Apricot Bars by Amy Tyner

I’ll admit it…I’m a sucker for traditions. As someone who craves predictability and who gets anxious about change, traditions give me a warm sense of comfort. So many of our family traditions tie back to memories of special people who are no longer with us. For me, one of those is making apricot bars.

My great, great Aunt Peg was a fun and wonderful lady. She was a nurse by profession and lived in the old family farmhouse a few miles from the farm where I lived for a big chunk of my childhood. Since she never married, she really adopted all of us as her children, and we loved including her in our family birthday parties and holidays. She was one of those “church ladies” who was always at our family church volunteering, and I loved sitting with her during worship because she just loved having us with her, and she also always had butterscotch candies in her purse. Every Christmas Eve, we would stop at her house after the Christmas Eve service, and she would have a buffet of homemade goodies for us to enjoy. One of those treats was apricot bars. To be honest, I didn’t even really like them, but my family sure did. Aunt Peg knew that, and when we moved away to Florida, she would ship some down to my parents each year.

After she died, the apricot bars were missed. My mom had the recipe written in Aunt Peg’s distinctive handwriting, and one year, as my family’s baker, I decided to tackle them. The recipe is, of course, oldschool, and they are kind of a pain to make. There are a bunch of steps, and in the end, you have to dip them in powdered sugar and wrap them up individually, so the kitchen and the baker get thoroughly sticky. But, for me…it’s an act of love and a tribute to Aunt Peg and all she meant to us. Each Christmas, I make them, and seeing my parents smile as they unwrap and eat one makes it all worthwhile. It’s tradition at its best! Not all traditions work for our good, though. Sometimes we cling to things that we “have always done that way” long after it’s the way we should be doing it. For me, one positive thing that has come out of an awful pandemic has been the opportunity to look at activities that I was forced to stop doing for a time and reevaluate whether they needed to return to my calendar as things opened up again. I see that same thing happening in our church, too. Our worship service times and styles have been tweaked to fit the needs of our congregation, and we have the option to attend meetings and learning opportunities virtually, which makes what we do open to so many more people both locally and far away. There are some church traditions that we need to keep and some that need to be let go of or adapted.

My prayer for you this holiday season is that you will re-evaluate your traditions. Take this opportunity to toss aside those that aren’t fun or that take time away from what really matters but cling tightly to those that bring you joy and that connect you to special people you miss. Personally, I highly recommend baking an old family recipe and if you need a taste-tester, let me know!

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