Opinion : Sights, Sounds and Tastes of Christmas

Christmas is a time that you expect to see twinkling lights and Christmas displays in the yards around town. When pulling into town, or any town for that matter, the street lights are decorated with wreaths or garland or in Vinton snowflakes.

When you turn on the radio you hear Christmas music from every genre of music country, gospel, and rock. It all says Christmas.

But what smells and tastes say Christmas to you?

Someone asked that recently and right away I remembered some sugar cookies that Alice Meyer made for Christmas at the Bear Creek Cemetery Open House. The recipe was a secret she said, but hinted that it includes sour cream. Life happened, we parted ways, and I hadn't seen a cookie to compare in years.

Then a few years ago someone else in my circle of friends made them...with sour cream! Big, thick, soft sugar cookies that are perfect without icing.

Then I remembered that when I was a kid, my mom would pop gallons and gallons of popcorn, in an iron skillet to make popcorn balls. We would make hundreds of these each year. They included jello, margarine and marshmallows. We made strawberry, lime and orange. Forming them and then putting them into baggies and then filling up a couple of garbage bags full of them and storing them on the cold porch somewhere around the second week of December so that they were ready to take to all of the family get-togethers that we had.

My dad would usually fill up a Fareway sack with them to take along in the semi and they were the perfect snack to eat while reading a book by the woodstove.

Not your traditional Christmas treat I suppose, but it said Christmas in our house.

We made chocolate covered pretzels, buckeyes and all of the other treats for the season, but popcorn balls were our official Christmas treat.

What treat says Christmas to you?