Here We Go A-Wandering

It is one of our most treasured if ill-conceived traditions that we always do a Real Tree, and if humanly possible, cut it from a u-cut farm. Now that DOB is not really up to the trek, I usually pick the kids up from school on a day in mid-December and we go straight to the nearest farm to pick one before dark. We are very quick in our selection. (Is this tree short enough to reach the top? Is it right here? Then it is good.) And last year I finally learned how I had been cutting trees wrong my entire life so now the cutting down is quick, too.

Unfortunately this year obtaining a tree was delayed a week or more past our usual late date because of the repair work still being done on the house from the pipe leak that happened in August. The back room was finally finished, though, and I had Toolboy scheduled to come help me set up the new couch later in the afternoon, so I figured we could squeeze it in yesterday.

It was inconvenient but not surprising that the window to get the tree coincided with the commencement of a three-day storm of torrential downpours. It was surprising that the tree farm was already closed and since I still refuse to get a smart phone as long as my 14-year-old flip phone keeps working, I had no backup plan for finding or checking if another one was open. (To be perfectly honest, even my flip phone was dead, which is why I don't really want to bother with a smart phone.)

So the kids (Duchess, Dot and Dash--Deux had been coming down with something and elected to stay home) insisted that we needed to go try to find another farm. The only one whose location I was certain of was about half an hour drive away through the busiest roads in the county at rush hour in the downpour. Duchess was driving and insisted she keep driving. I told them we might arrive just to find it closed for the day or the year, but they all wanted to go anyway. We could always give up and go to Lowe's on the way back.

In due course we did arrive, and amazingly enough it was still open (we were the last customers of the day) and they were immediately overcome with its size and majesty, as it was about a square mile of Christmas trees. We drove out to the section with our preferred species, forded a small river that had formed in the downpour, and cut down our selected tree.

It was then I realized that, relying on the Christmas tree farm to provide the service, we had failed to bring anything to tie the tree to the top of the car. But first we had to get it back to the office, which was about a half a mile hike back through the downpour and dusk. So I told Dash to pick up the short end of the tree and we headed off while Duchess drove back to the office. Dot accompanied us out of an overpowering desire to commune with nature.

We had made it most of the way back and watched Duchess drive past us en route to the office when Duchess came driving back, with twine to tie the tree to the top of the car. (It was at this moment that it occurred to me that we could have done this in the first place.) So we did, although not very well, and at this point after fifteen minutes walk in the downpour I had finally noticed that I was missing my hat, which I had actually knitted myself during a triennial fit of craftiness, out of green and brown variegated yarn.

So Duchess, Dash and I decided to drive all the way back to the place we cut the tree before it got darker to try to find the hat, while Dot elected to continue on to the office and commune with hot cocoa. We found the spot again easily enough (the small river was handy in location) but it now occurred to me that a knit hat made of green and brown variegated yarn looks exactly like the ground in a Christmas tree farm in a downpour at dusk in December. Happily we did find it.

Somewhere in here the tree fell most of the way off the car and I had to try to tie it on again, but it was still threatening to careen off the side the whole time.

Then it seemed to Duchess that rather than turning around what with stumps and streams and all she would be better off to keep driving on the assumption that the roads in the tree farm would loop back around to the office sooner or later. They did, but by the time we made it back Dot had finished her trip to the office, drunk an entire cup of hot cocoa, and come back out to stand in the rain and wonder what was taking us so long.

Then everyone else who wanted cocoa got it and the man still waiting for us to leave tied the tree on extremely securely and I insisted on driving home. We were all soaked to the skin and I still had a sectional couch to set up.

Everyone thought it was the best tree expedition ever.

White Christmas

A rather obscure beloved book of my childhood, called Wu-Han of Korea if memory serves me right, depicted an idyllic pre-war but post-Catholicism Korea with its traditional customs and folkways.

One of the lines I remember vividly explained how in Korea, white was the color of mourning, and there was a rigid procedure for how many years it must be worn: so many years for the death of a parent, grandparent, sibling, spouse, child. The result of these customary long years of mourning, the book explained, was that adults pretty much only wore white. Only children and an occasional young adult would still be wearing bright colors.

As a child, I figured this must be because people died a lot more in the olden days.

Well, perhaps they did die a bit younger, but the death rate is, of course, the same. Because the grownups in my life didn't wear mourning, I could not see the loss that walked with them. A once-met uncle or great-aunt was just a name to me. I did not remember the hands who had written the recipes, the faces in the faded pictures.

Now I know that they did. Now I have my own loss that walks with me. And now I realize it is simply part of life, in the past, the present, and the future. The longer you live, the more dead people you know. The more Christmases you celebrate, the longer the Ghost of Christmas Past shines his light backwards to places and people forever gone.

We're . . . sort of . . . doing the Christmas thing

A week of catching up around the house and getting ready for Christmas wasn't nearly enough. I am, surprisingly enough, a really good planner. When I have time to plan.

When I don't have time to plan . . . well, baking day arrived without flour and I totally forgot to check whether I had green chiles for an enchilada-based Christmas dinner until the last trip into town had been made. I still haven't gotten the house up to baseline-level Stuff Doesn't Get Caught In The Wheelchair cleanliness, let alone Festive Christmas Cheer cleanliness. The children's rooms are still the disaster that makes me want to swear they will never get new things again, ever. I didn't even dust the piano. I'm not going to have time to finish one person's gift and I think it's too small anyway. I'm tired and I have a sore throat but I can't seem to lower my immune system enough to get good and sick and have an excuse.

I did manage three kinds of cookies (after getting flour). That's pretty pitiful for my baking traditions, but it's what I could manage. We tried these gingerbread cookies (with half the pepper) and they were fabulous.  And these flourless chocolate cookies were awesome for gluten-free relatives (or, you know, non-gluten-free people. They're really good).

But Christmas comes anyway, right? There's something to unwrap. There will be something to eat (even if a little short on chiles). I'll try to sweep. I hope.

I should have pretty low expectations by this time. Around here it's a good Christmas if no one throws up. But I still would like to have things a little more together. Maybe next year.

We're DOING this Christmas thing

Christmas had kind of gotten sidelined this year up until Sunday. Which was OK, right, because it's Advent, not Christmas?

Only Advent is supposed to be getting ready for Christmas, and we weren't doing that. DOB has been absorbed with the Thing Not Yet Announced, I was busy with working and school and the Remodeling Project That Grew, and the kids have been shifting as best they can and listening to a lot of audio CDs. We did manage to get out the Advent wreath and readings, but that was it.

But this past weekend I put in my last day of remodeling. It's not done, but I am. And it's really, really close, and detailed finish work is definitely not my talent. It is an amazing transformation. We have eradicated nearly every scrap of country blue in a house which was one solid mass of it. Hopefully the new and improved pictures will attract a new and improved set of showings.

And I made an executive decision to quit school a week early. Since I didn't make this decision until Saturday, we skipped the whole vacation brain final week, so that worked well. We'll have to keep going until the second week of June, but it's not too awfully long.


So Sunday we had the church Christmas pageant and chili cook-off. Dash is gratified that no one tries to recruit him to be a sheep any more. He has hated being a sheep since the role was first foisted upon his toddler self, and most recently declared his role in the Christmas pageant to be "100 sheep who are not there." As a long-limbed first grader, though, he's solidly into shepherd territory, and shepherds wear fuzzy bathrobes and carry long sticks, so they're cool.

Then afterwards we had an unexpectedly gorgeous day and went and found our tree. (It's on the smallish side, because most of the $10 yellow-tag trees were gone this late in the season, but on the other hand that meant the kids could decorate it entirely without help.

The kids even tried to bring in the boxes by themselves. Some of them were too high up, but the big kids got a number of them. Deux asked, "What about this box that says 'Dishes?' It looks like it might have something."

"Oh, no," I said, "All the 'Dishes' boxes only have dishes in them."

Then when they had gotten through all the rest they could reach, I went out and got down the rest. And we searched through them all and found everything except the Christmas tree lights. Which, of course, had to go on first.

I went back out and searched the other miscellaneous boxes. I found some more things, but no lights. I searched the boxes we had brought out again. No lights.

I went back out to the garage and noticed a small box labeled "Dishes" sitting next to where most of the Christmas boxes had been. A light began to dawn. I looked inside.

Deux was pleased with bragging rights.

 Nothing got properly cleaned, but the decorations are up. This morning I rescued the Christmas CDs from the heap in the boys' room after they decided to repurpose the CD box as a fortress. I put Bing Crosby on. We read our advent reading and did a craft. I have butter thawing to bake cookies.

We're going to do this Christmas thing. I think I'm going to start with a long winter's nap.

Let the children come

So we got invited to help out at the "Celebrate Jesus" walk-through down the street last weekend. DOB was in trial preparation mode (which at that point on Saturday night mostly meant not talking to anyone), so it seemed like a good time to get out of the house.

We were overprepared. Remembering the previous weekend, when we froze our toes and fingers off just walking through another church's event at twenty degrees, I put everyone in two layers of everything under their coats and hats and mittens and then our (very roomy) Bible-time costumes over that. (Something you can learn from Christmas walk-throughs throughout the north is that people in Bible times all ate extremely well.) However, last weekend it was 45 degrees. We were in a nice little shelter and running to Jesus every two minutes. Pretty soon there were hats and mittens cast aside vanishing into the hay. It's a small miracle that we made it home with all of them.

Duchess of course wanted to say all the lines from the start, and Deux soon warmed up to it. After a while the twins joined in, along with a little boy whose father was playing Jesus a few scenes over. Pretty soon the chaos made the disciple's line, "Woman, quiet your children!" entirely justified. Deux also, for some reason, decided the best way to run to Jesus was to trip and then dive headfirst through the hay. He did it every time.

The idea was to have two families alternating every thirty minutes or so. However, the other family never showed. So our first shift was over an hour long, and by the end everyone was beginning to wear thin. Duchess and Deux had absorbed enough of "the show must go on" from theater classes to keep the action going no matter how long we waited for relief, but they relieved their feelings by storing up hay while Jesus gave his brief lecture, and then pummeling each other the instant the scene ended.

They finally scared up a replacement family and we went inside for soup and cookies and to shed our surplus layers. It was, of course, just then that Their Majesties showed up and walked through looking for us in vain. They met us and we went through the whole thing again and did a special demonstration for them. Then we were back on duty. Dot and Dash spent a lot of the last shift curled up in the hay, but there was still plenty of tumult for the disciple to object to. By the end we were hitting that point of exhaustion that works like hypothermia--the tireder the kids are, the wilder they act and the more they insist they are not tired at all and will never ever need to quit.

They asked us if we wanted to come back for a repeat performance on Sunday, but I thought one day was quite enough. Besides, on Sunday night, DOB was at the point of trial preparation that involves getting everyone to bed early.

Cabin Fever

I've been building a playlist of winter-themed songs to vary the diet of Christmas music. There are quite a few wintry songs on the theme of "I've got my love to keep me warm." There are, if anything, more on the theme of, "I'm cold now that my love has left me." But there don't seem to be any on the theme--which I would most identify with--of, "My love and I made a lot of babies and I think they're going to tear the furniture apart before spring."

It really hasn't even yet been a bad winter for being stuck inside. No one has been noticeably sick so far (we'll see how long THAT lasts)--we even managed to forestall a sinus infection for DOB by the hasty application of all the remedies we learned last winter. We had a week and a half of deep cold, in which we went down to the walk-through Life of Jesus at the neighborhood church and skated on the Sea of Galilee. Now it's back to 40s and drizzly which, although uninspiring, is really not that bad for getting outside. It was a matter of great disappointment that we didn't manage some snow at the intersection of those two weather patterns.

But darkness still comes way too soon and the children who used to be cute little toddlers bouncing on the couch are now posing a serious danger to the springs. I guess I should have put a stop to it sooner.

While we were wandering through the walk-through we got invited to come take a turn being Jesus Blessing the Little Children. Duchess naturally jumped at the opportunity, and everyone else naturally followed Duchess. I figured anything that would get us outside after dark was a worthy endeavor.

Sermons and shootouts

This week DOB and I watched Gunless, a very funny western parody about a gunslinger, the Montana Kid, who stumbles into a remote Canadian hamlet and tries to get in a gunfight with an enormous but peaceful blacksmith in a town where the only pistol has been broken for years.

At one point he gets asked why . . . why can't he just let it go? Why, after a brief misunderstanding, does he need to make the blacksmith the twelfth man he's killed?

He answers: "Cuz if I let it go now, then I shoulda let it go when them 3 guys in Missouri called me a cheat. Now you tell me. Did they die for nothin'? And if I let them guys in Missouri go, then I shoulda let it go when that man was whoopin' that dog. Now does that sound right to you? Beatin' on a helpless dog? If I was able to let that man go for beatin' on that mutt, then sure as hell no reason I couldn'ta just walked away when I was called out in Wyoming, or Santa Fe, and twice in Arizona. If I was so damned smart to walk away when I was called out, then I should have the wherewithal not to use my gun in self-defense, twice. And if I shoulda been able to avoid that, then there's no arguable reason why I couldn'ta just gone to the sheriff, insteada killin' the man that whipped my pa."

 The Montana Kid has inadvertently stumbled into an Advent sermon. He's begun to realize that he needs to change, that he wants a different life. But he can't have change without repentance: without admitting that his former choices were wrong. Sometimes, that's a lot of wrong to face.

The need for repentance is not an arbitrary call. John the Baptist doesn't call for repentance because we need to grovel a lot before Jesus will deign to come; he calls for repentance because it's the logical precondition for change. Because until we can face up to what has been wrong, we won't be able to accept things being made right. The change has to come from outside us . . . but we have to be made ready for the change.

A Christmas Album Timeline

1986: Come On, Ring Those Bells. Yes, on a record. Yes, I really am that old. There is nothing like the Christmas album you put on when you were an 8 year old, no matter how many more aesthetically appealing and less scratched albums come along later.

1992: Handel's Messiah. Still my favorite way to start the Christmas season. I used to turn it on the day after Thanksgiving and scrub the house from top to bottom and get out all the Christmas ornaments. This year I turned it on and crawled in bed with a book.

1997: Grunt. Technically, this isn't a Christmas album. OK, so it isn't by the wildest stretch of the imagination a Christmas album. Still, I always play it at Christmas, so for me, it's a Christmas album. This definitely falls into the category of "if you are the sort of person that likes that sort of thing, then it's exactly the sort of thing you will like." So if pigs singing Gregorian chant in pig latin sounds like your sort of thing . . .

1999: A Swinging Big Band Christmas. My grandmother gave this to me to expand my musical appreciation.  I'm still grateful for the expansion.

2001: Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Christmas Novelty CD of All Time. Back when we used to do the Great Epic Cookie Bake every year, we used to always listen to a Christmas variety record that dated back to the childhood of my mother and weird aunt. However, it was getting very old and scratchy, so my weird aunt went on a quest to recreate it. Nobody had issued the same album intact as a CD, so she had to hunt up a variety of CDs. Some of them were easy to find, like Dean Martin. Others . . . not so much. This album contributed that Scandihoovian classic, "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" and forever changed the landscape of our future holidays with "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas" and "Christmas at Ground Zero." It also contributed a few numbers that deserved to be buried in oblivion, which is why I have an abridged copy on my computer.

2002: Christmas Cocktails. This is part of that same quest, being the only album anywhere that had the essential "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Mambo." (The only form in which "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" is tolerable.) A certain song called "I Want You for Christmas" had a bit of private significance to me that year.

2003: White Christmas. We don't have an "Our First Christmas" ornament. That would be too sappy. But this album takes its place.

2009: Holiday Spirits. Yes, it was the "Twelve Days of Christmas" song. But I'm a sucker for men's chorales anyway. This was the last contribution by my weird aunt to my Christmas music memories.

So . . . what's on your Christmas album timeline?

O Christmas Tree

Last year Wondergirl and I made gingerbread cookies with the ducklings and they each decorated a few with the obligatory heaps of inedible candy and then scattered. This year we did it again and they stuck it out to the bitter end. Which means, of course, that all the gingerbread cookies are layered with heaps of inedible candy.  Still, all part of the fun, right? At least I couldn't find the chocolate sprinkles, because those would just be nasty on gingerbread.




Every year since we were first married, DOB has mentioned how he treasures the memory of the large, multi-colored lights on his grandma's Christmas tree. Every year I have ignored this (large multi-colored lights are so tacky!) and put up the tasteful white and gold ornaments I had before we were married. This year, after a friend mentioned that she and her husband have the same disagreement and settle it by alternating years, I realized that it was really most unfair of me to keep monopolizing the Christmas decor. And that the snowflake stuff was getting boring. So the Duchess helped us get colored lights and a few more balls, and my grandmother donated many colorful ornaments from her stash, and we went for full-on, old-fashioned, multi-colored garishness.

And it's beautiful. It's fun and homey and looks just like Christmas trees should look that are meant to serve as Christmas trees and not as decorations in the lobby. There's such a thing as too much good taste. Good thing I like it, because as DOB pointed out, I now owe him nine years of colored lights.

I haven't changed my mind about the candies on the gingerbread cookies, though. But at least I can pick them off before I eat them.

Happy Birthday, Somebody

This is trying not to be a "Snarky Things" post, because I acknowledge that it is unfair to be snarky about people's carefully thought out religious convictions. And I recognize that celebrating holidays is explicitly made a matter of personal conviction. And I also acknowledge that I do not necessarily know why people believe what they do and they may perhaps have very good reasons for it.

However, I note that there are a fair number of practicing Christians who don't celebrate Christmas, sometimes because of its pagan origins, sometimes just because of its extra-Biblical origins. Because somebody made it up once upon a time. Very well. Same goes for Easter.

But then, they notice that their lives and their children's lives are lacking in celebrations. Everybody needs an excuse to throw a party, decorate, dress up, have fun. So they go out and make up a new celebration. (One family always watched The Ten Commandments on Easter. I can only guess that Easter was too pagan, but Hollywood wasn't.)

Or they do up birthdays fancy to take the place of Christmas. So instead of devoting weeks to the contemplation and celebration of the coming of God to the world, they make the big celebration all about . . . me. Yay, me!

And . . . this mystifies me. At least the pagans had the humility to celebrate something bigger than themselves. At least their celebrations were tied to the seasons God made. How is stuff made up today inherently superior to the celebrations that have been held by the saints through the ages?

On the one hand, I can better appreciate the Christians who decide to start celebrating Jewish holidays, because at least they are real holidays. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel too comfortable getting carried away with it because it just seems like poor etiquette--like the Sons of Italy crashing the Leif Erikson Day parade.

No, the traditional Christian holidays are not commanded by God, nor are they untainted by any outside influence. But neither is anything that is going to be made up to take their place. And I, for one, am thankful for the chance to join hands with the saints of all times and places and throw a big party because God came here.

The Christmas Spirit

Once upon a time I always, always spent the day after Thanksgiving playing Christmas music, deep-cleaning the house and dragging out the Christmas decorations. When my parents and other braver souls returned from the sales, if I was doing well, I could be ready to put up the tree.

Now I think the best way to spend the day after Thanksgiving is sleeping in. Probably the day after that, too. I will never go to the sales, not unless they do not involve other people, noise, movement, and lights. The Christmas decorations will be up eventually, and the house won't be clean for five minutes together no matter what I do. I may dig out Christmas music, but I still haven't figured out where I keep it.

Instead, I offer for your pre-Advent reading pleasure a very short story I wrote last year.

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The Christmas Spirit

Emily stirred a third spoonful of honey into her peppermint tea. Gran raised an eyebrow and passed the plate of cookies again.

“Now, Emily, I sent for you for three reasons. First, although I haven’t told anyone yet, particularly your mother, the doctor says I’m about to keel over at any moment. I haven’t got much time, so pay attention. Second, you’re old enough to stick to your guns and young enough to be excused eccentricity. Third, you may, just possibly, take me seriously.”

Emily tried to drink the tea and burnt her tongue again. She set the cup down and watched for a moment to see if Gran would drop dead. When she didn’t, Emily asked, “Seriously about what?”

“I’m going to teach you how to have a proper Christmas. We’ll have to work out distances and angles so you can recreate it in a different house, as your father will undoubtedly sell this place the second I croak. If you do all the work, you’re more likely to remember when you have to do the ritual yourself.”

“Ritual? What do you mean, ritual?”

“The Christmas ritual, dearie. Did you think the Christmas spirit was just a metaphor? Or that it happened by magic? Well, it does happen by magic, that’s the point, but magic is hard work, dearie, and don’t you forget it. Now go get the red box second from the left on the right side of the attic.”

Emily stuffed the cookie in her mouth and did as she was told. When Gran called you “dearie,” the business end of her cane was not likely to be far behind.

It took the better part of the next two hours to get the box fully unpacked, each item correctly positioned, and for Gran to explain the significance and history of each tinsel-wrapped angel and tacky crocheted snowman. Much was revealed.

“So that’s why the fruitcake! I wondered why we always have it even though no one ever eats it.”

“Spirits don’t have tastebuds. But they do like tradition. It makes particularly good compost, later.”

At last they sat down in the middle of the arrangement and Emily tried the tea again. It was ice cold now, and disgustingly sweet.

“How did you learn all this, Gran?” she finally dared to ask.

“That, I’m not telling. Some stories are not fit for young girls. Suffice it to say you are very lucky to learn all this in a cozy afternoon with your Gran.” She winked, a little maliciously.

“Now for the incantation,” Gran said, “Listen closely, it’s not hard, but it can’t be repeated more than once a year.” She began to chant. Emily listened. It sounded a bit like a Christmas carol, only with the words a bit off, but she couldn’t be sure because Gran couldn’t carry a tune.

By the end of the chant Gran’s singing was as smooth as her Rosemary Clooney records, and an inexplicable glow had driven back the gloom of the winter afternoon. Emily tasted her tea again: it was perfectly warm, and just sweet enough. The room sat in golden quiet for a moment.

“Gran?”

“Mmmhmm?”

“What if you didn’t summon the Christmas Spirit?”

“Well, it might show up uninvited. You don’t want that. Spirits can be pretty nasty when they feel snubbed. But at best you’d be without it, and then what would happen? Uncle Al would get drunk and smash half the glasses, your mother would lecture everyone on everything, and your Treadwell cousins would never lift their eyes from their computer thingies. Vanessa’s boyfriend would be scared off for good and she’ll never get another chance, poor girl.”

“So that’s why you do it all the same every year.”

“Pretty much, pretty much.”

Emily drank her perfect tea and then ventured one more question. “Is the Santa toilet lid cover part of the ritual?”

Grandma chuckled. “No, that’s just to annoy your Aunt Vicky. She hates that kind of thing, but thanks to the Spirit she can’t do a thing about it.” Grandma sighed, closed her eyes, and then suddenly slumped in her chair.

Emily rose and shrieked, just a little. Grandma opened one eye and grinned.

“Fooled you, didn’t I? Well, I’m not dead yet. Now, you’re too young and I’m too old to worry about calories, so what say we have another round of cookies?”

Christmas Vigil

This makes our ninth Christmas, and our fifth disrupted by puking. However, it seems to have been of the fairly mild variety, as only one was seriously affected. It was still enough to make us think we should avoid infants and the elderly, which translated into all church and family gatherings. So we have stayed at home. (I wanted to say "quietly" at home, but that would be absurd.) We followed Santa's flight with NORAD.

DOB is one of those men who saves Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve. He is the rare variety who is able to do this and still find astounding deals on just the perfect gifts. Including for himself. (Like Deux, he feels much safer picking out his own presents.) This is a good thing, because once he's bought the thing, twenty-four hours is right at his limit for not spilling the beans.

Personally, I generally come up with one of three kinds of gifts: the kind where I think of the perfect thing in August and forget what it was; the kind where I think of the perfect thing at midnight on Christmas Eve; and the kind where I never think of anything at all. Occasionally I actually buy the perfect thing early and then lose it.


So we were up very late last night wrapping gifts. We had figured out the perfect plan for the morning, especially since we weren't rushing off to family gatherings and church: we had small gifts and trail mix in the kids' stockings, and they could play and snack until we were ready to get up. We told them, "When you get up in the morning, you can take your stockings into your room and play quietly until we get up." This was reinforced with a note from Santa on top the stockings.

Secure in the knowledge of this preparation, we tumbled into bed at midnight.

At three a.m., we heard rustling and giggling in the living room. By the time we had roused to the point of moving, the stockings were back in the room, the contents were unwrapped, and everyone was eagerly digging into the trail mix. We pointed out that it was not anything remotely resembling morning yet, and put them back to bed with a CD playing, hoping they would fall asleep.

At four thirty, we were finally drifting back to sleep when we heard more whispers and giggles in the living room. I went out to find them under the lighted Christmas tree. I sent them back to bed with baleful warnings of what would happen if they moved again before at least seven o'clock. (Specifically, that we wouldn't open the gifts until AFTER breakfast.) That did the trick.

After all that wee-hours rambling, I was especially appreciative to discover DOB had found me a warm new robe. In red, not bland white nor icky pastels.

It's a Wrap

As I write this, the Duchess is wrapping presents. This is a very good development. She still wants me to cut out the paper, but she'll do the rest. It doesn't look quite as good as I would do it. Probably by next year she will have surpassed me and I am willing to put up with the training period.

We took the kids to the dollar store this afternoon to pick out presents for each other. This has been a tradition since the Duchess was four and picked out the ever-famous Purple Bear for Deux, who has loved it devotedly ever since. You can get some good stuff at the dollar store. Deux took a turn at it next year and this year the twins also made an attempt.

Dash is plainly in the stage where he projects his own desires on others. If it doesn't involve motorcycles or fire engines, why would anyone want it? Deux is more cagey--he realizes not everyone likes what he likes. Therefore, after consulting his pocketbook, he bought himself three things he really wanted as well as gifts for others. Dot simply wandered around happily, eagerly accepted the least suggestion I made, and called it good. Duchess picked out suitable gifts and wrapped them all herself. Except for the cutting. She did express concern that her gifts not break within a week this year, as they did last year.

I gave Dash the chance to wrap his presents, and there were several minutes of tears as he had apparently thought he was going to get to wrap gifts for himself and was devastated to see the same old things he had chosen.

Waiting for Christmas

The ducklings are just at the age for full, unrelenting, uninhibited, luxuriant enjoyment of Christmas. They wallow in it. The tree must always be lighted, the music must all be Christmas, every moment is one of calculations of when and how Christmas will arrive or begging me to undertake this or that Christmas activity. Gifts are part of it, yes, but really only a minor part, and a very non-caluclating part. (They were giddy for days over the toothbrushes and wind-up-toys St. Nicholas left in their boots.) They revel in the whole of the season.

I was that child, too. It is part of the fun of being a parent to live through all that over again.

Somewhere on the road to growing up, like most of us, I lost the ability to exuberate like that. For many years Christmas passed tinged with a bit of regret that it never quite measured up to the Christmases of childhood.

Lately, I have come to realize that regret and disappointment had a place, too. And its place is in Advent. Advent is waiting. Not just the impatient, gleeful waiting of children rattling gifts to discover what is inside.

It is the frustrated waiting of the oppressed, who have returned to the Promised Land only to find that they still cannot live in freedom.

It is the fearful waiting of parents for the coming of a child after a stillbirth.

It is the waiting of the sick, the weary, the injured, waiting for justice, for healing, for rest.

It is waiting that knows that waiting is not just about time, but about loss and danger, about all the ways the world has broken its promises, over and over.

Hope is only hope if we do not yet have the thing we hope for. And Advent is the time to know that now is not yet the time. Our redemption is begun, but not complete.

And I have found in accepting the waiting, in not trying to rush myself into jollity, that I have made room for hope again, and so for joy.

On the Third Day of Christmas

I am hiding out in bed, but the ducklings are still pretty occupied with new toys.

It looks like the ducklings finally did get over The Stomach Flu That Never Leaves. Then we got it. The good news was, it wasn't on the Friday that Ron had three court hearings (all of which he won) and I had an interview for a new contract (which I got). The bad news, it hit both of us at once all weekend. Their Majesties took the ducklings out to get a Christmas tree and D1 and D2 decorated it. D1 put all the glass balls in one spot, and D2 decided to add the packing peanuts. But they are happy with it.

We got a little better on Monday, enough to get out of bed and try to face the world. But not a lot better. D1 wrapped most of the presents. There's no tape left in the house, but the presents were good and covered.

Her Majesty did the Christmas baking I had promised to do while I stayed in bed all Christmas Eve, fighting a relapse. We made it up for Christmas, very very late.

DOB points out that we have a lousy Christmas every three years. Three years ago, the twins were on the way. Six years ago, we woke up Christmas morning at 3 a.m. to the infant D1 vomiting all over her pack'n'play. (And that was after driving hours through a blizzard to make it to the airport and then flying standby to get here.) By contrast, this was pretty tame. It's hard to have a really cruddy Christmas when you have kids old enough to participate and young enough to get excited over opening boxes, let alone what's inside.

I really hope it doesn't take us another four weeks to fully recover from this and get back to just being regularly exhausted. Now that I have two ongoing contracts, we are really hoping and praying we can hire someone able-bodied in here to help out soon. Umm, today maybe?

Christmas in the Sheep Fields

A few days ago I posted a Facebook status that asked, "Does it count as being in the Christmas spirit if you don't feel like doing any of the work?"

I meant it to be a bit flippant, but the more I think about it, the more it sums up my feelings about Christmas this year. Generally one is expected to either be exuberantly dashing about to stores and parties or bah-humbugging along (usually while still dashing about to stores and parties).

There is no Dasher in me this year. Yet I bear no ill-will toward Christmas. It's still delightful. The lights twinkle just as well, the songs play just as merrily, the occasional social event is just as much fun.

But when it comes to my personal contribution to the festivities, well, I hope to show up. In something that bears no stains or rips more than an hour old. I have baked a couple batches of cookies, and that was plenty, and I have wrapped two or three gifts for each duckling (and only the ducklings) from the remnants of last summer's yard sales, and that was plenty. The tree was decorated once, but ducklings somehow quite innocently keep getting entangled in the lower reaches, so it now looks like the result of an ornament fight in the woods.

In a brief, quickly-abandoned attempt to write a Christmas letter I dug through this year's blog archives and remembered last year's Christmas. (And marveled again at the phenomenon that the stuff I wrote a year or more ago is always so much more profound and witty than the present drivel.) The twins were in the six-month growth spurt, nursing night and day and just learning how to gag down a few bites of applesauce.

Nights have certainly improved since then: how quickly one learns to take eleven hours of quiet for granted. But days have become much, much more complicated. The babies who napped twice a day, rolled about in a blanket in the corner, or rode along in mei tais have turned into The Energizer Bunnies of Chaos. Just opening the refrigerator door is an exercise in strategic withdrawal, as by the time the necessary object is removed, one or more inquisitive heads will be blocking its closure.

No wonder by the time nap time or bedtime hits, I can't come up with the energy to tackle a beautiful and creative Christmas project--or even the energy to care that I don't. I could berate myself over my laxness or express bitterness over various cultural expectations, but I don't really want to. I think all that stuff is very fun, I just don't want to this year. Some years one can be a Magi, bearing gifts from afar, and some years one is a shepherd, showing up impromptu and unequipped with a crowd of stinky sheep. The manger is open to all.

I wonder if God sent the angels to the shepherds and the star for the wise men because he knew the shepherds wouldn't have a clue what the star was about and the wise men wouldn't believe the angel--or, at least, would not enjoy it as much as working out all their star position charts. There's a messenger that's right for each of us, and I think mine will show up while I'm sitting in the rocking chair by the Christmas tree, singing carols to two howling toddlers who just fell and bonked their heads again.

Crismis is Cumyn . . .

and D1 is happily decorating every house she is given access to with seasonal signs, on which she sometimes consults over spelling and sometimes not. She even got D2 into the game, laboriously copying out The Twelve Days of Christmas, although she only got as far as "Six geese a-laying" and D2 gave up the attempt midway through the fourth word.

This morning they asked me if I wanted to hear the song they had composed. They stood next to their advent calendar and sang for each day's creature: "Oh, the cow is white and the camel is peach and the bird is white and the sheep is gray and the angel is red . . . " all the way through to "and Mary is blue and Joseph is green and baby Jesus is white" "no, brown" "no, white" "no, brown."

At lunchtime they were rehearsing the angel chorus for the Christmas program and after reciting "Good will toward men," D1 asked, "But what about the ladies?"

So, a merry and inclusive Christmas to all of you!

Deck the Halls

In a fit of temporary insanity, we promised the kids we would decorate the house the day after Thanksgiving. My mind filled with hazy memories of a peaceful, solitary day deep-cleaning and artistically arranging treasured ornaments, interspersed with raids on the fridge for Thanksgiving leftovers, all to the soundtrack of favorite Christmas CDs.

We forgot that we would arise exhausted, that the children would be exhausted and cranky (and yet insistent on continuing as promised) and that their ideas of decorating would be very different from mine. Specifically, the older two's idea was to set things out equally spaced in straight lines or simply in a stack. The babies' idea was to throw everything on the floor and step on it, which I allowed them to do with the nativity blocks and the Melmac plates.

Having begun, though, we had to continue, and the future looked brighter after a nap. Thanks to a kind extended family member, we had a coupon for a free tree at a local farm. Their Majesties accompanied us in the truck, and we tromped through the woods in a brief and not-too-picky quest for the perfect tree. (Still a definite step up from tromping through the aisles of the hardware store.)

Once we returned home and had done sufficient battle to erect and put lights on the tree, we could move forward with the real decorations.
As always, the beads were immensely popular. We stuck to the non-breakable decorations this year. The kids insisted on having the overhead lights out most of the time, and D3 especially enjoyed basking in the glow from the tree, exclaiming, "Light!" (Today D4 picked up the nativity block with the star on it and exclaimed, "Light!")

We wound up with some not-too-hot apple cider. And then we shoved everyone in bed very quickly and collapsed. Not quite Hallmark, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.

However, the idea of taking Advent slowly and adding the decorations gradually is looking better all the time.

Alas

I was wrong about the absence of giant inflated figures this year. Apparently everyone just waited a couple of weeks to put them up. (Well, two weeks is better than all month.)

And the people across the street have put up two hideous giant figures. Their lights shine in my bedroom window at night.

I'd like to sneak over there and stab them repeatedly. But it's the home of the chief of police.

Probably not a good idea.

Advent Activities

One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is the Advent box. Inside there was a box to open each day before Christmas; each box contained a small toy or object and a slip of paper with a related devotional. This is perfect for the preschool age, for whom the primary excitement about Christmas is the opening, regardless of what is inside. Around here, the grownups are very, very tired by bedtime and for anything beyond teeth-brushing and pajamas to happen, the energy has to come from the kids.

I don't know where my mother got the original idea--out of some Christian magazine, I presume. Over time I decided I disliked the specific devotionals we used, as they had no coherent organizing principle. I hate random sequences of Nice Thoughts, which is why I never read devotional books. But I loved the excitement of the new box to open every night.

So I wrote my own, naturally. Mine is organized by first going through key Old Testament stories chronologically, bringing out the portion that foreshadows Christ. Then it looks at specific prophecies, and in the final week before Christmas reads through the Christmas story in short sections. To make it even easier to get through on the spot, I even copied in most of the scriptures. (Although they're in KJV because we like the way it sounds read aloud, but others might prefer a more modern translation.)

We did this first two years ago, but I didn't have it all prepared in advance and didn't have enough small boxes, so I sort of recycled the boxes through and they never got the excitement of seeing the Whole Thing together at once. It wasn't prepared enough to use at all last year. This year I'm down to locating two more objects into boxes and we're done, and then it should be easy to use for all subsequent years. Little jewelry and chocolate boxes are the best, as they look decorative without needing to be wrapped. If you wrap the whole big box in pretty paper, it can sit under the tree and look festive and stay handy all month long.

For those with older children, Mama Squirrel has put up a very intriguing looking Advent Calendar using Advent as a time of spiritual preparation.