Holiday Discoveries

Hey - did you know there are Everlasting Gobstopper Candy Canes??!!
HOW COOL IS THAT?!
Christmas music makes me want to hurt someone - but Christmas candy soooo works for me. It connects me to everything KID and FUN and disconnects me from everything STRESSFUL and GROWN UPPY about the holidays.
I used to cut a hole in one of the fresh florida oranges my aunt would send and then stick in a "straw" made out of one of those Leo peppermint sticks that my dad got a tin of every year from some office party. It took a minute and at first you'd have to almost suck your cheeks inside out but then... the orange juice would carve out a path through the peppermint and there was nothing else like it. The smell of the fresh tart orange juice and the sweet minty candy; the taste of the two blended together; the stickiness; the way your teeth and gums hurt afterwards - all of that means Christmas to me. And those Lifesaver "books" we got in our stockings! Did anyone else get those? There were, like, thirty rolls of Lifesavers folded up in a "book". I'm sure I ate every one of them ON Christmas day.

You'd think Halloween would be the candy event of the year, but for me it's Christmas. Maybe it's because you can make your own candy at Christmas. Pralines and peanut brittle! Maybe it's that at Christmas, it's candy without anything scary like axe murderers or spiders. Maybe it's because you don't have to go back to school the very next day. You can suffer from the sugar hangover in peace. I don't know, but as a kid, Christmas meant GOODNESS and PEACE ON EARTH and CANDY to me. There was candy on the tree, candy in bowls around the house, sugarplum candy that danced in your head, candy in the pictures of the North Pole, candy in the stockings, candy, candy, candy!
I mean sure, I remember baking cookies and decorating them, yada, yada, yada. But the CANDY is what did it for me. And now there are Gobstopper Candy Canes! On my Christmas tree, on my desk, on my breakfast plate.
It's beginning to look (and taste) a lot like Christmas. La, da, dee, da, da. (Crunch, crunch)