A British author just wrote a book about the importance of aunts. I wish I had beat him to it.

I have been blessed with a trio of magnificent aunts, and they couldn’t have been more different personalities.

Aunt Jane was a nurse anesthesiologist who helped bring thousands of babies into the world. She never married, living with us all the years I was growing up. During World War II, Jane volunteered to serve and was sent to the South Pacific. She and her fellow Army Nurses (NOT WACS!) set up field hospitals right behind the front lines. When the bombers came over, she would haul her patients under the beds.

Aunt Jane was loved by the soldiers and the local people as well. One day an islander walked into the camp with a present for her… a live chicken!

My very stylish Aunt Vi also remained single. She was an office manager and an adventuresome traveler, crisscrossing America and Canada on the great trains of the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s.

Aunt Vi never learned to drive. One day when she was in her 80’s, Vi got a call from our local hospital that her brother had taken a serious turn for the worse. She immediately ran out of the apartment into the middle of her busy street causing all traffic to come to a screeching halt. Aunt Vi asked the first driver she saw to drive her to the hospital because “my little brother is dying.” The startled driver got her there in record time.

Aunt Peg married an Irishman and had six children. Her attitude toward life was simple and effective – get up, get working and keep smiling. Remarkably, she found spare time to become a first rate seamstress, upholsterer, community theater actress and unsurpassed thrift store shopper.

America has days set aside to honor mothers, fathers, grandparents and secretaries. I think a special day for our aunts is long overdue.

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Teenage boys and cats have independently discovered a source of endless entertainment. Just give them a roll of toilet paper, and they immediately know what to do.

Compared to imbibing drugs or alcohol, TP-ing a yard is a benign form of adolescent male recreation. As parents, we were fully aware our son was indulging in the sport.

He invented a sure-fire method for a quick, spectacular attack. A case of generic toilet paper and a broom were all that was needed. Loading numerous rolls on the broom stick, he would twirl the broom in the air thus draping trees with multiple streamers simultaneously.

One memorable night he and his friends staged a spectacular raid on a girl’s yard. The next day people came from miles around to photograph the results. No one got mad; they were too busy laughing.

The combination of our son’s reputation and the 14 mature trees in our yard made our house an obvious target. Our son knew he was responsible for cleaning up the inevitable mess… before it rained. We know he spent one entire night in our yard climbing and un-decorating trees.

Cats have developed two approaches to toilet paper sport. The first simply involves unwinding an entire roll right off the roller onto the bathroom floor. If you are not a cat owner, you cannot begin to imagine how many mountains of T.P. are on a single roll.

Our cat, Pi, is a proponent of method two. He takes the roll off the holder and wrestles it through the entire house shredding it as he goes. This is known as “the snowstorm”, and last week we recorded three record-setting interior blizzards.

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I have two perfect New Year’s resolutions.

1. Don’t feel guilty.
2. Don’t feel guilty when you break resolution Number One.

I love men, but I must admit feeling that they don’t shoulder their fair share of guilt. In fact, men seem to lack the tsunamis of guilt that overwhelm women most of the time.

Since guilt appears to be a women’s problem, it behooves all of us females to help each other dodge the guilt bullets. How did we ladies get to this sorry state of, “I should have done more, I could have done more?”

In my case, I lay a huge share of the blame on those nuns who only rewarded the girls that had no life other than homework and good deeds. The sisters filled all our hours so we had no time to think of the opposite sex. I suspect my Protestant, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim friends had similar scenarios concocted for them.

Ladies, we are no longer seventh grade girls trying to please Sister Mary Innocentia. We do not have to stay up until midnight baking cookies for the bake sale. We do not have to die a thousand emotional deaths when we forget to send a birthday card. We do not have to take on volunteer jobs we have no time for, nor do we have to feel guilty when we can’t be three places at the same time.

I have a few words for Martha Stewart, too. You, Ms. Perfection, are a purveyor of guilt by the truckload to your own gender. We cannot possibly live up to your “real simple” standards. Have you been talking to the nuns?

So here is my antidote. When guilt rears its ugly head, grab a good book, pour out a tumbler of wine and quickly head for the couch. And don’t feel guilty; figure the couch is lonely.

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I was a lucky child. My parents always had a fight right before Christmas. Since this was the only fight they would have all year, I considered myself blessed.

The annual Christmas fight always was triggered by the same object, the Christmas tree.

We would go to the local tree lot where my frugal parents would hastily choose a tree from the bargain corner. “We only have it up for a week,” they rationalized.

During the short drive home, the tree would deposit half its needles in the trunk of the car.

On Christmas Eve day, my father and the tree would retreat to the basement. Muffled curses and a lot of banging would filter upstairs. Then my grim-faced father would lug the Charlie Brown tree upstairs and unceremoniously deposit it in the living room.

My equally grim-faced mother would try to make the best of the situation… for about three minutes. “It’s listing very, very badly to the left,” she would say.

I won’t print what my dad said. He and the tree would bang downstairs back to the basement.

When the tree made its second coming, my mother would string on the beautiful, pastel, wartime neon snowball lights. Thank goodness they did not work in series; one or two burned out every year, but we always had the rest. She finished the tree with exactly 3 dozen ornaments. Our tree never had tinsel. My mother considered tinsel to be tacky.

I will never have to worry about getting caught up in the glut of Christmas excess. My parents trained me well.

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Fruitcake can be very scary stuff. Let’s face it, sometimes the idea of a tradition is better than the tradition itself.

Fruitcake has two basic flaws. First, the garishly colored, hard, super sticky fruit lurking in most every fruitcake. I challenge anyone to eat this stuff naked right out of its little plastic carton. This “fruit” bears no resemblance to the luscious fruits of everyday life i.e., apples, pears, peaches, strawberries, plums and grapes.

The second problem is fruitcake’s density. Miss Piggy really did give the best diet advice ever uttered, “Don’t eat anything you can’t lift.” Two square inches of fruitcake would make an admirable boat anchor.

When I was a young mother, our neighbor gave us one of her special Christmas fruitcakes every year. Naturally, my husband and two children wouldn’t touch the thing. Since I was raised never to waste food, I would make noble attempts to eat this fruitcake Rock of Gibraltar. Finally, I couldn’t face one more of her uninspired creations. And I hit on the perfect means of disposal. No food would be wasted, and a new tradition would be born.

On the day after Christmas, my husband and I drove to a local park at midnight. This park was where my favorite bird, crows, all gathered in the trees at dusk to roost. We stood on a high hill and shot the fruitcake like a discus into the meadow next to their rookery. I’m certain the crows enjoyed it for breakfast. The Annual Fruitcake Toss continued for many, many years.

Ironically, I do bake a small fruitcake every holiday season. All the fruit in it is recognizable and could stand on its own merit. If you try this recipe and don’t like it, you now know what action to take.

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