Missy Schenck – December 2021

There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not feel those hopes and dreams that capture the season. Christmas 1993 was a first for our family as a single-parent household. Fourteen years of traditions would never be the same for my four children who longed for anything, especially Christmas, to bring hope and stability into their lives.

Our family finances changed drastically over the course of our divorce and my teacher’s salary left little room for Christmas as a line item in our budget. The Christmases we all loved so well were gone. Panic set in and nighttime sleeplessness amplified my anxiety. I felt a desperate need for HELP!

The pediatrician’s office always solved an abundance of ills and woes for our family. On this particular morning, I had no idea the remedy for my Christmas doldrums was right in our doctor’s waiting room. While reading a James Dobson’s Focus on the Family magazine, I came across an article for single, divorced families and holiday traditions. “Develop new traditions for your changing family. Move forward and make it a fun and positive process. As a family, discuss your Christmas traditions and decide which ones are important to hold on to forever and create new ones that are appropriate for now.” DEVELOP NEW TRADITIONS…it had a nice ring.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I remembered the beautiful Christmas story about the little boy who made the chimes ring. The legend went that the chimes of Christmas would only ring when a gift of true love was placed on the altar. As this small boy made his way down the church aisle he took off his tattered coat and set it on the altar. Chimes rang out joyously throughout the land to mark the unselfish giving of this small boy.

I use to hear chimes. I heard them when my children made snowflakes from paper doilies, pipe cleaner candy canes, Popsicle stick ornaments, and gumdrop trees. I heard them when I opened the present made at school of a photo in a Mason jar top with glitter garlands framing it. I heard them the year the children put the Christmas tree in the playpen so the cat would not pull it over again. I heard them as I watched bathrobe-clad shepherd boys and angels with coat hanger wings parade down the aisle for the pageant. These were the chimes I wanted to hear again and the Christmas spirit I longed for my children to know.

By morning, my heart was filled with the spirit of Christmas and an idea for a new family tradition had presented itself to me in the form of a mantra - “out of hand, out of heart.” That which is made with our hands, comes straight from our heart. It changed our family and redefined the meaning of Christmas for us.

My mother’s entire life revolved around making something out of nothing- - oatmeal boxes, soup cans, Clorox bottles, milk cartons, coat hangers, material scraps. She was resourceful and creative – holidays and parties were her forte. They brought to the surface a breed of woman not to be believed and she taught me well. In no time at all, our house was transformed into Santa’s Workshop.

The timing was perfect for the Yum Yum Bag, a simple, yet creative way of packaging our homemade goodies. Each bag was made from muslin or gingham and decorated with trims, ribbons, craft paints, and anything we found in my studio. The bags were filled with our favorite cookies and tied up with a handmade ornament. Over the years, the Yum Yum Bag became our family trademark, but the contents of the bag held an even deeper meaning and made the chimes ring every time we made them.

In 1988, my childhood friend, Sallie, died after a three-year battle with breast cancer. Multiple rounds of chemotherapy left a terrible metal taste in her mouth and she craved cowboy cookies, oatmeal, raisin, and chocolate chip cookies found in The American Cancer Society Cookbook. It became my Sunday afternoon routine to make Cowboy Cookies for Sallie and a tradition I continued after she died. Unanimously, our family agreed Sallie’s Cowboy Cookies would be our Yum Yum Bag contents.

Christmas 1993 will always go down in history as one of the best in our family. The path that was set almost thirty years ago remains at the core of Christmas for all of us – out of hand, out of heart. It is now a joyful ritual to see who made what, but more importantly to feel the love and hear the chimes. Now, we cannot imagine celebrating in any other way. It is our favorite family tradition and makes everything about Christmas real.