So, my husband was given a gift basket and a very nice cash bonus by his boss this week. When he brought home the basket, I said “Boy! This is a real Southern Christmas basket!” His boss and my husband left one company and went out on their own almost three years ago and it has been a great success, well over a million dollars already and no corporate stress.

His boss is a no-nonsense, conservative young Southerner who loves his family and the benefits of working hard. In the basket were some hand-painted salt dough ornaments from his small children, local honey, handmade soap, various homemade sugary treats, a bottle of top-shelf Kentucky bourbon and a mason jar with some hooch – white lightning! Christmas in the South!

I recalled when we took up residence in my husband’s grandmother’s small, tin-roof cottage one year, located on a mountainside in northwest Georgia. We had just left Boston and I couldn’t get used to the hustle that Atlanta had become. I missed the quiet of a New England town. The little cottage, with a red smokehouse, needed some TLC – the water pump didn’t work, there was a rumor of snakes that had gotten into the damn oven, (I think my father-in-law made that up to get a rise out of me) and I was up for the challenge.