December 13, 2015
Gaudete Sunday
The Third Sunday in Advent
Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, rejoice.
— Phillipians 4:4
![2015holibadge-blue[1]](http://www.silkentent.com/Trees/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2015holibadge-blue1.jpg)
Today is the third Sunday in Advent, known in the Roman liturgy as Gaudete Sunday. It is also coincidentally the feast of St. Lucy, as well as the day I traditionally gave my Holiday Open House Extravaganza. I haven’t had the party since 2006, and certainly wouldn’t be having it this year even if it were still our habit. Nevertheless, Gaudete Sunday remains my favorite day of the season. Even with Ron’s illness and the disruptions and uncertainties it brings, we have much to rejoice about.
This is the picture that greeted me when I opened my browser this morning:
That’s Lynn DeAngelis, now Lynn DeAngelis April, in 1990, five years old and enjoying her turn as the Lussibruden. (I just Googled “Lussibruden” to see how to spell it. This image was the first returned. Probably just on my computer. But still, wow.) Facebook was reminding me of this piece I wrote in 2004:
Above you see a picture of Lynn at 5 (1990) serving the cardamom rolls at my first holiday open house. (The shoes had been used a year earlier as part of her Dorothy of Oz costume.) I got her decked out like this for another few years, until she learned that a particular classmate would be accompanying his parents to the party and she said, “I’m not wearing that crown any more.†Now I place it on the table along with the Lucia-outfitted Kirsten doll and a heaping tray of the S-shaped cardamom rolls. That table also features the Three Favorite Cookies of my childhood, corn-flake cherry drops, Toll House cookies the way my mother made them (with all ingredients doubled except the chocolate, to save money), and sand tarts.
I don’t know how much baking I’ll do this year. I’ve assembled the ingredients for Lynn’s adaptation of the cherry drop cookies, but I haven’t made them yet. Lynn is the official baker in the family now, and she used that aspect of her personality to update us all today on that little Lussibruden 25 years later:
Gaudete! Rejoice indeed!
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