The Praline Tin

At 41 years old, on the eve of Christmas Eve, I made pralines for the very first time.

Not because I suddenly decided to become a candy maker, or because I needed one more thing on my already-full December to-do list - but because memory has a way of knocking quietly when the season turns quiet and familiar.

When I was little, my Nani had pralines at every Christmas Eve family gathering held on BB Handy Road. They lived in that tin - the one pictured here. I wasn’t tall enough to see over the counter, but I knew exactly where it was. I can still feel the cold metal under my small hand as I lifted the lid just enough to sneak one or two, unnoticed, before anyone could shoo me away. It’s one of the few concrete childhood memories I have - the kind that exists not as a story someone told me later, but as something my body remembers.

From what I understand, the tin itself has a story too. My Nani and Pops’ first Christmas married, my Pop stopped at the feed store in Collinston for supplies. The owner gifted him a bottle of whiskey or something similar for the holidays, so I was told. Pop apparently said something along the lines of how Mrs. Ann might not appreciate that, so the owner tossed in a metal cookie tin instead. painted on both sides with Currier & Ives scenes. One side winter. One side spring.

That tin stayed with my Nani for decades. Every Christmas season, it came out again, filled with pralines, winter scene facing up. Tradition made of sugar and metal and muscle memory.

A few years ago, in the midst of figuring out what holidays look like now - as a divorced mom, navigating shared calendars and reshaped traditions - I showed up to a family gathering feeling a little unmoored. My Nani told me she had something for me. She turned into the kitchen and came back holding that tin out in front of her.

It was mine.

I don’t know that I can fully articulate what that moment meant. Except that it felt like home and returning and belonging being known, all at once. That tin has sat on a shelf in every kitchen I’ve lived in since, turned seasonally to match the world outside - winter when everything goes to sleep, spring when things soften again. It is ordinary and sacred all at once.

So today, at 41, on the eve of Christmas Eve, the eve before the Handy Christmas gathering, it felt like the right time to try. To see if I could make pralines like Nani’s. They weren’t perfect. They weren’t pretty. They were a little messy - like most things worth keeping.

But they were warm. And familiar. And filled the kitchen with something that felt like continuity.

Sometimes tradition isn’t about getting it right. Sometimes it’s just about daring to begin again - with the tin, the memory, and the quiet hope that some things can still be carried forward.