Postscripts

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A Texas Christmas

Type in "A Texas Christmas" on Amazon.com and here's what you get, among other things: Christmas in Texas (Clayton Wheat Williams Texas Life Series, No. 3); Great Texas Christmas Legends; Merry Christmas From Texas: Recipes for the Season; Fruitcakes and Other Leftovers/Christmas Texas Style (Harlequin Duets, 15); Night Before Christmas in Texas, That Is; and Geology and Tertiary Igneous Activity of the Hen Egg Mountain and Christmas Mountains Quadrangles, Big Ben Region, Trans-Pecos Texas (Report of Inves). Christmas in Texas (Westcliffe Publishers, 128 pp., $39.95), by Marilyn Covington with photographs by Richard Reynolds and foreword by Janice Woods Windle, is also there but it's easy to miss among the multitude of Texas Christmas-themed books. And somehow that seems strangely appropriate; this comprehensive book consists of the kind of recipes and Christmas customs that might make your great aunt squeal with merriment upon seeing long-lost Christmas traditions that she thought were merely handed down from one generation to the next preserved in type in a vibrant, well-made coffeetable book.

Witness page 43: There, at the top of the page, is a recipe for Mama Lou's Banana Nut Cake, and if that doesn't say something about Texas, I don't know what does. "Mama Lou checked to see if it was done inside by using a broom straw," the recipe states. "Perhaps today, we would prefer a small skewer (a toothpick may not be long enough." Jane Clancy Debenport of Temple is Mama Lou's granddaughter. She reveals that Mama Lou's real name is Lula Ratcliff Clancy Heneghan Minter. Recipes for Whiskey Lizzies, Mom's Thimble Cookies, and Calico Corn Salad are also included in the book.

But there's also Chef Dave's Warm Salad of Field Greens, Goat Cheese, and Port-Soaked Cherries in Pancetta Vinaigrette, which is to say that Christmas in Texas isn't just a quaint, nostalgic homage to the old-fashioned ways. Covington seems to have canvassed the entire state collecting Christmas tales and memories. "Every Christmas I decorate my almost life-sized cactus made out of old rusted barbed wire with over 200 miniature lights and put it in my yard with Mexican folk art figures," writes Doug Beich of Grand Prairie. Christmas in Texas is not without its oddities, of course. There's one image in the book of little children walking excitedly down the middle of a street with big boxes strapped all around them. The caption states, "Christmas-wrapped children add to the joy of the Georgetown Stroll." Then there's The Mary Elisabeth Hopkins Santa Claus Museum in Columbus, which must be on a list somewhere of the world's strangest museums. Mary Elizabeth Hopkins (dressed in red, of course) peers out from her portrait at museum visitors and, one senses, her beloved 2,000 Santas constructed "of everything from papier mâché to wood, from tin to lace, gourds to corn shucks." If you're seeking asylum from bland, homogenized visions of Christmas, Christmas in Texas is for you.