Tag: christmas

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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

Photo by Luna Lovegood on Pexels.com

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: Magic

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

Kempton asks us to reflect: Where did your ideas about Saint Nicholas/Father Christmas/Santa Claus come from? Did you enjoy other magical stories as a child?

There is no question about where my idea of Santa was rooted. I still have my favorite version of The Night Before Christmas, illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. Though it is in poor condition from being loved on so much, it was the one my mother read to me over and over and over again, and the one that still comes to mind on every mention of Clement C. Moore’s Letter to Saint Nicholas. The sugarplum illustration is my favorite one in the entire book. The art of the bygone era appeals to me.

Of course, there was other magic. Rudolph’s red nose and a team of flying reindeer were captivating images filled with magic. Frosty’s magical topcoat that brought him to life – and then couldn’t keep him cold enough to survive – still brings winter wonderland feelings even through the tears of a melted snowman.

Magic Acrostic

Merry Christmas

And Happy New Year

Going on 59 times now ~ and

I still love the magic of

Childhood at Christmas

On a scale of 1-10, rating how much magic and wonder are important to me at Christmas, I’d rate them a 6.

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A Christmas Carol at the Alliance Theater: Still, Still, Still

A quartet of carolers opens the play with Still, Still, Still

We didn’t come straight home from Halloween festivities and put up our Christmas tree (it still isn’t up), but we have officially begun preparing our hearts for the Christmas season ahead. It began two weekends ago when we took our grandson Aidan to see The Nativity Tour at The Biblical History Center in Lagrange, Georgia. When it comes to Christmas, I do love the charged energy of cold weather, the laughter of shoppers, the gatherings with food and fellowship, and the lights. But Christmas, for me, lives in the quiet moments of deep thought and reflection – about ordinary things and how they connect to a greater concept.

The first reminders of the season came as we stood outside a sheepfold with our firstborn grandson, now a few months away from a driver’s license, learning about the likelihood that the manger may have been made of stone and the surrounding animals predominantly sheep. We discovered the reasons that a family in Biblical times may have turned away a woman expecting a baby for fear it would displace them if birth occurred and rendered their house unclean for 30 days. Having no room in the inn has been a frequent thought recently as I watch families unravel over candidates – brother against brother. Sadness, angst, grief over loss of relationships, and anger have all been the emotions of recent days. It’s hard to escape.

The second reminders of the season came as I watched my favorite Christmas book, A Christmas Carol, come to life on the stage. Is there any wonder that this particular adaptation of the play at this theater opens each year with a quartet of carolers singing Still, Still, Still? It prepares the minds and hearts of the audience to pay attention – to be still and watch for what is most important by looking in our own mirrors – to listen to the characters and the messages they bring. And yes, to sit right next to Charles Dickens himself, whose own story lurks in the shadows, and to wonder: what, dear friend, do I need to see in each of these characters and change in my own life as I seek joy this season?

Is there any greater time to hear this message than right now, today? It is the message of Christmas that beckons us to think not of our own rights and wishes, but the acts of service and giving to those around us to avoid those two hideous children, Ignorance and Want, who huddle under our cloaks. Children we try to hide, who are as clear and present as decaying front teeth behind a selfish smile. Is there any greater time to seek healing in our own hearts than Christmas?

Adults are often asked if we believe in Santa. Whether we do or don’t, the greater question, I think, is whether we believe in Scrooge. Somewhere in the quiet moments, I am reassured that even old Ebenezer himself, and even the Grinch, has hope – as do I, as does this nation. And this year, perhaps more than ever before, I welcome the ghosts to remind me to count my blessings.

Reminders: A Tricube

still, still, still

we listen

our hearts thaw

still, still still

quartet sings

voices lift

still, still, still

their words ring

all year long

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers
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Family Yule Log – Part 2 of 3

Part 1

Part 2

At 8:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, my daughter and I began our first-ever Yule Log baking adventure in our pajamas in a rural countryside VRBO kitchen that was unfamiliar to us. When our Kentucky family got together to plan the Christmas dinner, everyone decided to divide the menu and each prepare a dish. Ever so daringly and boldly, she volunteered us to bring a Yule Log. She’d found an ambitious recipe online and had shopped for all the ingredients. She measured them into bags and brought them to the rental house.

By the time we arrived back from the only open store, a Dollar General on the backside of nowhere, we were well into the Christmas Eve hours when children are tucked into bed and elves begin working their magic. And we needed more than magic. We needed divine intervention. Lots and lots of prayer – my One Little Word for 2023. 

The recipe looked intimidating. We watched the video of the woman making it to try to ease my apprehension. So much had to go right, and I was fearful of a flop.

The old whipped-cream-on-the-nose baking pose

To ante up the challenge, we were using dishes that weren’t ours, cooking in a gas oven we didn’t know. The cardinal rule in baking is to “know thine oven,” and this beast was a complete and total stranger from another realm. 

Somehow, though, after all the beating of the egg whites with sugar to form stiff peaks and folding in that mixture with the flour and egg yolk and cocoa, she pulled a perfectly baked chocolate sponge cake from the oven, ready to be inverted onto parchment paper and rolled in a thin white towel and placed in the coolest part of the room to set before spreading the heavy whipped cream on it and re-rolling it. My daughter was unflappable throughout the whole process, but my nerves were on edge the entire time. I was trying not to show it. 

The cake is ready when it springs back into form when pressed

We watched the recipe video again when it came time to unroll the cake and spread the layer of whipped cream on the inside. 

The entire process involved phases of blending, folding, baking, setting, cooling, spreading, rolling, unrolling, and waiting. It also involved a lot of laughing to keep the nerves under control. It felt a lot like walking across a landmine with someone who didn’t know we were on a battlefield with so many potential pitfalls. 

As every step turned out, my daughter smiled through the entire process. She was baking a miracle as I stood amazed. Turns out, she hadn’t read the entire recipe before she started. Each small step was not overwhelming to her. I, on the other hand, saw every mile of the long journey and knew how risky it could be.

It came time for the rolled log to be iced, and her artistic flair came out in full force. 

She evened out the chocolate buttercream frosting into consistent thickness and began her artistic presentation using a fork to make bark lines, even making an elliptical shape to make it look more knotty and authentic, like an owl might pop its head out at any moment and ask us whoooo we were. She softened a Hershey bar and began the tedious process of shaving thin chocolate curls with a sharpened knife. And she placed peppermints in a Ziploc bag and crushed them to look like shimmering snow to top the Yule Log. 

And when her masterpiece was finished, she stood back and admired it with pride. 

“Look what we did, Ma! Thanks for making it with me. Without you, I probably would have given up.” 

I hugged her close, thinking, No, dear daughter. This is all your creation, not mine. I never would have even attempted it. You are far more courageous than I will ever be.

She inverted a mixing bowl to cover it like a cake lid and placed it in the refrigerator to chill overnight. I admired her accomplishment and thought of that Yule Log as a metaphor for all the ways we need each other. 

And we hugged goodnight, looking forward to sharing it with family on Christmas Day.

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Family Christmas

We celebrated Christmas with the Johnson side of the family last night and played a couple of games of Left Center Right on the heels of dessert. The dinner menu was kept simple – Stouffer’s Lasagna, Cole’s garlic bread, and salad, with peach cobbler a la mode for dessert. Christmas and Thanksgiving are the only occasions on which I get out the good dishes and set the table with a tablecloth, chargers, placemats, fabric napkins, and a centerpiece – in our case three, to honor our departed mothers. We still don’t have much to drink from besides Mason jars, so we use clear Solo cups for our sweet tea. These dishes, I should mention, were given across the years (like my beloved Nativity set) as Christmas gifts from my mother and my former mother-in-law to build a set a few rungs higher than our basic white lead-free, chip-proof Corelle which came on the scene when I felt the first signs of arthritis.

Dishes that have been family gifts over the years

The ancestral kitchen spirits are always welcome, but on holidays we go a step further in summoning them; we light candles for Briar and Kyle’s mom (Pat), Bethany’s mom (Barbara), and my mom (Miriam), as we do on other holidays to remember them and keep them close.

Ollie with Briar bringing game luck

I do not believe in fancy seating place cards, though, not when there is theater box candy screaming in the dollar store to be used for this purpose. Everyone had a favorite at the top of their plate: Reese’s Pieces (Jack). Milk Duds (Briar), Raisinets (Kyle), Sugar Babies (Jax), Junior Mints (Andrew), Hot Tamales (Bethany), SweeTarts (Cece), and Boston Baked Beans (me). 

Fitz sits with Bethany

Even the dogs wanted in on the fun. We think the one reason Briar won both games when he was the only one who had to be coaxed into playing was that Ollie sat in his lap bringing good vibes. Fitz stayed with Bethany, and Boo Radley stayed under the table and with Kyle.

We exchanged gifts and sampled a libation or two, and our gift with strings attached were lottery tickets for the 620 million Powerball drawing on Saturday night. If any of us wins on those tickets, we have to give the other 7 folks in the picture 5 million dollars each. What’s 35 million on 620? We each placed our ticket on the coffee table and put a finger at the top of our ticket so we can check all the numbers via that photo. Nothing like a little family accountability in case someone tries to plan a surprise move to Switzerland suddenly.

Folks usually hope and pray for a white Christmas. We are hoping and praying for a green one!

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Kitty’s Fruitcake Cookies

Kitty and Randolph always stopped by my grandparents’ house in Blackshear, Georgia on Christmas Day with a big, round, heavy tin of fresh-baked fruitcake cookies. The grownups would sit in the parlor on the antique furniture by the silver tinsel tree and talk and talk and talk, while my brother and I would figure out ways to steal cookies. We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to like fruitcake cookies, so we liked them – and still do. We are among the small percentage of the population who can actually savor a slice of fruitcake with a cup of coffee.

My grandparents were natural social distancers back in the 1970s, but Kitty and Randolph were part of their small circle of friends- close enough to make it past the front door. Kitty was always smiling and laughing, but Randolph was quiet and reserved.

My maternal grandparents lived life unto themselves. They both worked – she in the Sears Catalog department in downtown Waycross, Georgia, and he for Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in Waycross. Both worked hard and came home at the end of the day to each other, their impeccably clean house, and their manicured lawn that they took great weekend pride in landscaping during the warm months. 

Those Christmases, so full of vivid paperdoll and red wagon and Daisy gun and army men and fruitcake memories, come rushing to mind as I sit here in my living room thinking of my early childhood years when we traveled to visit our grandparents in our metallic blue and woodgrain-sided Buick station wagon through the back roads of rural Georgia, my brother and I lying flat on our backs on a quilt in “the way back” (third seat flattened to a bed area, with no seatbelts, of course) looking up at the stars in the clear night as pine tree tops whizzed past. 

My eyes gaze upward to the window over our front door, out to the stars past the pine tree tops, realizing that the years, too, have whizzed past faster than I could have imagined. I’m older now than my grandparents were then, and understand in these years more than ever before how fleeting time truly is. 

And I wonder whether fruitcake-filled Currier and Ives Christmas tins with lids of horses pulling sleighs over snowdrifts out by the old two-story farmhouse are still a thing anywhere. I’d like to steal some cookies and tuck myself away in all the wonder of a silvery tinsel tree, reliving just a few moments of those good old days, hearing Kitty tell stories and coffee cups clink and antique chairs creak as folks laughed, before screens came along and disrupted real human conversation. 

Those were the best days. 

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The Best Present is Presence

I didn’t want them to leave, even though we go back to work tomorrow and most of our grandkids have another week of homeschool before they take their Christmas break. Sawyer is in 3rd grade, Saylor in 1st, and River in PreK. Beckham and Magnolia aren’t in their school years yet.

Aidan, the oldest and a teenager, lives in a neighboring county and attends a private school there. He has finally caught – and exceeded – my height. We’ve been back to back and heel to heel for a year now to see when the day would come, and it has happened!

Even though it’s far from our normal routine where we live with three Schnoodles, having part of our family come for a visit is a joy! They are a lively bunch, and they make us so proud!

We love taking pictures each time we all get together. Our daughter in law sets the timer and makes the run to take her place before the click, while we all watch the flashing light and say “cheese” on repeat until it stops. She’s an iPhone wizard!

This year, no one felt like getting dressed for a picture, so we didn’t. It was a rainy, cold weekend and we were busy staying warm and playing dominoes and watching movies and eating nonstop. So we opted for the reality photo, the one where you have to keep calling everyone to get outside and no one can pry themselves off the couch or chair they’re occupying. No one wore anything except pajamas with a coat or robe (and not the family matching kind with the coordinated Tartan plaid that looks planned and professional). A couple of us had shoes on, no girls had makeup on, and one or two of us might have brushed our hair or teeth. We simply ran out in the misty drizzle for a photo to mark the occasion.

L-R: Saylor, Kim holding Beckham, Briar in back, River, Aidan, Sawyer, Marshall holding Magnolia, and Selena

This may be my favorite picture of us ever taken. When our grandchildren are grown and look back on these days spent with their grandparents, this is what I want them to remember – that we were happy just the way we were, and that we chose to savor every moment relaxing together at home. And that we didn’t need a crippling blizzard to know how to stay in our pajamas and drink coffee and chocolate milk all day and stay cozy.

It’s true: the best present is presence.