No matter how she sliced it, she kept the flame of a holiday season burning brightly

Yeah, I know Christmas is over. The holidays are kaput. We’ve all moved on. Even our New Year’s resolutions are feeling a bit stale.

But alas, for me, the yuletide holidays have yet to take the “see ya next year exit.” This is because I’m still processing what happened to me on Christmas Day.

I will openly admit I have an addiction to making Christmas magical. But this past year I sacrificed something besides my sanity. I surrendered a finger. My middle finger to be exact. As in, I almost cut it off. (Yes: I gave Christmas the finger.)

I lived to tell the tale, and now I’m on a quest to make sure this story becomes epic family lore. It’s the story of a woman who kept the Christmas spirit alive while bleeding profusely.

My story begins with me putting the final touches on our Christmas dinner. This included icing a cake that I made three days earlier.

The cake was a scrumptious four-layer gingerbread and chocolate extravaganza. I had frozen the layers and was now ready to begin slathering them with cookie butter frosting.

But first I needed to cut off the tops of the layers so they would lay flat when I stacked the cake. I normally don’t do this, but I had watched a copious number of holiday baking shows and was hyped up on being “professional” in my Christmas cake creation.

The real flaw in my plan was not factoring in that cutting the top off a frozen cake isn’t easy-peasy. That’s because it’s less of a slicing motion and more like sawing. But I, determined to be like the “home baker” who has just won $25,000 on the “Holiday Baking Championship,” would not be deterred.

I sawed away on that frozen cake like a lumberjack on a sugar high. I pressed down as hard as I could on the cake with one hand while the other one commenced slicing/sawing, and in the process created a new dessert: cake with a side of finger.

And although I was bleeding what seemed like buckets of blood, the tableau still remained rather festive. The blood, after all, was a cheery red color that matched the plaid motif in my Pottery Barn tartan placemats.

While bleeding, I was still thinking positive thoughts. Not convinced that I needed medical intervention I summoned my daughter to Google, “When should you get stitches?”

Shockingly, I hit every single requirement. But I was still torn between needing the bleeding to stop and not wanting to go to the emergency room on Christmas. I mean, talk about something that’s seriously un-festive. But my husband insisted, so off we went with a beach towel as a tourniquet.

In what can only be described as a Christmas miracle, the ER was empty. I was the only patient and received enthusiastic care.

Many stitches later, I left the ER imbued with gratitude that I still had all my fingers. Spurred on by getting a text from one of my children that read, “So, like, is dinner not happening?” I sprinted to my kitchen, iced the cake using the layers that were still pristine, got dinner on the table, and even lit candles, which wasn’t easy with a finger that was so heavily bandaged it was the size of a yam.

I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, let down the generations of women in my family, who were the purveyors of Christmas magic. Even though I was down a finger (and what I’m thinking had to be some major blood loss, or at least that’s how I’m telling this story now and forevermore), I would deliver joy.

And I did. Which means my kids better make sure I become a family legend or an icon. I’m not picky. I’ll let them choose.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and on TikTok @snarkyinthesuburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.

This story was originally published January 8, 2025 at 4:00 AM.