can’t solve global problems or what’s going on in Washington you can do one more thing for your community. And trust that when you need a kindness, a neighbor will knock at your door.

We drove home with the empty containers from last week’s delivery. My gloves smelled like Doug fir. We took the back country route and some forest creature – maybe a fox or a coyote – darted across our headlights. I took it as a sign of grace.

After Thanksgiving dinner and a wintry walk our daughter announced to her four-year-old that the holiday season had now officially begun and she could therefore watch The Snowman. I was so hoping for this.

I saw this sweet little movie for the first time last Christmas with this same little kid and if this was going to be a family classic I wanted a front row seat. While everyone else moved into the kitchen we popped in the DVD, she wrapped her pink spangled tights around me and we settled in on the couch.

If you haven’t caught this fantasy charmer based on the children’s book by English author Raymond Briggs you’re missing a dreamy escape from the crazy season. The Snowman has been around since 1982 and what did my wondering eyes discover on Wikipedia but it’s already considered a classic. That’s another good reason to have grandchildren. Traditions just keep coming and some of the best ones start with a story.

The tale is about a little boy and a snowman that comes to life is told without dialogue or narration. It’s almost a silent film, except for the haunting music Walking in the Air which plays when snowman and little boy fly off over the sea and up into the mountains.

My granddaughter doesn’t question the possibility that snowmen know how to fly but she did want reassurance that he wouldn’t let go of the little boy’s hand. I was thinking the same thing myself since I’m kind of a scared-y cat when it comes to heights but we agreed that snowmen and children take care of each other.

When I was a little girl I got hooked on the Macy’s Day Parade, and watched it every Thanksgiving morning from the same wingback chair that now sits in my living room. I watched it even when I went to college. I watched it even when I had kids and they went to college. Actually I only gave it up a few years ago. The magic wore off. Except I do miss seeing the Rockettes float.

You can get very jaded about the holiday and for me the thrill is gone when you hit the mall. I’m happy for store owners but I’m still trying to figure out why people decided it was okay to go back to binge shopping again this year. I don’t know anyone who’s feeling any more financially secure this December than last.

But our 4-year-old granddaughter is not demanding her own smart phone. And her baby brother is only one and much more into magic than merchandise. Next week when they’re over we’ll unpack the wooden manger scene, the reindeer with the missing antler and get out the box of snow globes from Chicago, Munich and Boston.

Not known for my baking except for one rum cake a December, I will never be remembered as the Christmas cookie grandma. But I can really get into stringing lights across the porch and putting candles in the window and stomping through the mud at a tree farm.

There’s more. My granddaughter doesn’t know it yet but she’s going to her first Nutcracker this year. I know it’s fashionable for some grown-ups to scoff at the predictable dueling mice and dancing bonbons but I want to be with her when that tree grows to the ceiling. And then when the Snow Queen appears in her silver tutu and all her little snowflakes twirl on stage and it starts to snow….
If this kid’s anything like me, that’s the part that will have her coming back every year for more.

.

Maybe this will be the year for good wishes, loving thoughts and no gifts. When Santa, the spirit of Christmas formerly known as Mr. Big Box, slips only a few envelopes under the tree.

Envelopes not with gift cards but with little notes inside that read something like, “A donation has been made in your name to (some worthy cause) and whose selfless efforts will lead to greater peace and harmony than by my going to the mall to buy you something you can’t afford to buy for yourself and I really can’t either.”

It could be our good karma Christmas. A day on which we gather with our family and give out good cheer but nothing that comes in a box with a gift return slip taped inside.

This no-gift option is something that Father Christmas and I are thinking of presenting to our immediate kin. It will have to be decided soon because we are a gift-giving family. We have tried downsizing. We’ve set price limits. We’ve drawn names so that we only give to one person. Then we amended that plan to allow side presents for everyone else in the form of stocking stuffers. But sweaters and salad bowls don’t fit inside even jumbo stockings. So people went ahead, bought big and stacked their over-sized items on the floor under the appropriate stocking, taking us back to the old days of piles of presents for all.

There isn’t a Santa we know who isn’t short on jingle this year.

But without presents, why get up before dawn on Christmas morning to dive under the tree? Could we still have our ritual without the main attraction? We could sit around in our pajamas and play our favorite Gladys Knight and Mariah Carey Christmas albums and still indulge in the Christmas morning menu of bagels, lox and cream cheese and some form of brandy to splash in the coffee.

Still, rituals are hard to break and no one wants to be called a Scrooge but really (and I’m rehearsing now) everyone’s on a tight budget. There isn’t a Santa we know who isn’t short on jingle this year. Yet our family is lucky to be among the employed and the housed, and we still have our health and can buy lox. But there is a growing band of needy out there. So let’s suck it up this year and share with those who don’t have a choice where to put their money.

But what do we tell the grandkids? Do we announce, “Well, Christmas is really about spending time together so have a bagel” or do we make an exception? There is the Christmas story told in our family about one small child so overwhelmed by the number of gifts piled up around her feet that she started crying and kicking them away. That child, now the mother of two, has already requested that we please keep it to a minimum.

How about this new twist to the family ritual? We choose our favorite local agency or organization that constantly gives to our community – a school, library, women’s shelter, clothes closet or food bank and write a modest but meaningful check. We go lean with the kiddies but still get to scope out the cool new things painted red with wheels at the toy store and thereby contribute to the local economy.

And for the adults, I’m thinking books. Real ones, to encourage the art of reading and writing, to save our independent book stores and to preserve that other ritual that sometimes takes place over Christmas, when things go quiet and you take yourself to a cozy chair by the tree, open your book and a new story begins.