drunken rustic rum bread

I made a rum cake last night. Or rather, I made a loaf pound cake with rum in the batter, and then I drowned the cake in rum glaze. Rum cake was a thing we made at home irregularly during the Christmas season when I was a kid. But every year at Christmas, we had homemade egg nogg with rum in it. Ever since, rum flavored food and drinks have tasted like Christmas to me.

As a kid, I was introduced to Christmas as a winter holiday, not a religious holiday. For several years, I enjoyed advent calendars without even knowing what “Advent” was. Most of the advent calendars my parents purchased for me were woodland creature-themed, so for a long time, I thought the word “advent” had some vague association to trees and animals. So when I talk about Christmas, here, it’s not in a religious sense, nor am I implying that Christmas is the only holiday people celebrate this time of year. It isn’t. However, it’s the holiday I grew up celebrating, and it’s a holiday I think about quite a bit during December. So I’m going to write about it.

I’ve been in search of a Christmas-y feeling this year, in earnest. Not a particular religious definition of the holiday, but that “magic” feeling I truly used to feel at Christmas-time when I was a kid. It was something I sensed even though, when I was young, I was too secular to know that the word “Christ” was contained within “Christmas.” (I just thought it was a funky spelling, and writing out the word “Christmas” was another chance to demonstrate my ability to memorize strangely spelled words. Two-time elementary school spelling bee champ, right here.) For me, “Jesus” and “the magic Christmas feeling” were not synonymous.

So the “magic” feeling was not about religion. It was also not about getting presents, though of course, like all kids, I loved presents. The magic was something not quite definable. It was in the shine of colored lights on a Christmas tree in a dark room, reflecting off the wrapped presents under the tree. It was in good smells coming from the kitchen. It was in the anticipation of waiting for once-a-year special Christmas programs to broadcast on television – in a time before digital streaming or even VCRs – so if you didn’t catch the program when it was on TV, you missed it. It was in the crazy idea that a fat man in a red suit might fly through the sky in a sleigh with a team of airborne reindeer. An idea of Santa that appealed not because of crass commercialism, but because of the idea’s impossibility.

The magic of Santa was in the willing suspension of disbelief that made it possible to buy into this flying red-suited fat dude and his reindeer, landing on the roof of your own home, squeezing down your chimney, actually reading the note and eating the cookies you left for him. Sure, he left gifts, too, and that was of course a benefit. But it was the whole crazy idea of Santa’s existence that I loved most – and it was the hardest thing to give up when I grew too old to believe in Santa. I still got the same allotment of presents when the gift tags said “From Mom & Dad” instead of “From Santa.” But I lost the magic. I could no longer swear that I’d heard the reindeer on the roof, the tinkling sound of the bells on the sleigh, and Santa thumping out of the chimney and into our living room. Life acquired a certain sadness when I could no longer hear those things.

There are myriad ways that adults are instructed to observe the Christmas season, usually involving the execution of some practical action. Practical action is good. But I think it’s also okay to want that “magic” feeling, even if you understand the feeling is no guarantee of any particular happy ending. It’s okay to want to feel good. It’s okay to want to celebrate. And, even if I can never go back to believing in Santa again, I think it’s also human to want to believe in the possibility of impossible things.