Already Used Up All My "Season" Puns

When I started this blog away back In (a previous) Bleak Midwinter, naturally one of the first posts I ever wrote was about Christmas: specifically, how I had “flunked” it. I felt like I captured it well enough that last year’s Christmas post essentially boiled down to “ibid.”

I don’t know that my Christmas was much more “successful” in the ways I described there… but I got to thinking about the elements of the season that I crave, a must-have list of broader scope than another of my early entries on Christmas music. This is quite aside from the spiritual aspects of Christmas – I feel like my appreciation and sense of wonder about all the miracles of the Nativity story probably grows yearly – but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking forward to and enjoying the more superficial aspects of the holiday, either. Such as:

• The music. I begin rotating through my collection as soon as Advent starts – but not before. I admit this may be due in part to the same personality quirk that has me turn down lunch at 11:58, but it just doesn’t feel right to hear the music of the season till the countdown begins in earnest (this is the same way I feel about Christmas shopping, in distinct opposition to, and much to the frustration of, the spouse. Her goal this year – only narrowly missed – was to have everything wrapped by Dec. 1). Between my collection and the local Christian radio station’s outstanding and eclectic playlist, I get a pleasing mix of secular and spiritual, traditional and reinterpreted and altogether new.
• A real tree. I wrote recently about my annual arboreal struggles, but even with all that, I’d no more give up and get an artificial tree than I’d swap our dinner for the plastic food from my daughter’s Little Tikes kitchen.
• The Christmas letter. I’ve been writing a yearly newsletter, in the tradition of my mom, for probably 15 years now. I’ve toned down a lot of my more ostentatious writing tricks, now that I have a weekly (or weakly) outlet for that, but I can’t seem to help writing basically the same letter every year: hey look it’s snowing/cold/music’s starting, must be time to write; here’s what we did as a family; here’s what each of us is doing these days; here’s what the season’s really about (often using and sometimes abusing some kind of metaphor); we’d love to hear from you. I’m very fortunate that I don’t have all of them side-by-side for comparison purposes.
• Snow. Even as a kid, I wasn’t big on playing in it; I was often playing solo, and I lacked the imagination to create my own wintry fun. I’ve spent some Christmases in the South… but they felt somehow like popcorn without butter or salt. Granted, I’d just as soon it fell on the 23rd and melted on the 26th, but I won’t ever be dreaming of a brown or even green Christmas.
• Clandestine gift operations. It’s harder to pull off now, with kids to plan shopping outings around, but my ideal season would keep her guessing up till Christmas morning: Did he buy anything? Is it wrapped? What could it possibly be? (This may reflect another of my issues – see the part about the fish sticks) The most humiliating Christmas of my life was when I came up empty a couple weeks before the day; I think it was when my son was an infant, so perhaps I can plead sleep-deprivation-related insanity. Basically I had to have her lead me around the mall pointing to stuff, then leave the stores so I could buy things and “surprise” her. Do you think it’s overcompensating that I don’t even ask her what she wants now?
• Surprises in return. Even as a kid I was never a peeker or a shaker. I crave being totally surprised on Christmas morning (shocked is even better). I’d almost rather get an unanticipated mediocre gift than a perfect gift I knew was coming. The surprise, for me, is part of the gift.
• Meticulous wrapping. This is also a significant part of the (outgoing) gift. I never have the store wrap for me, and I seek whenever possible to avoid gift bags. Gift bags to me can be shorthand for, “I got this at the last minute and I couldn’t be bothered to wrap it.” In fact, I’m also semi-legendary for wrapping “obvious” shapes in cleverly camouflaged ways (one of my most flamboyant creations: a record album and 2 pieces of sheet music; I built a cardboard pyramid with the sheet music and some cardboard, using the album as the base). My sister taught me to wrap when I was 9 or 10, and I take great pride in it. This can also be a source of conflict, as my wife would like it very much if I’d just Get On With It Already, but I consider myself the Charles Emerson Winchester of gift-wrapping (“I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on.”).
• Careful Christmas-morning planning. I always predetermine the order in which I’ll present the gifts. The simple and less-impressive stuff goes first, the big important ones go last; I also try to intersperse the clothing and non-clothing items. The concept is to keep the momentum building, although not always in strictly linear fashion – if there are 10 gifts that can be “ranked” 1-10, the typical order might be 1-2-4-3-6-5-8-7-9-10.
• Tradition. I was trying to think of good examples for this, but I realized all the other entries really represent my traditions, the yearly building blocks of a season that’s merry and bright. Yes, I’d love to have a set of traditions that look more like Martha Stewart and less like Rain Man, but if there’s one thing we learn – or else – from middle age it’s that you’d better get used to being who you are. And this is who I are.

I hope that you had an enjoyable and blessed holiday season; that its meaning came to you in new and fresh ways; and that you’ve been quicker than I in learning to see the beauty of Christmas as it is in your household, instead of expecting an Andy Williams special.

Season's Bleatings

Since the major media outlets seem to have missed it, forgive me for pausing to wish myself a happy blogiversary... Tuesday marked 2 years of filling up this space every week or so. Unfortunately I was unable to celebrate in print, because I was busy living a blog.

Regardless of the obvious charms of this Most Wonderful Time of the Year (not limited to the Andy Williams rendition),there are aspects of this season that are somewhat less generously suffused with Joy to the World. For you this may include the weather, or the shopping, or the ubiquitous song about a grandparent in trouble that dare not speak its name (did you know that the "Elmo" of "Elmo & Patsy" is actually Dr. Elmo? Eleven months of the year, a mild-mannered dentist; the other, he's like Springsteen or something. Although a more apt comparison might be Rick Dees, or even moreso Bobby "Boris" Pickett).

For me, however, the bane of my seasonal existence -- in a close call over that song, and it's too late & it's already stuck in my head and oh, please, Lord, won't you put me out of my misery? -- is Tree Day.

Putting up the Christmas tree is one of those Currier & Ives / Norman Rockwell-type images, and I always thought of it as just one of those things a man's supposed to be able to do -- like changing a tire, fixing stuff around the house, or carving a turkey. Over the years, however, the tree and I have faced off in a series of epic battles.

Once it's found, bought & gotten home, the real fun begins. Now the Experts say you're supposed to cut a little off the bottom; this helps it "drink" better, stay fresher, and not drop all its needles in a big heap on your rug until next week. This frankly poses a dilemma for me. First, it's my wife that has the cool tools, and she leaves them at camp. I, on the other hand, have a saw with a plastic handle and interchangeable blades that my I think my dad bought for me at W.T Grant in about 1975. In a sense, it's the perfect implement for the occasion, since I shouldn't be allowed to have sharp objects when I'm in this kind of mood.

To be honest, better tools wouldn't clinch it for me. Let's just say that back in Junior High, I did better in Bachelor Living (managing to be both a euphemism for and a stereotype of Home Ec) than I did in Shop. Of course, I really had no chance going in -- a shop full of heavy/sharp objects, populated to a large degree with the ... less academically aggressive students ... is not a safe place for a skinny and unpopular "new kid" with glasses, suspected (with some justification) of being a geek.

I'm always wary of whether the tree will balance & stay vertical, so I also use the trunk-trim as a way to level out the bottom as well. This is more effective when I don't cut the wrong direction, as I did a couple years ago. I ended up basically wedging that cut back under the trunk like a doorstop.

That's also why I gave up on the old-fashioned metal tripod stand and got one of those enormous bucket-like plastic ones. The advantage to that is that if worse comes to worst, I can just throw away the tree and decorate the stand, since it's pretty tall all by itself. It's so deep that I had to put a wood block in the bottom to prop up the tree. It took me like a half-hour to scrape such a block out of a scrap 2x4 piece (beavers would've been quicker)... only to find at last that the "well" of the stand is wider at the top than at the bottom, so I had to hack off yet another piece.

Finally, I got the tree essentially upright (I told my wife the reason it looked like it was leaning was that "the trunk isn't straight") and brought it in the house. I was so enervated from the tussle that it's taken me the 2 days since to even get lights on it -- which also ranks well below my top-10 fave holiday chores.

For some reason, I've found myself listing at about 5 degrees from vertical since I started working on the tree. Finally I gave up and admitted to myself that the tree was somewhat less than vertical (Step One: We admitted that we were powerless over shrubbery). It was way too late to try to reset it in the stand, so I did the next best thing.

I took the piece I sliced off the end of my original block and stuck it under the edge of the stand, tipping the stand up & making the tree look reasonably plumb. If you come to visit us over the next few weeks, I hope you enjoy our festive decor -- but please close the front door very gently.

What's in a Name

One day, a little over 8 years ago, I found myself on an airplane, desperately trying to come up with a name. I don't mean "a name I couldn't remember", but a name that had never been named before. We were on a flight to Pennsylvania, rushing to try to get there before our son would be born... and rushing to come up with a name before he was born. I think a lot of first-time parents are unprepared, but at least most of them get more than the 3 weeks' notice or so that we got!

Names are tough; we wanted to find a name we liked, and one with some meaning, but one that was also impervious to stupid nicknames. Or too many nicknames -- consider the decision faced by a Robert, who might also be Bob or Robbie or Rob or Bobby (or Robert). Of course, it can be difficult to go to the other extreme... "Mark" is a tough one to come up with a nickname for.

I always impress on my kids the importance of names, especially calling someone by the name they prefer to use as a sign of respect and value. So of course, we have frequent scraps at our house because our daughter likes to shorten her brother's name; he likes to add something to the end of hers.

The Christmas season -- or more properly, the Advent season -- is also a season of names. One of the familiar Advent Scripture passages, one of the ones that's as much a part of the music of the season as "Joy to the World", is the one from Isaiah that prophesies the many names of the coming Messiah: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace.... This past Sunday, we sang, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel".

There's something about that name for Jesus that really gets to me intensely. I have a great collection of Christmas music, and when I hear the "Immanuel" songs, it sometimes chokes me up a little (no tears, of course; I'm way too manly & cool for that). But the very concept that God was so invested in our lives that He came here to be with us... I just find that so profound and moving.

Maybe the best example of that is Our God Is With Us by Steven Curtis Chapman (or see the lyrics here). When he gets to the bridge, and breaks out with "Rejoice, rejoice"... well, I have to confess I'm running up against the limits of my writing skill. That song takes me way beyond myself to a place of worship, joy, and awe at the enormity of what God's done for us.

I should also add that if necessary, you should sell all of your other Christmas music and buy his The Music of Christmas. It's an astonishing meld of the traditional and the contemporary. One of the best things about Advent for me is that I give myself permission to start listening to Christmas music, and that album's always Number 1 (with a shining star) for me.

Throughout this season, keep your ears open for the different names used to identify and describe the Baby who's coming. Make it a goal to discover and meditate on the one that speaks to you the most deeply.