Category: Gratitude

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A Calm Christmas: Honoring the Melancholy

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This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2020), and in Chapter 6, she presents ways to honor the melancholy – reaching out with invitations, volunteering, and setting a place at an empty chair can be forms of honoring those we have lost or sadnesses we acknowledge. She urges us to reach out to others, whether we feel up or whether we feel down. Either way, we combat the loneliness and sadness when we feel this sense of purpose and connection.

I saw a meme last week. It said, “I agree with keeping Christ in Christmas, but I’d prefer it if we could keep Christ in Christians.” And I nodded in wholehearted agreement. All too often, I hear people grumble about helping the needy, reasoning that they will only spend the money on drugs or alcohol.

There are ways of meeting specific needs without unknowingly contributing to another’s addiction, though. I have made a practice of keeping some spare change and dollar bills handy in my pocket for the seasonal charity bell ringers, but I also enjoy keeping gift cards to local fast food restaurants as well – for those who are hungry. I feel a sense of responsibility to give, and assurance knowing that the need that will be met is hunger – – not a way to drown problems in alcohol or running the risk of making a situation worse for any children who may be dependent on the person receiving the assistance.

There are ways to make a difference in small increments, and even if the goal is to help one or two people a week, that is a step in the right direction – at least for me.

That is why I couldn’t get peace while drinking my seasonal peppermint milkshake in Chick-Fil-A last night. We’d gone to have a bowl of chicken soup for supper, and I’d noticed an older lady wheeling a full-size suitcase up to a table before getting in line to buy food. She’d spoken to an older gentleman and gestured to her suitcase, so I assumed she was an acquaintance. Since we are a short distance from the Atlanta airport, the suitcase didn’t seem at all unusual.

Until it did.

When she returned to sit down, she sat at the table behind the gentleman to whom she’d spoken. I started putting the pieces together when I I saw her mumbling to herself, carrying on a full-blown conversation on her own at her table. I surmised that she’d asked the man to keep an eye on her suitcase while she stood in line for food. When she moved her jacket hood up over her head, I had the opportunity to take a longer look, unbeknownst to her.

That’s when the suitcase became no ordinary suitcase but a way to set up house for the home she didn’t have. To endure the frigid night ahead, somewhere on the streets of the city.

She’d tugged at my Christmas spirit in such a way that I had to take some kind of action to help this human soul. I could see the struggle – it was visible to me since homelessness has affected someone near and dear to my heart, and all the telltale signs were evident – right down to the mental instability. This was someone’s daughter, and perhaps someone’s mother, sister, aunt, friend. There was no denying the truth that any help would be appreciated.

As we finished our meal, the line that had been forever long the whole time we’d been eating had miraculously disappeared. I was able to slip over to the register while my husband cleared our table. I purchased a gift card enough for a few meals and asked the Chick-Fil-A employee to deliver it to the woman for me to lessen the attention and avoid any embarrassment. Sure enough, the high school-aged boy took the gift card to the lady in the blue jacket with the hood up over her head with the suitcase propped at the end of her table.

And in this way, witnessing someone without a home at Christmas, I thought of the deep need to become a better steward of blessings. Certainly, one small act cannot meet the depth of need that is evident if we only look around, but a collection of small acts by those who are attuned to others around them can add up to make a notable difference.

I don’t share this story to bring attention to my act of giving, but to share the bittersweet joy that one small act of care can bring for both giver and recipient, even as we wish we could do so much more. Indeed, more is needed – we witnessed two more clear situations on the way home where needs were evident. I share this story to bring appreciation for the shelter and food that we do have and how so often the basic needs we may take for granted are brought into focus when we bear witness to those for whom the provisions of shelter, warmth, and food are only the dream.

After all, this is one small way to honor the melancholy and to make a difference in the season when our blessing deserves to be spread around for others to realize moments of comfort – and above all, to know that someone cares. Honoring the melancholy is not a comparative act, or one of positional self-worth or more-fortunate-than-thouness-so-let-me-toss-you-a-scrap. Honoring the melancholy is staying attuned to the rhythms of life with the understanding that these situations and emotions do not discriminate. Melancholy and adversity come alongside all of us throughout our lives in different ways – and if we are to be blessed in our own times of need, we must bless others in theirs.

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A Calm Christmas: Heart and Hearth

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This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2020), and in Chapter 5, she considers reflecting on where the heart is and what the heart needs in celebrating. She encourages us to contemplate the gatherings with a mindful spirit for how we spend time and what we do with others to celebrate. She reminds us in Chapter 5 that “time-honored traditions are only worth maintaining if they honor your time and bring you pleasure.”

This may be my favorite chapter yet. Kempton opens with a reflection of a Christmas Day moment from her teenage years, providing a snapshot frozen in time to show her grandmother, her parents, her siblings, and herself gathered in the midst of Christmas dinner. She illustrates it so well, it’s reminiscent of a Hallmark ad or a Publix commercial. And then comes the sobering reminder: things will not always be this way.

She redefines what a calm Christmas means: A calm Christmas does not have to be a small Christmas or even a quiet Christmas. Rather, it is one where you remove your own stressors, let go of perfection, and focus on what really matters to you. She then takes us through a process of re-imagining how we gather, how we gift, and how we gambol.

Each year, my father has traditionally given me a box of books. He’s a book collector, so he thinks mindfully about what I will love. He knows my unique and quirky reading personality and what will be meaningful for me. Among my treasures throughout the years are a first edition copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, signed by Harper Lee herself; a very old copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck; and an assortment of Gladys Tabor books, including Stillmeadow Sampler, Stillmeadow Calendar, and Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, three of my absolute favorites. Oh, the joy they bring to me as I sit and read and re-read and re-read again. These gifts are mindful, meaningful, and they matter – the hallmarks of great gifting.

Most of my writing circle of friends know that my father is undergoing chemotherapy for colorectal cancer. It leaves him fatigued and weak, so we have decided to postpone our gatherings this year to allow him to rest and to minimize his exposure to large numbers of people who bring risk of germs to him in his state of weakened immunity. We won’t gather until later in January, and the gathering will be simple when it happens – a few hours, a meal, and a time of reflection and togetherness.

Meanwhile, to keep Dad’s spirit of Christmas book gifting alive and well, my brother and I found the perfect gift for him. It’s a Simplay 3 Little Free Library that he can put on the corner of his yard at the intersection on the south end of St. Simons Island, Georgia. Even though he may not be able to share books with me on Christmas as he has done in the past, he can certainly find the joy in sharing books with others this Christmas season and feel the warmth of spirit as he watches folks consider the collection of books he curates to go inside. He has always had a mountain of books to pass along, and while some are collectible, others are modern bestsellers.

Book gifting is a tradition that matters, and my brother and I know all too well the joy our dad finds in sharing his deep love of reading. Books make a difference in how we see the world, and Dad is a perfect reader/book matchmaker. We have been matched! We can’t wait to see the next great matches he makes!

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A Calm Christmas: Celebrations During Christmas

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This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2020), and in Chapter 4 which begins Part 2, she presents ways to consider mindful giving as we celebrate during Christmas.

Kempson says, “Mindful giving comes down to three questions: whether to give, what to give, and how to give.” She goes on to explain that sometimes, the best gift of all is the gift of nothing (there is a child’s picture book title by that name) – that the social contract of giving is often felt most strongly this time of year when the release is there to simply forego gifting. In fact, she provides a statistic that 60 million gifts in 2018 in the UK were unwanted, according to one study, and that another survey found that six out of every ten gifts given to a sample of 2,000 adults were unwanted. Before giving, she offers 3 questions to guide the gifting: is it mindful, is it meaningful, and is it memorable?

Our office holds a gift exchange, and while it’s fun, I’d lay a wager that the numbered gifts fall into the statistics above. For this occasion, I look at the dollar value and either go with wrapped cash or a gift card from a certain huge retailer named after a river in South America. Everyone participating seems to like this option so they can either use it to further their own Christmas shopping or personalize a gift for themselves – from someone who doesn’t know any of them well enough to give a one-size-appeals-to-all gift in this eclectic mix of personalities that would satisfy whomever ends up with it. And it works like a charm.

For the smaller department sector, I set out to answer the age-old question about the best gift for all ages. Everyone loves it. Everyone needs it. Everyone uses it. No one expects it.

And I came up with the answer to this universal question by looking deep into my own soul and asking: what does everyone need that everyone probably already has but could use more of, where size, age, gender, religious affiliation, and political persuasion does not matter? And a clear answer rose to the top.

Chapstick.

I ordered three dozen tubes of Candy Cane Chapstick, along with a supply of clip holder sleeves I’d seen on a travel blog recently. The sleeves have a clip that allows users to attach the tube to a lanyard or a purse loop or backpack strap so that the tubes don’t end up in pockets, either lost through holes, melting with body temperature – or worse, going through the washer and dryer and staining clothes with petroleum spots like I’ve done so many times.

I grabbed a tabletop tree from Hobby Lobby and festooned the tree with the best guard against bitter winter wind that exists – this universal tiny tube of lip bliss. And here is what I discovered: you can’t go wrong with a candy cane Chapstick tree. It’s mindful, meaningful, and (hopefully) memorable – at least for a season.

Even with all of the thanks and appreciative conversations with people asking for the links to be able to re-create the idea at their family gatherings this year, the thrill of giving something you know people both need and want far outweighs the joy of receiving. It’s the greatest feeling in the world!

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A Calm Christmas: Comfort and Joy in Contemplation of Spirit

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This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2020), and in Chapter 3, she presents ways to seek comfort and joy in winter by seeking our natural rhythms and learning from nature.

To contemplate ways to simplify and nourish our spirits, Kempson encourages us to go gently into winter mornings by tiptoeing to the kitchen, light candles, meditate, or write as self-care measures. She asks these questions:

How could you simplify your home, schedule, digital life? How can you nourish your mind, body, spirit, and loved ones, and what rituals will see you through winter?

So much can be simpler. I once heard that if you feel stressed and need to hit the reset button, spend a half hour in nature. But those who are really busy should spend an hour. Sometimes we don’t have control over simplifying our work schedules or the digital life that work requires, but when home is the haven that allows the respite at day’s end, there is much to be loved. I walk my dogs along a path my husband keeps cut on the farm…and would you believe I go in my flannel pajamas and boots, praying all the while that a delivery truck doesn’t come calling while I’m out in my loungewear? We drink cinnamon orange tea in the evenings in winter, and while we don’t have a real log fireplace, we keep the gas logs going if it’s anywhere below 60 degrees outside. These are the ways we nourish ourselves, and the simple rituals are what will take us through winter. Sometimes, doing as little as possible on weekends is the order of the day, letting the book stacks speak their stories to us as we read the day away.

One of my favorite thoughts in this chapter is “the sounds of winter are cracking in poetry, wind in the trees, rain on the roof, a spitting fire, the thump of a log falling away from the flames, rustling paper, mulled wine poured steaming into a glass, the rhythm of the weather forecast calmly announcing that the storms will rage on.”

That’s the epitome of hygge at its finest – in its best season to be fully experienced as a way to embrace the season of winter.

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A Calm Christmas: Mission Christmas Constellations!

This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), savoring every chapter like it’s a rich dessert, drizzled with all the best chocolate, caramel, and whipped cream. In Chapter 2, Kempton presents ways to reflect on and consider various aspects of Christmas and what they truly mean to us. We take the scores of importance from Chapter 1 to create Christmas constellations and consider ways to reduce tension and enhance the holiday season, especially when comparing our rankings with those of a spouse.

I completed my Christmas Constellation by graphing, in rankings of importance on scales of 1-10, the areas of faith, magic, connection, abundance, and heritage as they relate to what Christmas means to me. I examined my completed graph and imagined what I might call my constellation in the clear, cold night so brightly shining. The reclined reader. The image is vividly there as I look at the outline of the recliner with my head propped back, my feet up on the footrest of the chair, flanked by three warm schnoodles and a book in my hands.

Truth. That’s me in the night sky in my own personal twinkling constellation. Exactly as I would want to be, right there on a red line stretching out between the star dots.

Imagine my surprise when I went back through Chapter 1 and asked my husband to share his personal 1-10 rankings of these same parts of Christmas in the quest to create an overlay. I hadn’t revealed my rankings to him when I asked him to share his. I jotted them down, then flipped the chart to rank his in green.

Here are our overlaid results:

Just as Kempton intended, I’m sure, this led to some deep conversation about our Christmas ideals and values. Out of 50 possible perfectly matched points, we were 2 1/2 points divergent: a half point off on heritage, one point off on faith, and one point off on connection. Magic and abundance were matched exactly, at 6 and 5 respectively.

We talked about the things we noticed and wondered, most notably that we were curious if the loss of our mothers impacted our seemingly low rankings on heritage. Perhaps some of the traditions felt “less” now that they were no longer here – or too painful to continue. We also talked about what made sense as we worked our way through the discussion points. It makes sense that we both ranked faith the highest, since church has played a tremendous role throughout our lives. It makes sense that abundance, to us, means that we have just enough – without living lives of excess. It makes sense that we value connection with others since we have family and friends with whom we enjoy spending time at holidays. It makes sense that the magic of Christmas still hangs in the air as wonder and belief that unseen guests and unexplained events can be seen and felt more strongly at Christmas than any other time.

Three hours later, we were still sharing Christmas memories and reasons we believe things are the way they are now in each of these areas. Kempton noted that these rankings can change each year -and we both agreed that five or ten years ago, our rankings would have been different in most categories. I think what we both enjoyed more than anything was the evening of deep conversation with dogs piled in our laps, instrumental Christmas music playing softly in the background as we shared favorite times and reflections.

The upside is that our values are similar enough that we aren’t likely to disagree or argue about the way things should be done. The downside is that where rankings seem they may be perceived as weak, there isn’t a higher ranking in the other to pull either one of us up on the scale where some areas might generate more “Christmas spirit” if they were higher.

That fine line between Christmas spirit and stress, though, is a reflection for a later chapter.

The shared perspective is that right now, we’re exactly where we want to be.

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A Calm Christmas: Heritage

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This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), and in Chapter 1, Kempton presents The Five Stories of Christmas that focus on faith, magic, connection, abundance, and heritage. Today’s focal thoughts center on heritage.

Kempton invites readers to reflect on these aspects of heritage:

What is your view of traditions related to midwinter, such as decorating your home with evergreens and celebrating the winter solstice? What sort of weather do you associate with Christmas, and what impact does it have on how you expect to feel and what you expect to do this time of year? What particular traditions have been handed down through your family and become part of your personal Christmas story, and how do you feel about them? Do you plan to maintain them?

We’ve never specifically celebrated Winter Solstice, but we have traditionally celebrated winter with a Christmas tree in our home, whether real or artificial, along with a wreath on the door as well. Having grown up on an island, I always wanted snow but never had a true “White Christmas” until 1989, when the snow set in the evening before Christmas Eve and amounted to about 6 inches in the coastal area of South Carolina where we lived at the time. Weather never had an impact on our holiday season, since most of the time it was warm and sunny. In fact, there were Christmases that we could have sunbathed on the beach.

Traditions that have been handed down include gift giving and celebrating Christmas morning around the tree with a breakfast casserole in the oven, warm cinnamon rolls, and coffee and juice. There were many years that my mother hosted a formal Christmas dinner at high noon with extended family around the table, and while I loved it, a formal meal on Christmas Day is not a tradition that I would be successful in continuing, as families are growing and beginning their own traditions. At this point, my husband and I are happy to travel or to be home – whichever works out best for those family members with young children. Also, we often spread the celebration times around so that we are not locked into the one day of Christmas being our dedicated day to gather.

In writing our Christmas narratives, Kempton reminds us that “much of the stress of Christmas comes from either not giving ourselves permission to evolve our inherited narrative, or from the pressure to evolve it into something that is out of alignment with what, deep down, we believe about Christmas….What we need is a way to marry what matters to us with what matters to those we love, and then let go of the rest.”

I couldn’t agree more. Having traditions and memories creates rootedness and belonging, but it’s a double-edged sword in creating a rigidness that prevents us from embracing new ways of doing things and being flexible in our thinking. Things don’t always have to be done the way they’ve always been done. It’s my turn to celebrate with my children – and their children – in the way that they choose to honor, celebrate, and keep Christmas!

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate heritage as it relates to family traditions as a 4 or 5 in importance. These ratings will become part of a Christmas constellation in tomorrow’s post.

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A Calm Christmas: Abundance

This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), and in Chapter 1, Kempton presents The Five Stories of Christmas that focus on faith, magic, connection, abundance, and heritage. Today, my thoughts center on abundance.

Kempson inspires readers to reflect on this:

What elements of the more commercial side of Christmas do you recall from your childhood? Which aspects did you find exciting (such as a television ad, the idea of stockings bursting with gifts, writing a letter to Santa, etc?) How do you feel about Christmas shopping?

The first element of the commercial side of Christmas that I remember from childhood is the Sears Christmas Catalog Wish Book. I spent hours turning the pages of the toy section of the catalog as if those were the only toys in the world, all waiting on shelves at the North Pole to be delivered by a magical reindeer-pulled sleigh.

That wish book should not have been any different for me, really. My grandmother worked in downtown Waycross, Georgia in the Sears Catalog Department, so my entire childhood was filled with items from Sears – from housewares to clothing and everything in between. I had Winnie the Pooh on every shirt I owned, along with the matching shorts and pants, and I’m pretty sure that Sears short sets were the precursor to Garanimals. Whatever we may have needed, we mostly got it from Sears with the secret inherited family discount that all came down through Grandma Eunice.

Those catalogs weren’t just toy finders, either. They were the small-town Georgia equivalent of the New York City phonebooks used as booster seats for kids at Christmas dinner. It was the one time of the year we actually ate at the formal dining room table, and the catalog boost did the trick.

Shopping was an altogether different matter. My mother loved shopping at Lenox Square in Rich’s in Atlanta, Georgia the day afterThanksgiving. We spent all day there with my aunt, and it started at 6:00 a.m. to get the bargains, starting in Rich’s – before it became Macy’s. In fact, the men would drop off the ladies and the children and go back home to watch football and relax, but they would make a swoop back to the basement door of Rich’s by the candy counter so that the ladies could pack all the treasures in the car without having to lug so many bags. By the time the men returned, the women had fulfilled their part of the day with us cousins. We’d been through the Secret Santa gift shop with our own personal elf to help us shop with the money and list our mothers had made, and we’d also seen the pink pig. We got to go home and play board games when the men came back. It was the dads’ turn to be on kid duty. The women? They kept shopping – without kids in tow.

I’m pretty sure that’s where I developed my lingering distaste for shopping. I don’t like traffic, I abhor frenzied crowds, and I don’t like the “thrill” of the hunt. As an adult, I never have been one to have much more than what I need (except in food and shoes), so the excess of clearance and sale items in the name of saving money never made much sense to me about things we hadn’t needed in the first place. Were we really saving money if the need wasn’t there?

These experiences had a place, though, in shaping the shopper I am today. These days, I ask family members for the digital equivalent of the Sears Christmas Catalog Wish Book in the form of links. My daughter in law is amazing about it, too. She has the lists ready, one per grandchild, and it allows me to shop Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales as we purchase gifts for our grandchildren. We use this principle: Something you want, Something you need, Something to Wear, and Something to read. That’s how we buy for each grandchild (number 7 will be here 2 days after Christmas, if not before).

It’s what we call simple abundance: having the things we need, but leaving plenty enough wishing room.

On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate celebration of abundance by way of Christmas shopping and gifting as a 5 in importance. The ratings of each section will be used to create my Christmas constellation on Friday.

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A Calm Christmas: Connection

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This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), savoring every sentence. In Chapter 1, the author presents The Five Stories of Christmas that focus on faith, magic, connection, abundance, and heritage. Today’s focal thoughts center on connection.

Kempton invites us to reflect:

Do you have a specific memory that is related to a Christmas tree, a Christmas feast, or a particular Christmas gathering?

I do, in fact, have a specific memory that is related to a Christmas gathering. We were in my grandparents’ home in Blackshear, Georgia, sitting in the den by the silver tinsel tree with its bright blue ornaments – probably 1970ish. Their friends Kitty and Randolph dropped by with a tin of Christmas cookies, and I remember my grandmother receiving the cookies with warm thanks and a big hug before placing them on the kitchen counter, then returning to the den, where Kitty and Randolph sat down and made their impromptu visit. When they left, they got in their pickup truck to deliver more tins of cookies to family and friends – who, I’m sure, also had no idea they were coming for the surprise visit.

That memory still stays with me as the way of the old days before life got more complicated. It was my first experience with a Currier and Ives tin, and my first experience with a variety of different types of homemade cookies, like the kind with sticky orange marmalade in the center. This was a day when people were home more, did more baking, and made house visits. Life may not have actually been simpler; in fact, it may have been just the opposite. But the values seemed to have been much different, and everyday moments were made more meaningful because less seemed more and enough seemed bountiful.

The older I get, the more I love the idea of these bygone eras. I think it’s why I love reading anything by Gladys Taber so much. Everything she wrote from her Connecticut farm, in my mind, is seen through a Currier and Ives painting. Rustic, rural New England with snow and simple times. It was a day when people really connected. Not through a screen, but in person. Unannounced.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate the importance of connection, gathering, and feasting at Christmas as an 8. These ratings of each of the stories will be important on Friday, when I draw my Christmas story constellation.

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The Real Age Test

The pink Christmas tree in one class I visited this week

I had the privilege of visiting three second grade classes this week as teachers in our system complete their Science of Reading modules required by the State of Georgia under its new legislation.

In the first class, one student asked, “Have you ever been in a classroom?”

That should have been my first sign.

I replied that I had, and it all started once upon a long, long time ago and lasted for many years.

She looked at me suspiciously, then asked with a hint of sass, “So you can handle us?”

Oh, the joys of second grade. They tell it like it is, and nothing gets left unsaid.

Forget any “Real Age Test” your insurance company has ever asked of you. There’s a real-er one, and here’s all you have to do: step into a primary school classroom for three hours. Three hours is all it takes to get yourself into real trouble, as any of the guests aboard the SS Minnow would remind us. Ironically, being shipwrecked on a desert island seemed it would be paradise by the time I slugged back out to the parking lot each morning.

How did I ever do this when I started teaching in the late 1990s with a full class of second graders, three children and a husband and so much laundry at home, when one played soccer on a travel team and we traveled most weekends as a family and stayed in hotels AND I didn’t have Clicklist at the grocery store where I could click my order in and pull up and wait for them to come running out with the cart and load me up?

How?

HOW??!!

This, my friends, is the Real Age Test. I passed with flying colors as someone who is really aged.

I slumped back into the driver’s seat, one building away from my office and allowed myself five minutes’ peace, hoping no one walked by and saw me in such a state. I wrapped my arms around the steering wheel and let my head rest on my forearms. I prayed. I prayed I hadn’t pulled a muscle bending over to sit down in the tiny chairs or, more likely, hefting myself up out of them. I prayed there were still 19 heads to be counted in the room I’d just left and that there were not a few running loose in the building somewhere and that I wouldn’t get a phone call shortly, asking about any missing children.

The Real Age Test. Like cheese, I’ve discovered my moldy edges and the holes I didn’t used to have. My denial has come to an end, and I have accepted that I am truly aged.

I feel it in my bones.

But I did take away a great compliment: when I was doing a read-aloud, they were mesmerized. They said, “You do it so good.” Apparently, I sparkle as a picture book reader. And that makes it all worth it.