Some families debate about the best time to open presents—Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. When I was growing up there was no question—the night before Christmas, because Christmas morning we were way too busy. The thing I remember best about those mornings is the aroma of oven-fresh cinnamon rolls.
It all started before I was born. My mom had just graduated college and married my dad. She’d heard that the local Meals on Wheels volunteers had Christmas off. She was familiar with the program because of what they’d done for her mom, my grandma Evie. Not only did they deliver a hot meal every day, they provided good company. Mom hated to think of the elderly and the sick going hungry for a day.
“Not everyone has somewhere to go,” she told the Meals on Wheels folks. “Let me handle Christmas.” For a while Mom managed on her own. She and Dad had only one small oven in their duplex.
They used it for the potatoes and green beans, and put the hams out on the grill on their back deck, no small feat considering that they lived in Michigan! First she cooked and delivered just a handful of meals, but her list of customers got longer. No way could she do it all herself. She asked friends from church and Bible study. They were glad to pitch in. Drivers were harder to find. Enter the cinnamon rolls.
See, Mom is known for her kitchen magic, especially when it comes to baking, and she’s not above using food as a bribe. Once, Dad threw his back out and Mom baked a batch of double-chocolate brownies to get the neighbor boys to mow the lawn.
My uncles and grandpa—all of them engineers—were induced to put a new deck on our house with the promise of Mom’s mint-Oreo-fudge ice-cream cake. What could she make to lure drivers for Christmas Day? Sweet, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon rolls, that’s what.
For me, cinnamon rolls were the smell of Christmas. Where other kids might have listened for the sound of Santa’s sleigh bells, I waited for the sweet yeasty aroma of rolls in the oven.
Those Christmas mornings our house was like a beehive. I scurried into the kitchen to find the famous rolls kept warm under towels. There were plates and plates of them. (By now, Mom had a big kitchen.) “Put them out,” Mom said. “The drivers will be here any minute.”
In a way, the drivers were our Santas. There was Bruce, tall and lanky, giving us big hugs. He ducked coming into the kitchen, his head almost skimming the top of the door frame. And Jack, who was short and bald, would pick up a cinnamon roll and divide it in half for my sister and me. “Merry Christmas,” he’d declare. Paul, one of Mom and Dad’s friends from church, loved driving so much he eventually volunteered for Meals on Wheels year-round.
They ate their rolls, got their delivery routes and loaded up their meals, making sure to start out early so they’d have enough time to visit with their customers.
Friends are surprised when I tell them how I spent Christmas mornings as a kid. No sleeping in, no mad scramble for presents under the tree. Just the aroma of Mom’s cinnamon rolls, and the even warmer sense of her generosity.
Try Mom’s Cinnamon Rolls.
