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A Southern Christmas

The beauty and grace of the South is legendary, and these attributes permeate Southern Christmas festivities as well. With just a little effort, you can bring this feeling into your own home -- whether you live in the Southern states, are homesick for your down-south home, or want a break from a relentless winter.

Food

Unlike most themes, which begin with decorations, in the South we are all about the food. Thankfully for those who aren't southern, many of our recipes have become popular around the world; what family, for instance, doesn't have a favorite recipe for pecan pie? For a Southern Christmas, you can spike it with bourbon to make it really sing, and embellish it with bourbon-laced whipped cream. Or you can add oysters to

your traditional stuffing recipe for a Charleston-style treat.

But I'm ahead of myself; we must begin with hors d’oeuvres and dinner first. Southerners love seafood, and it's often incorporated into our Christmas festivities. For appetizers, you can include miniature crab cakes, shrimp, or smoked trout (applewood-smoked fish is worth finding). As a delectable first course, try she-crab soup, enriched with cream, sherry and crab roe.

If you want to get really southern, deep-fry your holiday turkey in peanut oil. For this, you will need to buy or rent a turkey fryer, and for heaven's sake don't do the job on the wooden deck unless you have good insurance. But the danger is part of the delight, and once you taste fried turkey you'll never be the same. See our directions and recipe for making a true Southern-style Deep-Fried Turkey.

Baked ham, of course, is another classic; an authentic Smithfield from Virginia is the top of the heap. Soak a country ham overnight in apple juice to remove the salt; you may need to change the juice once or twice, otherwise you'll just be soaking the meat in brine. Before you cook the ham, rub it with an orange, stud it with cloves and during baking baste it with cider. Once the ham is cooked, you can deglaze the drippings with brandy on the stove, and reduce it to a wonderful sauce. As an alternative to mashed potatoes, try a calorie-ignoring macaroni-and-cheese casserole.

Peas accented with cashew nuts are also a classic, as is sweet potato soufflé. For the latter, whip eggs into warm mashed sweet potatoes, transfer into a buttered casserole dish, top with copious amounts of dark brown sugar or molasses, and add marshmallows. Bake it until the marshmallows are toasted and the soufflé is fluffy. (This is not a true soufflé that will crash at the first draft; it's just a light, fluffy version of sweet potato casserole). For a more "upscale" experience, combine whole string beans with chestnuts candied in a bourbon and brown- sugar glaze. Jarred whole chestnuts can be costly, but if you try to save money by shelling them yourself you'll regret it.

The Christmas Tree

For decorations, be sure to focus on the Christmas Tree -- southern celebrations revolve around it! To begin with, you can choose a southern breed of Christmas tree. While the

popular spruce is widely grown in North Carolina, there are also the Leyland Cypress, White Pine and Carolina Sapphire Cypress (an attractive blue color without the razor-sharp needles of the Blue Spruce).

Many people like to decorate a tree with bows rather than tinsel or garland; simply tie large bows out of red velvet or plaid ribbon on the branches, and intersperse with your other decorations. Because family is such an important theme in a Southern Christmas, one of the favorite traditions is to display different kinds of nostalgic or meaningful ornaments on the tree.

These might include the crude little trinkets your child made in 1st grade, or even the baby's first set of mittens, along with favorite southerners are collectors, so a tree can be swathed with only glass ornaments, or mercury glass, or silver and pewter ones.

Continued on Page 2 (Natural Decorations and Gift Ideas for a Southern Theme Christmas)