Fight the Red and Green Blues with Brown Bananas

If the alleged “most wonderful time of the year” causes you stress and anxiety, consider my antidote for the Red and Green Blues: Brown bananas. Yep, four bananas going bad in the fridge unexpectedly offered me some comfort that may yet morph into joy.

For perspective, here’s the timeline: In October every year, I am semi-jazzed about The Holidays. I’ve already bought and tucked away some presents, I’ve replenished my supply of gift bags for half price and I’m thinking perhaps I will approach Christmas more gracefully than in past years. By Thanksgiving, I’m turning suspicious.

What’s not to like about Christmas?

The incessant commercialization, which often starts the day after Halloween. Also, some people resent that the “true” meaning of Christmas gets lost in the rush to celebrate Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. (On that topic, why is Giving Tuesday scheduled last?) Other people resent that religious institutions insist that their beliefs are more true and more meaningful than anyone else’s beliefs – or even than their lack of them.

Tips on How to Avoid Heightened Expectations

Also, the pressure to HAVE A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS gives rise to unrealistic expectations of all sorts, including in the realm of politics and in regard to the future of the planet. Then we have Santa Claus – to believe or not to believe? My grandson worries that because I don’t have a chimney, the man in the red suit won’t be able to bring me gifts. I worry how Santa will reach children locked in cages at the border or those living in war-torn countries. Ho. Ho. Ho. 

By the beginning of December, the Red and Green Blues have settled in and I start hiding from Christmas. I’m not the only one. The Mayo Clinic offers coping tips (www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20047544) for anyone experiencing stress and depression, especially the kind that is self-induced. “The holidays present a dizzying array of demands — parties, shopping, baking, cleaning and entertaining, to name just a few,” the site counsels. “But with some practical tips, you can minimize the stress.”

Lots of lovely people are part of my holidays, and I am grateful for that. But no “practical tip” quite fends off feelings of loss for those we miss. “One thing I don’t like about Christmas is all the dead people,” I blurted to a man my age at a dinner party last Saturday. I barely know him, but he knew right away what I meant: People who were so important to us in Christmases past and that are now gone.

How Losses Photobomb the Christmas Picture

Speaking of dead people at Christmas, have you noticed that they still sing dreary holiday songs from decades ago? Listening to streaming Christmas music at my neighborhood nail salon, I realized that not only are the songs ancient – the recording artists all are dead. Well, except for Brenda Lee, who presumably is still rockin’ around the Christmas tree even though she is now 75. She recorded that song in 1958. Why are we still listening to it?

For several reasons, my idea of excellent Christmas music is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” which premiered in 1892 as a ballet loosely based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story about a kitchen tool and a mouse king. The story goes that audiences hated the ballet and even the composer described it as “rather boring” and “infinitely worse than ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”

Another of my How to Survive the Holidays traditions is to read “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote. Plus, I invite three kids over to decorate my tiny artificial tree and eat pizza – my idea of a fine holiday party. Because I downsized when I moved across the country a decade ago, “Christmas” fits into three small boxes. The years of festooning every surface are long over, and even now, I unpack only half of the stuff, to avoid doing the same thing year after year. 

Back to the brown bananas. I decided to turn the abandoned bananas into small loaves of festive bread to give to the letter carrier, the trash removal guys and the construction workers who tore up my street 18 months ago and are still at it out front.

Old Recipes Bolster Confidence to Survive Christmas

In search of a favorite recipe, I opened a bulging folder of same, clipped from newspapers and magazines and even full pages torn directly out of cookbooks that I’ve since donated to book fairs. The folder is a secondary source to my file box of recipe cards, which also serves as a time capsule. It holds red dirt that came home 36 years ago in my jeans cuff after a trip to Ayers Rock in the heart of Australia, a photo of my son at age 7 (he’s 45 now) and my ticket stub from a Beatles concert on Aug. 21, 1966. (Well, where do you keep yours?)

The folder holds recipes from my ribollita phase (that’s Tuscan bread soup), six ways to prepare chicken pozole and a plethora of options for making boeuf bourguignon. (Julia Child’s version wins every time.) I also have a fabulous recipe for sangria from a bar owner and treasured directions for gazpacho that once doubled as a shopping list and so includes “40-watt light bulbs.” And I’ve collected information on many a dish that calls for cannellini beans.

I also found several recipes in my mother’s handwriting (she died at 58, when I was 24), including one for a cake my paternal grandmother liked to make. So the dead who so often come to mind on holidays and on the anniversaries of their passing also lurk in my recipe folder. I sat at the table for a while, just enjoying looking at my mother’s handwriting.

Some of her Christmases were fabulous and some were filled with pain. My brother died at 10, in 1963. Another year, my parents celebrated sending me off to college, the first in my family to have that privilege. Almost a decade later, my widowed dad was exceedingly proud to hold his first grandchild. Eight years later, Daddy was gone, but I hope his generous sprit lives on through me all year 'round.

All this reminded me I can beat the Red and Green Blues, get through Christmas and look forward to waking up December 26, glad it’s all finally over once again. But first, I need to find an excellent recipe for banana bread.