Posts from — December 2009

This is my last post of 2009, so I wanted to say something significant, something to sum up the year and point with optimism to the days ahead. Instead, my thoughts turned to New Year traditions. A lot of them are pretty silly, when you think about it.

Take “Auld Lang Syne,” for instance.

Why do we sing this? Apparently, back in 1929, Guy Lombardo’s band played the song at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City after hearing some Scottish immigrants singing it. The Waldorf Astoria continued the tradition,  playing Lombardo’s version of the song every year until 1976. Radio (and then television) allowed the rest of the country to sing along at home.

Do you know the words? I didn’t. A web search turned up the lyrics (reprinted at the end of this post), but then I had more questions. What in the world is a pint-stowp? How does one “pou’d the gowans fine”? Happily Wikipedia had all the answers.

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A Christmas Card
from our house to yours:

“… She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus,
for He will save His people from their sins.”
Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken
by the Lord through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and she shall bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel,”
which translated means, “God with us.”

I still cringe when I remember the year my parents decided to mess with family tradition. We’d always had a real Christmas tree, illuminated with those large, old-fashioned lights (now considered the height of retro-fashion!) and hung with lead-filled crinkled “icicles” (long banned by the EPA). But the year I turned ten, my mother decided it was time to update our decorations.

She and my dad went to our local Christmas tree lot, picked out a tall misshapen tree, and had it flocked. Spray-on flocking was quite the rage in the mid-60’s. (At least they stuck with white “snow” rather than opting for the very trendy blue, lavender or pink.) Hauled home in our pick-up, the tree went into our high-ceilinged living room. There it was spotlighted with a floodlight. Finally, gold balls were nestled in the fluffy white branches—tiny ornaments at the very top, giant shiny spheres on the sturdy branches at the base. I’m sure the tree was beautiful, with its avant-garde shape and mono-thematic decorations. I, for one, hated it.

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It’s pervasive. Whatever our faith, whatever our musical preferences, at this time of year we are all subjected to an unending deluge of “Holiday” music. We either love it or hate it, but it’s awfully hard to escape it.

As I was standing in line at the market recently, waiting to check out and listening to yet another version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, I started to consider: what if most people learned their facts about Christmas from the lyrics of popular Christmas music?

Just think of how they’d describe the first Christmas. It all took place in a little town called Bethelem, in the middle of the night, in winter….

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Today is December 15. Today is my birthday.

December can be a hard month to have a birthday. It seems the whole world is focused on Christmas, and your personal special day gets lost in the lights and tinsel.  Instead of having a birthday party, it’s more likely you find yourself at someone else’s holiday gathering. With all that delicious holiday baking enticing you, you feel guilty eating your birthday cake—if you get one at all. And balloons just don’t look right next to a Christmas tree.

So what’s a December baby to do? Adjust that old attitude!

The whole world is focused on Christmas? That’s great! The crucial point here is realizing that it’s not all about me. It’s about Jesus. My attention needs to be on Him, not myself. Perhaps having a birthday near Christmas will help me learn that lesson sooner than if I’d been born in July.

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Just in case you haven’t noticed, Christmas is only two weeks away. I’ve already posted some suggestions to help you in your holiday gift giving. In that November article, I mentioned how last year we had “given” my husband a goat that would actually go to a needy family in the Dominican Republic.

Since then, I have done some research into various organizations worthy of your donations. Some have gift catalogs, such as the one we ordered from last year. You can “purchase” anything from carrot seeds to medical supplies to clean water for a village. Others just accept donations. You can designate a specific fund, or opt for “where the need is greatest.” They may offer to send you a gift receipt that you can wrap and place under the tree. We like to make our own at home—our family is big on word-processed scrolls, tied up with a red ribbon.

Large nonprofits such as World Vision and Compassion International have stellar reputations, and you won’t go wrong sending them a donation. But since they are familiar to most people, I’m going to introduce you to three of my favorite smaller ministries. These are Godly people doing Godly work, but without the big budgets and big names.

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Today’s guest post is from Pete, my sweetie for more than 30 years. He originally (about three weeks ago) posted it as a note on Facebook. I think his observations are worth keeping in mind, especially as I hope to soon share some game reviews written by our son-in-law, who knows much more about such things than I do.

Here’s Pete:

I’ve just finished an experiment in a couple of the very popular online multi-user games. I wanted to learn how they work, how fun they are, and what was the opportunity for play that involves interaction with friends old and new.

Let me say up front: I don’t think these games are evil in some way. I have relatives who play other massive online multi-player games with really great interaction, to the point where one guy’s online game-playing team gets together in person at least once a year, traveling from far and wide to spend time together. I think that’s awesome!

How about the games here on Facebook (FB)? Here’s what I found:

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One of my earliest memories is making these cookies with my mom. There was always a batch for Christmas, and I would spend hours and hours decorating them with different colored frosting, creating works of art that were always proclaimed “too pretty to eat.”  But eat them we did. First we ate the “oops-es” and then the less perfect ones, and finally the rest. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without a day spent in the kitchen, covered with flour.

When our kids were small (see photo), of course we had to make the same cookies. It has now become a family Christmas tradition.

These cookies are also a really great excuse to collect cookie cutters. I have dozens, and am always looking for another good one. A good cutter has no narrow spots, where the cookies usually break. It isn’t so big that it swallows up all the dough. And it’s a fun shape for decorating. I even still have the original cutters I used as a preschool-aged child—the horse, rabbit, dog, fir tree, circle (with crinkle edges), star (also crinkled), bell, and especially the crescent moon, whose shape was perfect for fitting between all the other cutouts.

What about you? What are your favorite Christmas cookies? Is there a special recipe that  your family always makes for the holidays?

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Having just celebrated Thanksgiving, I was explaining to a friend that having a houseful of guests for the entire week had strained my introverted personality. She looked at me and asked, “So, why did you do it?”

Good question! Why did I spend hours scrubbing floors, making beds, planning menus, hauling groceries, cooking—and now washing load after load of sheets and towels—in order to create a situation I knew I’d find stressful?

Very simple. As I went down the list of the nine guests we hosted for Thanksgiving, I realized that each and every person was special to me. They were friends and family. I love them. Yes, it would be nice to see them at a more leisurely pace, perhaps two or three at a time, but if the only way I could spend time with any of them was en masse, I’d take it.

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