Incandescent Christmas

Christmas night, I fell ill. We were at the apex of all the festivities...our children, grandchildren, my Mama and Ken's Daddy and sister's family were here...there was a groaning table of breakfast food and beverages, lots of joy and happiness. The tree was jammed with presents...it looked like a Santa dump truck had just unloaded there. We held off opening presents until the food was eaten (I mean, cheese grits can't wait). Delicious, fruity mimoses were passed around to the adults, chocolate milk to the kids. We were all ready when it came time to open gifts. This is our tradition: presents are passed out, but opening starts with the youngest and ends up with the eldest. That way, the Mamas can corral their children's gifts and we all get to see and enjoy everyone's prizes. In this family, that gives room for plenty of ribbing and laughter. I opened my gift and it was a lovely, framed picture of our grandchildren, plus a wooden box that had this burned into the top: "You are loved." Inside were personal notes from my folk, even down to the littlest grands. As I read them, the tears poured. It was the best gift imaginable. But my tears started sticking...the nose clogged, breathing became more labored, the joints began aching. It was if my tears spawned an illness. Thankfully, there was lots of help cleaning up -- I didn't even move from my comfy chair. Everyone parted to their own homes, but by midnight, I was one sick puppy. Throat sore, sinuses clogged and aching, I went into my cocoon and stayed there for two days. Ken is the best of nurses, so I had all my needs met, even the ones I didn't want. 

I am overdramatic about pretty much everything, but in the times that I have been very sick, I come to a cresting point when I think, "Maybe this is going to kill me." And I always wonder what it would feel like to just be normal again. Will that ever happen? Then I start promising God I'll do this-and-that differently if I get to live another day. I know He redeemed me with all my sins and warts, but I also know that I could do better. At 5:00 am this morning, I was hurting so bad I thought I might as well go stand in the cold and let the dog out. Then I could let myself die, because who knows when Ken might remember to walk the dog. I peeled myself off the bed, let her out (no shoes, only a nightgown on, heck, it was 30 degrees out, a heat wave compared to the last three days). She took her time sprinkling on three hibernating flowerbeds, did some serious business at the edge of the lawn, then decided to have herself a walkabout. Of  course she would do that when I'm not dressed and it's freezing outside, though that dog is usually attached to me like velcro. She even glanced around at me as she casually trotted across the neighbor's yard, as if to say, "Haha! You can't catch me now." Though the whole neighborhood seemed to be in deep winter lockdown, I can't imagine I didn't wake someone up with my hollering. I was able to retrieve her before my toes got frostbitten; all the while hoping the neighbors didn't wake to see the crazy lady running across their lawn. 

Now that I'm emerging from the cocoon, I feel the warm afterglow of Christmas. What blessings, what joy, what goodness I see all about me. There are also troubling things-- relationships that need mending, things to be anxious about, a church friend dying today (he seemed hale and hearty a week and a half ago as he thanked me for some decorating I did.  We never know when we will get the call, do we?) There's a time to say yes and a time to say no. I did a lot of "No" in the last few weeks, purposely slowing down from the most hectic fall in recent memory. Sometimes I resent the necessity of food. It doesn't seem to matter how much or how little I eat of it, I'm still fat. So much trouble. 

As a Christian, I have at my core the heart that God gave me at salvation, not of my own merit or my own goodness, because heavens to Murgatroyd, I ain't got none of that. Emmanuel, God with us, who created this amazing place and this body that is beautiful, despite my errant ways. Our cracked, fallen world cried out for redemption and He answered. He calls the high, the mighty, the lowly...but I believe He saves the scumbags, because they're the most impossible, after all. Look at the manger, the simple shepherds, the poor mother and father...the King arrives unexpectedly, in humility and common flesh. That's how we find Him, when we strip down to repentance and need. Glory, in the dirt.  

Twas the Night Before Christmas

My Daddy grew up without much Christmas. He also grew up without shoes and enough food. His parents had 8 children, but PawPaw was shiftless (PawPaw was a rolling stone...wherever he laid his hat was his home) and didn't provide anything monetarily to the family. He was apparently an amazing salesman. He would buy an old nag of a horse, fix her up and then sell her. One time he sold a mutt dog, because he cleaned it up and talked its virtues up to the buyer. They didn't have Goldendoodles back then, at least not on purpose. Selling a moth-eaten, lost dog to a stranger might indicate how persuasive he was. Only the Lord knows how He invented my Daddy, because he was nothing like his own father, praise be...

When he and my Mama married, they had very little in the way of money. Daddy worked hard at the Post Office, while Mama took her Domestic Engineer role very seriously. She wanted Christmas to be special for him, so she carefully bought ornaments and decor over the years. She told me that she wanted him to have the childhood he never had. Then Daddy would go over-the-top with gifts for her. The house was full of good smells, a fresh tree, decorations everywhere. It is a mystery, how our one Christmas album (Perry Como) survived decades of playing.  

We would always visit my Aunt Ellen, either Christmas Eve or Christmas day. My favorite cousin, Susan, was everything good about cousin love. She was (is) a whiz-brain, played card games like a card shark, and was an incredible athlete. She grew up with four mangey boy creatures and learned grit and sass very early. At Aunt Ellen and Uncle Fred's house there were always tangerines, bananas, yummy fudge. A cloud of aromatic cigar smoke drifted through the house. I thought it smelled somewhat like coffee and leather. I love that fragrance. We would play and eat all day, then head home. Daddy always drove by a church every year that had a life-sized nativity scene out front. Then as us kids were getting woozy, full of candy, fruit and mac-n-cheese...Daddy would say that he thought he saw Santa up above. We would snap to, desperately looking for signs of that sled or the reindeer. When we got home, they would put us to bed and tell us that Santa wouldn't come if we were still awake. Daddy was as excited as we were. He never lost his inner child and we loved him for it. 

The gifts were put under the tree while us kids tried to sleep. Our parents usually got us up, late Christmas Eve, to open them. There's nothing quite like that feeling...the anticipation, the joy of it. After all three of us married, our folks kept to the tradition of Christmas Eve. No matter the size of their house, the whollllllle family comes for Christmas Eve supper and to open gifts. That number is somewhere around 64/65 people now...started with three little souls and now we're filling and subduing the earth. This year it's gonna be chili and all the fixin's. We will crowd up in Mama's small house, jam up the road in front, eat, laugh and catch up. I see the importance of that cousin love...all our grandkids are now becoming great friends with each other. At every juncture, we get announcements of more weddings, more babies, job changes, moves, hopes, dreams. Our folks blazed a trail and they have a legacy that is following right behind them...a strong wake whose ripples just keep on going. 

Who could have imagined, all those years ago, those many Christmas Eves, the impact that two people would have on the world? Simple work, humble abode, steadfast and faithful ones who did their best, bowed their heads to pray, talked about (and to) Jesus when they rose up and when they went to bed. It wasn't fancy or complicated, just real faith in a real God, walked out. Some say that the Church is full of hypocrites. Truth is, we're all hypocrites, with our pride and self-promotion and posturing. If we could work up being as good as God, what would we need Jesus for? I'm naughty, even when I'm nice. But hope springs eternal, for the baby boy king came to redeem us from the pit and the pits. 

Let's see if I can find me some Perry Como on Pandora, where there are clouds of music and no grooves in the records...  

Emmanuel

It's never good for me to decorate other peoples' houses before I gussy up my own. All the juice gets used up. I require male help getting the decorations out of the barn right now as well (that's from all those years of muling it myself, producing hernias and such). God gives that decorating bug to people, not everyone, mind you. I was a young gal when my Mama let me take over the tree decorating. It's an inborn, inherent knack for placing the goods in just the right spot on the tree, but apparently it can also be taught. I don't trust anyone to do it, however. Anyone. My MawMaw would say that's just pride, and it probably is. Even though there are those in the world that do it better than me, they're not here to do it, so I suppose I will labor at it until my pine-tar-sticky hands fall off. 

But not this year. Here it is, December 6, with only less than three weeks 'til Christmas and my house is still frumpy and undecorated. Last year it looked like the Christmas Bomb went off, even before Thanksgiving, with the tour of homes stopping here. Past years have always involved some sort of early event that forced my decorating hand. I do that, lining up company, events, extravaganzas in all areas of my life (not just Christmas), to keep me from being lazy. People always tell me that I need to cut back, but the inevitable thing that happens is that if I don't book myself uber-tight and keep ten plates spinning, then nothing gets done. It's sad that I wasn't born with a high degree of self-discipline. I have to hem myself in like a hog so I'll actually do things. Then I end up stressed or sick and miss my people. It's a problem. 

I think I'm Grinchy this year. That is a terrible thing to have to admit. Where are you, Christmas? I know where He is. Maybe I need to take a timeout and set down with Him a spell. Remember the Magnum Mysterium, think about the vortex of time, where He flung the planets across the Milky Way, where He saw and knew it all, from the first pinprick of creation, through the fall of man, to His grand plan to redeem a people for Himself. To think upon a star, signs in the sky, a king brought in the humblest of ways. God as man, the great mystery. Let us ponder...