Undecorating

The Christmas decorations are all down and boxed up, waiting to go back into the attic.  My living room looks bare without the enormous tree taking up the space in front of the back window. That came down Sunday, after I spent Saturday removing all the ornaments I could reach. John had to get up on the ladder to remove the top ones, and he had to take the tree apart. It is now boxed up and back in the closet for next year. This took some time and effort, and there was a bit of discussion in which John promised me I could hire someone to put the tree up and take it down next year. I think he meant it as more of a threat, or at least a Dire Warning, but I would be happy to hire someone who would not be in a position to criticize my choice in Christmas trees unless he wanted to get his butt fired, and a bad write-up on Angie’s list to boot. I’m just saying. 

The rest of the undecorating is pretty much my job, because I’m the one who has picked most of the trinkets, except for the ones we inherited from Eloise. It’s not hard, just time consuming and a little sad. The time consuming part is due to my having over 200 tree ornaments, some of which go in their own little boxes and some in the big plastic ornament storage boxes with dividers, and for some of them I cannot remember which is which. Then I have to figure out which crystal angel goes in which blue box, and which Hummel angel goes in which printed box, and which boxes go up in the attic and which stay down. I should make myself a list, but I would only lose the list.

The sad part is the solo cup ball. Years ago I worked with a little girl, C, who was severely physically disabled due to an infection in utero. The first Christmas I worked with her, her family gave me a Christmas present - a big ball made out of several dozen clear plastic drink cups with Christmas lights strung through each one. They’re called patio balls, and I had never seen one before, but her grandparents made them to sell, and giving them away actually cost them potential income. I thought it was the most hideous thing I had ever seen, but I brought it home carefully, and that night I hung it on the porch. John will put up lights on the porch sometimes, but he doesn’t like to, so I thought I’d at least have something lit out there. Then I went across the street to the mailbox.

When I turned around again I was startled. The light fixture that looked so - unusual - in the daylight glistened beautifully in the dark. I would never have believed it.

C’s story is a sad one. After a few years, she had a bad seizure and fell into a coma. Eventually her parents had to make the hard decision whether to continue extraordinary life-extending measures or to let her go. Fortunately, they were supported by their church in their decision.

I went to C’s funeral, feeling angry. I watched her two brothers running around playing, and I could picture C as she should have been. When the pastor got up to speak, I folded my arms and thought, “This had better be good.”

The pastor read the verse from Matthew 19, verse 14: Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." He spoke about how much C’s brief life had meant to him, and how he had learned from her. My anger slipped away. I don’t know how her parents felt, but I think if it had been me, and if I found anything at all comforting, it would not be words about how God needed another angel in Heaven, but a reassurance that my loved one’s life, brief as it may have been, had an impact on people here.

C would be something like 20 years old by now, if she had lived. My patio ball, carefully treasured, has survived and hangs on my porch every year, a beautiful light that, like C, shines briefly from an unprepossessing exterior, before it goes away.

Standing Guard

D’Artagnan is now a little too chunky to climb the TV armoire like he did last year, so here he is standing guard over the new artificial Christmas tree, with a friend.

D'Artagnan Style

Eatin' Goober Peas

Yesterday my UMW circle held our traditional Christmas potluck dinner. I had signed up to make scalloped potatoes, but decided to make a similar dish, made with frozen hashed brown potatoes instead. The recipe is far from heart healthy, being made with butter, sour cream, canned cream soup, and cheese, but the potluck is only once a year.

As I grated up the two and a half cups of cheese, a ditty ran through my head, “cheese, cheese, cheese cheese, eatin’ cheddar cheese”. Those aren’t the real words, I immediately realized. The song is “Goober Peas”, and the lyrics run, “Peas, peas, peas, peas, eatin’ goober peas/ Goodness how delicious, eatin’ goober peas.” I had learned the song as a child in summer day camp, on one of those endless bus rides to the beach or the lighthouse or wherever else we went. I had vaguely realized that the song dated from the U.S. Civil War, and that “goober peas” are peanuts, but standing in my kitchen grating two and a half cups of cheese, it hit me that the men who sang that cheerful little ditty were starving.

As wikipedia puts it,

The lyrics of "Goober Peas" are a fairly accurate description of daily life during the last few years of the Civil War for Southerners. After being cut off from the rail lines and their farm land, they had little to eat aside from boiled peanuts (or "goober peas") which often served as an emergency ration.

There I was, standing in my kitchen trying to fend off extra calories. I had made a few changes in the recipe, using light sour cream instead of regular and a reduced calorie version of cheddar cheese soup (which promised no trans fats) instead of the cream of mushroom soup. Since I was using cheddar cheese soup, I substituted Monterrey Jack cheese for the cheddar, and tried to find a two percent version with no luck. I also substituted green onions for regular, which had no effect on the calorie count but just seemed to go better with potatoes and sour cream. And stuck in my head was a cheerful song sung by men who had no idea where their next meal was coming from, or when they would get to go home, or even if they had homes to go back to. That wasn’t the sort of thing I thought about as a child. War was a game we played, when we acted out the original version of role playing games, the kind children played in their back yards by saying, “Let’s play Army”. We played a lot of those, Robin Hood and his merry men, pioneers going west, cowboys and Indians. Do children even do that anymore? I don’t think we ever played Yankees and Rebels.

Many versions of the casserole I was making  call for topping it off with crumbs, usually corn flake crumbs but I did see one version with Ritz cracker crumbs. We don’t have corn flakes, but we do have the crackers. I pondered leaving off the crumbs, but decided to go ahead with the whole shebang. It seems appropriate. “Shebang” is a Civil War term, originally a name for the lean-to’s that prisoners of war built themselves if they could. Otherwise, they went without shelter. I learned this in a visit to the National Prisoner of War museum in Andersonville, Georgia. 

I’m a cheery little Christmas elf. The casserole smelled delicious, though, and two thirds of it disappeared later at the dinner. Before dinner we stood in a circle, held hands and said grace. The woman presiding suggested we do like at Thanksgiving, and go around the circle and each name one thing she was thankful for. Most of us named something family related, particularly that family members were returning home for Christmas. I did not say that I am thankful that I am not living in the midst of war wondering where my next meal was coming from, much as I am. I said I’m grateful that my son, too, will be home for Christmas. And so I am.

Why?

Why do the Swarovski people put six inch long ribbon loops on their crystal Christmas angels?

And why don't I just cut the loops off and put regular hooks through the metal eye that holds the ribbon instead?

Why is it that even when I turn the hook the other way, the back sides of my Christmas tree ornaments always face out?

And why is it in over forty years of buying my own ornaments, I haven’t learned to buy the ones that don’t have plain backs?

Why is it that I can remember the place and year that I bought each of my souvenir ornaments, but can’t remember my computer passwords?

And why don’t I just make passwords like “drumAK2002”?

Why do the cats prefer stealing ornaments off the tree to playing with their own cat toys?

And why don’t I just put hooks on their cat toys and hang them on the lower two feet of the tree?

Why did I even buy the ornaments that I think are so unattractive that I relegate them to the back of the tree?

And why is the back of the tree more thickly decorated than the front?

Why am I keeping the picture frame ornament with 1988 on it that holds a picture of Neal even though I have to keep taping it together? (Oh, who am I kidding, even I know the answer to that one.)

And why does it bother me that he will never be 11 years old again when I’m actually happy that I won’t?

Loot

My son spends Christmas Eve with his dad and stepmother’s family when he is in town. His stepmother’s family has a large Christmas Eve family brunch and that’s when they do their gift exchange. In the past, John and I have spent Christmas Eve going to see the bonfires on the levee and then to the 11 PM service at our church. We usually get home around the time that Neal does, so in the past we have opened our gifts around midnight and then slept late the next morning before having yeast-raised pancakes for breakfast.

This year, Neal decided to stay overnight with his dad. He came back to our house after noon Christmas Day, giving him just enough time to fix his spinach madeleine in time for our 2 PM dinner. So we didn’t open gifts until 3:30 or so.

When you get to be my age and have to devote a lot of time to divesting yourself of all the stuff you have collected in a life time so as not to be overwhelmed with it, the fun part of exchanging presents is giving gifts, not getting them. Four years ago at Christmas, present buying was easy. Then as now, LSU was selected for the BCS Championship Game, which, just as now, was in New Orleans. So gift selection was simple: I spent a small fortune on Stub Hub buying 2 tickets to the game, one for Neal and one for John. 

I put John’s ticket in a small box, wrapped in LSU wrapping paper. I put that box in a larger box, wrapped in neutral paper, and put that box in a larger box, and so on five boxes deep. They read “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Valentine’s Day”, “Happy Anniversary”, “Happy Birthday” and “Happy Father’s Day”, in order of decreasing size.

For Neal, I did the same thing, with “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Valentine’s Day”, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day”, “Happy Easter” and “Happy Birthday”, in order of decreasing size. Only inside the smallest box was a gift card for an electronic’s store.

I keep forgetting my son isn’t a spoiled teen any more. I was expecting him to anticipate a ticket and whine about it (good-naturedly) when none was forthcoming. However, he simply congratulated John on getting the ticket and admired his own gifts (an LSU tie and some electronic device he had wanted). Later, I had him help me set the table (another Christmas tradition, since table setting was his first chore as a toddler). After handing him the napkins and silver, I handed him a sign I had made thanking me for the ticket, with the ticket clipped to it, and said, “And you are going to need this sign to hold up when you go to the game.”

They were both ecstatic, as was I when LSU held up their end of the bargain and walloped the Ohio State University for the national championship.

This year I made it clear early on not to expect a repeat. Tickets are selling  on Stub Hub for about the amount of my monthly Social Security check. John wanted the hammer drill and Neal wanted an iPod Nano. I also got some surprise gifts: a cashmere scarf for Neal and a gift card for an office supple store for John, who needs a new printer. John also found Neal a collapsible cart to take to the market, which is several blocks from his flat in London. Neal was thrilled; he and his roommate had been saying they needed such a thing. My husband shares his mom’s gifts for finding handy gadgets. 

Neal bought John the shredder he wanted, in which I took a proprietary interest, since I probably used our existing shredder more than John does. The new one reduces paper to confetti, 8 sheets at a time, and takes on CD’s, DVD”s and credit cards as well.

Neal gave me some coasters. Yes, John got a fancy shredder suitable for a small office and I got coasters. They are handmade, marble coasters, purchased at Agra, India, made from the same marble as the Taj Mahal and inset with lapis lazuli, turquoise, tiger stone, and other semi-precious jewels, each one a little different from the last, but I have fun telling people that my son gave John a new shredder and me a set of coasters.

Not the kind that sing "Charlie Brown"

Neal also gave me the elephant for my elephant collection.

It is strange how events in my life tend to repeat. Many years ago, my dad gave me a set of coasters. It wasn’t exactly a gift, he just needed some to set his ever-present coffee cup on when he came to visit. The coasters were mass produced out of wood and cork, but they were precious to me and I hung on to them until they fell apart or got lost over the years. Now I have a replacement, from his grandson.

I love Christmas. 

Comings and Goings

Yesterday was supposed to be a happy day. My son was due to come home from London to spend a week with us before flying to Paris to spend New Year’s Eve with friends. His flight was due in a little after 6 PM and we were going to pick him up. We had offered, via email, to take him out for dinner on the way home, but he thought he might be too tired after 16 hours in the air so we bought cold cuts and made potato salad for a fast fix dinner once we got home.

I have finally become used to how little time I get to spend with my son on his visits here. Even when he’s staying with us, he stays up late, sleeps late, and goes to visit friends, his step-siblings families, and of course, his dad and stepmother. We pencil in a few lunches and/or dinners and wave at him as he goes by.

Yesterday morning John’s former boss called looking for a ride to a memorial service. One of John’s former coworkers, the former boss’s secretary, Jane*, had died. The memorial service was in Baker, not far from the airport, actually, at 3PM. The airport is on the opposite end of town from us. We could easily make it to the service, but then we’d have just enough time to bring former boss home, turn around, and head back to the airport. Either that, or former boss could come hang out at the airport with us. He decided to find his own ride.

This has been a very strange December. In addition to John’s uncle and coworker dying within a week of each other, the father of his sister’s oldest friend also died. We spent one Friday a week ago at his funeral in New Orleans. All three of these people had lived long lives. Jane, as the youngest, was about to turn 80. The tragedy in Jane’s story was that her younger daughter Kelly* had died just a few weeks before, of a drug overdose, after a life punctuated by trips to rehab and jail. Jane, who was already doing poorly, quit eating and refused a feeding tube. 

I never met Jane, but I felt as if I knew her. For at least a year, maybe longer, not a day went by without a Jane story from John. Jane was a character. She filled people’s lives with laughter, however unwittingly.

At the memorial service, I heard of another side to Jane. There was the younger Jane riding a horse, getting a music degree, and posing for a “beauty shot” in her bathing suit. There was the Jane who worked hard to support her daughters when she was left on her own. There was the Jane who made sure her grandchildren had hot meals while their mother, as her husband put it, “was away”. There was the Jane who always wanted to look good - and that led to a typical Jane story. One day she called a coworker to see if her could figure out what was wrong with her pencil sharpener. “Miss Jane, what is all this gunk?” he asked. “My eyeliner,” she replied.

Looking at pictures of all these Janes, I was surprised to see that she actually looked the way I expected. “Are you sure I never met her?” I asked John.

After the service, we made it to the airport with time to spare. Neal’s plane actually arrived a little early, in contrast to the flights coming in from the east which were badly delayed by storms. “Do you guys still want to go out to dinner?” he asked. It turned out he had run into some old friends in Dallas who were taking a different plane to Baton Rouge but were going to be at a local campus hangout, the Chimes, later in the evening. If we stopped there for dinner, we could then leave him with his friends and he’d grab a ride home later.

Okay, the cold cuts will keep. We had a nice leisurely dinner. Neal admired a ring I was wearing. “I’m glad you like it,” I said. “I’m leaving it to you in my will.”

“I’d rather have you. Can I swap it for you?”

 After dinner, Neal found his friends and we headed home with his luggage. On the way home, I had to laugh.

“This has to be a new record,” I told John. “He didn’t even make it home before leaving with his friends.”

Then I think of Jane and Kelly. My son is not on drugs, in and out of prison and rehab. He loves his family, all of his family. We’re lucky, all of us.

Life goes by so fast. There’s no time for keeping score.

*not her real name

Little Known Christmas Fact

When the Wise Men traveled to Bethlehem, they brought along a cat, who gave the infant in the stable the gift of comforting purrs.

It's a Wrap

My husband wanted a hammer drill for Christmas, specifically, a DeWalt hammer drill, not cordless, that Lowe’s had for a good price. We don’t do surprise presents - he took me to the shelf and pointed it out to me. A few weeks ago I went to the nearest Lowe’s to buy one. They had one left on the shelf, and it looked as if it had been previously opened, as the nearby clerk confirmed.

So I waited a few days, until the day of my ophthalmologist appointment, and went to another Lowe’s which is one exit down the road from there. They, too, had only one left on the shelf, and it was fastened with a wide piece of tape, but the tape looked as if it could have been the original packaging. So I bought it, and left it in the trunk of my car to await an appropriate time for me to bring it in the house and wrap it. (We don’t do surprises, but we pretend we do.)

I do not like wrapping packages. I'm not good at it, and don't like my uneven results. We used to have a store near us that did gift wrapping, but it went out of business when a Mailboxes, Etc (now The UPS Store) moved in a block away. For a while, another packing and shipping store had a gift wrap service, but they discontinued it a few years ago. So I am on my all thumbs own when it comes to wrapping. I use a lot of gift bags, but the drill is too heavy for that solution.

Wednesday, after driver safety class, John decided to go replace a front tire on his car that he was worried about. It was the perfect time for me to bring the drill in from the trunk, wrap it, and put it under the tree. As I wrapped the package, I heard rattling, which worried me.

That night, we went to Lowe’s for John to buy blades for his jigsaw, and I noticed the shelves were now restocked with drills, and that each package was fastened with  a flat plastic ribbon circling the package in both directions. I started worrying that I had bought a drill that had previously been opened and returned.

So Thursday morning, I snuck the package out from under the tree and hid it, plus the receipt, in a bag of old ornaments that I had promised to take to the thrift store.  I headed to Lowe’s with my wrapped drill and told my story to the customer service rep. She agreed they could swap it out, but she had to unwrap the box first to make sure it wasn’t damaged, because if it was, I’d have to take it back to the store from which I purchased it.

Once she unwrapped it, she asked, “What makes you think it’s been opened before?” 

“Because it just has that one piece of tape and the ones you have on the shelves now have binding on them.”

“Well, let me check with someone from that department.” A few minutes later someone else came by, looked at the package, and said, “Thats the way they pack them.”

“Then why is it rattling?”

“That’s the way they pack them.” He offers to open the box and check that everything is there, which it was, rather loosely packed but still in its plastic bag. He also explains that when they stock the shelves, they are only required to put the plastic binding I saw on items priced over $100; somebody may have chosen to put it on the smaller items, but they don’t come from the factory that way. “We’ll take it back if you want. It’s up to you.”

I decide to take it home. The clerk threw out my torn wrapping paper for me and put another piece of tape on the box. Now I had the problem of finding another opportunity to wrap the box again. Fortunately it came sooner than I thought,when hubby needed to make yet another trip to Lowe’s to get new weatherstripping for the front door. As soon as he was out of the driveway, I grabbed the box from the trunk, rewrapped it in the same kind of wrapping paper and ribbon, and stuck a tag on it and put it back under the tree. By this time, I've had enough practice with it that it actually came out looking decent.

It doesn't matter. Next year, I’m getting  him a fruit basket.

Death At Christmas

My husband’s Uncle Jack died early Monday morning. He was the husband of John’s father’s younger sister, whom I met once when we stayed at their house on the west coast on our way to Alaska for a cruise. They were extremely hospitable to us and we enjoyed our visit. Aunt Mary’s cooking was better than anything we had on the cruise.

Uncle Jack had been ill for over a year. It started with anemia from internal bleeding, which led to a stroke. He never recovered entirely, and had a series of mini-strokes until he finally lapsed into a semi-comatose state and stopped eating. His health directive ruled out tube feeding, and in a few days he was gone. The immediate family is having a small, private memorial service, so we sent flowers and a letter of condolence, feeling that sense of helplessness you do when you are far away and can’t be of any practical use.

Uncle Jack’s death reminded me of other deaths my family has had at Christmas. When I was nine my Grandma L, my stepmom’s mother, died of kidney disease after a long illness.  (Since she was a Grandma, she seemed very old to me, but was really not even 60 years old when she died.) We took down the tree the day after Christmas that year, but thereafter my mom did her best to make every Christmas festive for us. She’s the one who set the example I follow of decorating everything in the house that can’t actually move out of the way. She also baked cookies (the rest of the year she wasn’t much of a baker) and prepared special dishes for days in advance. Each year mom would complain that she hadn’t been able to get us much for Christmas, but I was always pleased with my gifts, and looking back, I appreciate that she did not let Christmas become a sad time of the year for the whole family when I know she missed her mother very much.

Not quite ten years ago my godfather died the day before Christmas Eve, from a fall down the basement stairs. He was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and was not supposed to go near the stairs, but probably forgot. I wanted to go to Ohio for the funeral, but a snowstorm was moving in and my godmother pleaded with me not to. I didn’t want to add to her worries, so once again, we sent flowers and our sympathy. 

I know that people die every day, and that some of those deaths will be at Christmas, just as some will be on some otherwise nondescript day in mid-August. The absence of our loved ones is no less felt at Christmas because their deaths occurred at another time of year. Still, when I hear of a death at this time of year, the little kid part of me wants to holler, “That’s not fair.” People should live to see one last Christmas.

Peace Offering

Truffle is a warm and friendly cat with me. He is especially warm and friendly when everything is going his way: when I feed him his treats, when he gets to snuggle on the electric blanket, when he’s sitting on the edge of my chair getting his ears scratched.

He is not warm and friendly when he has to see the vet. That’s when he turns into 13 pounds of snarling muscle. At least, I think he weighs 13 pounds. At his most recent check-up, last week, it was impossible to get him on the scale. It was impossible to take his temperature. It was just possible to give him his shots with both vets and one assistant holding him down. Dr. Kate was also able to check his heart rate while he was wrapped in a towel snarling at us. “You would think his heart would be racing, “ she said, “but it’s not.” Great, I’m the mom to Hannibal Lector cat.

So I decided that since I am retired and have time for these things, I would make the vet some homemade goodies for Christmas. The vet’s office is less than half a mile from my house, so it was no trouble to drop something off. And what could be more appropriate than homemade truffles? Made with dark chocolate and decorated with white chocolate and chopped macadamias, they would reference our black and white cat, D’Artagnan, as well. Isn’t that how cute?

I have a recipe for no-cook chocolate truffles, but I decided to try something new, specifically, the Chocolate Truffles Recipe from the Simply Recipes website. It looked easy, especially if I skipped the optional flavors and went with basic vanilla. I could roll one third of them in cocoa, one third in chopped macadamias, and drizzle one third with melted white chocolate. How easy is that? as Ina Garten would say.

I keep forgetting that Ina Garten is a professional chef, and I’m not. Still, the recipe is easy. However, it does not make as many truffles as the recipe says: I was only able to make 25 of the size shown. It’s also harder to roll the truffles into balls than it is with my no-cook version. We have a melon baller someplace in the attic that would have made the job easier, but if I went to look for it I'd be there until Easter. 

After they’re formed, the truffles have to sit in the refrigerator overnight before you can roll them in toppings. They aren’t really hard to make, just fussy.

Rolling one third of them in cocoa was easy. I was even able to round them off some more. Rolling in the macadamia nuts was harder because no matter how finely I thought I had them chopped, I’d keep finding big pieces that wouldn’t stick. Drizzling with white chocolate was where I ran into trouble. I had to guess at the proportions of cream and baking chips that would let me drizzle yet still harden as it cooled. I guessed wrong. Even worse, my attempts to drizzle a few lines over each truffle resulted in blobs rather than stripes.

Okay, they are homemade, right? We aren’t going to worry about the little stuff. I packed them into a tin and took them over to the vet’s office. “Thank you”, said Kim, the receptionist, as I suggested she might want to keep them in the refrigerator. “What are they?”

“Truffles,” I answered. A brief puzzled expression passed over her face and then she realized I meant the candy and opened the box. (After all, I’m the mom to Hannibal Lector cat.)

So I think Truffle will be welcome there for another year, but next year, I'm sticking to cookies.

Christmas Decorating

When I am daydreaming about Christmas treats, one of my favorite daydreams is that someday I will be able to hire a floral designer to decorate my whole house for Christmas. Since my hunch is that would cost my entire budget for my someday Australia trip, it is likely to remain just that, a daydream. In the meantime, I try to accomplish what I can can, leaving my house with that loving hands, done at home look, blended slightly with that chewed on by the cat look. Neither look makes it into the Christmas editions of my favorite magazines.

The cake recipe is from Southern Living. Usually my cakes don't look this pretty,
but the directions and pictures were easy to follow.

The dining room, Christmas 2004. 

One year I spent a small fortune on a matching wreath, swags, and wall hanging baskets for the front porch. The calico wreaths someone had given me for Christmas 25 years or so before had given up the ghost, several live plants had died in the wall hanging baskets, and I decided I could spend some money on decor that would last me another 25 years. The swags hung from the original front porch light fixtures. Then the light fixtures broke, and I couldn’t find replacements with quite the same configuration. That actually worked out well, because I put a swag on the back door and the other on the light fixture at the side door, and voila, the whole house looked cohesive. (“Cohesive” is a decorator term meaning the opposite of that mix of stuff you inherited from grandma, stole from mom, and found while dumpster diving.)

This year, hubby made a live wreath from the trimmings from our enormous Christmas tree, and complained about the wreath hanger making marks on the frame of the storm door. So now the live wreath is on the back door, the faux wreath is on the side door, and one swag is back in front.

The poor little Christmas cactus is hanging in there.

John's live wreath, with a purchased bow

The side door

If the outdoors looks cohesive, the indoors is a different story. The indoors looks like a moderate sized explosion took place in Hobby Lobby. The way things look in my head and they way they look in three dimensional space is laughably different.

There is, for instance, the tree. Thirty seven years ago, one of my little clients gave me a beautiful velvet ornament she and her mother had made for me. It was a turquoise color, that over the years faded to a seafoam green and now to a beige with a tinge of green, but the lace foil and synthetic pearls are still as good as ever and I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It did, however, spark the idea to have a tree with all unique ornaments. Most of the ornament sets I have are themes: the old Sears Christmas Around the World ornaments, The Wizard of Oz ornaments, A Christmas Carol ornaments, nursery rhymes ornaments, but the ones that are duplicates are left over from another tree in another house. In someone else’s hands, that might have looked charming; in mine, it mostly looks mismatched. Since a lot of the ornaments are gifts, they are staying. I can actually remember each person who gave them to me, and part of the fun of decorating the tree is remembering each person and hoping they are doing well.

The bottom is empty because of the cats.

The Nutcracker tree in the back room

Then there are the collections, most of which are also gifts of mugs, candle holders, and ornaments too heavy to hang on the tree. There’s an angel collection, a snowman collection, and a Santa collection. This year, I added an impulse purchase to the Santa collection: a two and a half foot tall Native American inspired Father Christmas that the owner of the Native American shop in Cherokee, North Carolina let me buy for 20% off after I drooled over it for half an hour. When I put it on the bookcase with the rest of the Santas, they looked like the mismatched impulse purchases they are. Finally, I moved them across the room to the built in bookcase and distributed them among the shelves so they are still grouped together, but a little less dissonant. I think. The angels are on top of the first bookcase and the snowmen are on the desk.

I think he needs a sled.

Finally, there’s the mantle. The mantel sports faux greenery, cast iron stocking hangers, candlesticks, and this year, the Santa picture that I can never find the right spot for. There used to be a perfect spot for the Santa picture, on the wall that is now the home for the armoire. There is another suitable spot for Santa on the back wall, but that’s where we put the tree. So Santa is now hanging on the mantle, only a few inches too high, and hubby is tired of messing with it. I can’t blame him.

The stockings in the middle are handmade. The one on the left, my mom crocheted, and the one on the right, my MIL made for Neal.

So maybe someday I will hit the lottery, hire that floral designer, and have a house that will make you all green with envy. In the meantime, well, it’s Christmas. Isn’t that the time for loving hands, done at home?

Another "it seemed like a good idea at the time" purchase,
a souvenir of Branson, on the baking center in the kitchen

Advent

Wrapping

In packages of tinsel flimsy

Hopes that this will be the one time the children

Cease their quarrels,

And wrapping, in sturdy boxes, strapping taped protection 

Against the guilt of being miles and years way 

From a place no longer home,

And wrapping 

The hope that a small gift will arm against

The jealousy of friendship

And wrapping

The boxed reminders that the year just passed 

Is counted out in broken promises, lost hopes,

And goals as distant as Atlantis,

I remember

That in just such demon days

As winter swallowed daylight

Seekers preached

The birth of the Sun,

The birth of the Son,

The birth of the Light.

Advent,1984

Christmas Letters

Christmas letters have a bad reputation. Miss Manners does not like them, many readers of the old Ann Landers and Dear Abby advice columns of years past wrote in to say how much they despise them, and one year MSNBC even had their readers share their most notorious ones. One wonders from which dregs of humanity those folks who actually send those letters are recruited, since everyone professes not to like them. So it is with much trepidation I confess, I like Christmas letters.

I have liked Christmas letters since I first started receiving them 40 something years ago, and only started sending out my own six years years ago, so I don’t think I’m being self-serving when I say I like them. My Christmas letter started out as for my siblings only, one year when I was facing surgery shortly after Christmas and needed to spread the news. In the past two years I have added one other person to the list, my godmother, the only surviving member of my older generation of relatives.

The MSNBC feature described Christmas letters as “a litany of bombastic bragging disguised as holiday cheer.” To which I say, “Yeah, so?” If you write me to say you bought your husband a new Lexus for Christmas, it doesn’t take anything away from me unless you stole it out of my driveway. (Which you couldn’t have, since I don’t own one.) If you have a new job, a promotion, or the world’s cutest puppy, I will raise my glass in a toast and then drool over the puppy pictures. What exactly is wrong with getting other people’s good news?

It is precisely when I am feeling my lowest and most depressed that I seek out other people’s good news. I used to say that if I could be the good fairy at a child’s christening, I would give that child the gift of being able to rejoice in other people’s good fortune, because then she would always have something to be happy about.

So while we are on the subject of bombastic bragging disguised as holiday cheer, I will share a story about my son, although it didn’t happen at Christmas. He was in the computer club in his high school, and the club was chosen to participate in a contest in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, they couldn’t take everybody, and my son, a lowly freshman, was left behind. “They’re even going to get pocket money,” he grumped. “A concept with which you are totally unfamiliar”, I added dryly. He actually was chosen as an alternate, but since everyone else remained hale and hearty, he didn’t get to go.

His buddies won second place, however, as he came home to tell me excitedly when they got back to school. “They even got a trophy!” he added. “They kicked butt.”

I used to say that if I could be the good fairy at a child’s christening, I would give that child the gift of being able to rejoice in other people’s good fortune. Then one day, I realized that’s exactly what I had done.

How’s that for bombastic bragging?

Reindeer Games

Yesterday one of my coworkers gave all of us tree ornaments she made - reindeer made from wine corks. I usually love homemade tree ornaments, but not this one. It was well made. Obviously she had put a lot of care into it. I just didn't like it. Four wine corks glued together with plastic eyes and nose and pipe cleaner antlers and tail just look like a Kindergarten project to me.

Naturally I thanked her and brought it home safely (I thought) tucked into a gift bag with a gift one of my little kids gave me. When I got home, the reindeer was in three parts, the front leg and head having broken off in transit. So that should have been the end of the story. Just toss the three pieces in the trash. My coworker will not be visiting my house at Christmas, and even if she did, I had a handy and true explanation for the ornament's absence.

For some reason, I couldn't do it. The pieces had been hot glued together. I have a hot glue gun (somewhere), and could see where to glue them together to put them back. I dithered back and forth between fixing the ornament and tossing it out. It sat on the kitchen counter all night. By morning I had come to my senses and tossed the reindeer remains in the trash.

In the meantime, I've been reflecting on white lies and pretenses. Would it be a better or worse or just different world if we always told the truth about what we think about things? There are people who think it would be better. They have no hesitation about telling you that the ornament that you spent time and thought creating for them is not to their taste. I've noticed these people tend not to like it if you are honest back. So I'm not sure I want to see a world in which we don't say we're thrilled with the present, or that a friend's new haircut is becoming, or that our children's artwork is the cutest ever.

On the other hand, we all work at honing our listening skills to sort out the real from the insincere. One of my social worker coworkers is so obviously tactful in her dealings with me that if she says, "Susie's mom has some concerns she expressed to me", I automatically translate that into "Susie's mom showed up in my office with a lawyer and a gun". I think most people would know not to give me 6 more assorted wine cork reindeer ornaments after hearing me say, "I wonder where people get those ideas. I would never in a million years have thought to make something like that." Unfortunately, some people are no good at reading the subtle signs. It would be easier to negotiate through a world in which people say what they really think, but it would be harsher. I've seen that world on message boards I frequent, and I don't want to live there.

But occasionally, especially at Christmas, I might want to visit.