Small Things

Thinking deeply (finally!) about Christmas

This has been a busy Christmas, and as usual, it has been in the days after that I've been able to spend some quality time with my kids, and my husband, just playing games, wrestling, dancing to the Jonas Brothers (Kid music that rocks! says Mary) and rocking my baby without feeling compelled to rush everything because there is too much to do.

After the kids were asleep tonight, I sat with some chocolate-covered Peppermint Joe-Joe's and a glass of wine and spent some quality time on the blogosphere. And it was while reading at Rocks in my Dryer that I think I finally had a moment to contemplate on Christmas. This post, Grace in a Manger, is an old one, from her archives while she takes a holiday break. I've got to share it, because it's sure to make you stop and think.

Christmas, I thought, was the cheery holiday that evoked images of a sweet baby Jesus, a manger full of fresh-smelling hay, joyful shepherds, a glorious star and a partridge in a pear tree.

The real theological meat was diced at Easter, I believed.  Easter was about blood, death, and victory won only through the harshest pain.  Easter was about sanctification and propitiation and all those other "-ation" words that my pastor is supposed to explain to me.And so, in my simple little head, Christmas was happy, Easter was hard. 

At Christmas, we could just sit back and not think too hard, sip our egg nog, and gaze at our happy little nativity scene in which Mary looks all clean and regal, not like a scared young teenager who just went through labor next to a cow.

It's easy to not think too hard about Mary, baby Jesus, and the manger. Even for those of us who go to church, and who teach our kids about the nativity, and who sing Silent Night. But thinking about Mary, in the hay, giving birth to a Savior . . . well, I am contemplating that tonight.

Mom's Top 5 Family Christmas Traditions

When couples marry, they face a lot of compromise, and holidays can be trickier to negotiate then congressional bailouts. Luckily, my husband and I have been together since we were embryos (ok, not really, that would make us twins). So we were introduced to each other's Christmas traditions while we were still living with our parents, enjoying the holiday from a kids' perspective. Once we went off to college, we took turns staying at each other's parents' houses for Christmas break, and came to appreciate the few differences in how our families "do" Christmas.

Once we married and had our own tree, hearth, and home, I was surprised at how much we still managed to find to argue about. The biggest fight was about colored lights vs. white lights, and I believe I actually cried in the Home Depot parking lot. (My husband, bull-headed? Me, over-emotional? Never!) I remember complaining to my Dad on the phone about how uncompromising Jamie was being, expecting to get some sympathy. Instead, Dad suggested that colored lights might mean a lot to Jamie, and that it would be a small sacrifice, and maybe we could switch next year. We had colored lights that year, and I am woman enough to admit the tree looked quite cheerful and festive.

Colored lights aside, as the wife and mom, I am certainly the primary Steward of Christmas. I oversee unloading the Christmas boxes, I do almost all the gift shopping, wrapping, and shipping, the cards, the decorating, the table setting, and it might be safe to say, ALL of the clean up. Jamie has taken over most of the cooking, which I miss doing, but haven't figured out how to make time for. Jamie is a good cook.

Now for the the list. My Top 5 Favorite Family Christmas Traditions:

1. Singing carols on Christmas Eve. My sisters have always been very musical, my younger sister is a music therapist and plays like 27 instruments. Her husband is a talented classical guitarist. While my talent is harder to pinpoint, I do like to sing, and we always do a lot of that at Christmas.

2. Christmas Eve mass. We dress up, and rush to get seats, and it's always overcrowded and overheated, but I love it. I love the candles, and the singing, and the feeling of anticipation, of impending happiness. We actually missed it this year. We arrived a half hour before the children's mass, to standing room only, which we just can't do with a baby, a preschooler, and a kindergartner. So we left, and went back the next morning at 10:30. (I cried a little over it, though.)

3. Noche Buena. The Cuban side of my husband's family always celebrates on Christmas Eve with a pork roast, black beans and rice, and fried plantains, among other things. We continued this traditional meal at our house the first time we hosted our own Christmas Eve, and now my family enjoys it too. Jamie cooks it all, pretty much, which works well because I am usually still busy with last minute gift wrapping, and getting the kids ready for church.

4. The Stockings. At my house, when we were growing up, our stockings were an important part of Christmas morning. They were handmade by my mother, and Santa always stuffed them to overflowing. We would all come downstairs and admire the pile of presents around the tree, and then head to the mantle to each take down our stocking and cradle it on our lap while Dad made coffee and Mom combed her hair, put on slippers, and whatever else she decided was worth making us wait in torture. We unwrapped the presents in the stocking first, things like paperback books, cassette tapes, inexpensive earrings, chocolates, candy canes, gum, and makeup. It was hard to get Jamie to accept the Stocking tradition. At his house, the stockings were kind of an afterthought. I was there one Christmas during college when his Mom had us all paint our names on fuzzy red stockings with glitter paint. (I guess she suspected I was probably a keeper.)  They still hang those stockings to this day, but they are not a major player. We've found lotto tickets, or a roll of film, in them before. When we are there for Christmas, I usually stuff a little something in them all. I have made Jamie do Stockings first every Christmas at our house, except this one, because the kids' toys were too big a lure for them. Who can ignore a 7x4 foot slotcar racetrack long enough to sit and dig through a stocking? So we did the tree first this year. But I plan to restore the proper order in the future.

5. Epiphany. We leave the tree and all the decorations up for the full twelve days of Christmas, until the Feast of Epiphany. Traditionally, that's when the three wise men reached the baby Jesus to give their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

As always, please feel free to share your favorite traditions!

And I thought packaging couldn't get any more ridiculous

Every Christmas, parents expect to have to put together some toys. Its helpful when they include a list of the tools you need for assembly. But they really should label some toys, particulary toddler and preschool toys, "package disassembly required." A list of required tools would prepare us for the ordeal: sharp scissors, wire cutters, a phillips head screwdriver, and a bandaid. Also, a trashcan directly next to you to collect the two dozen wires and plastic bits that the baby longs to chomp on while waiting for her barn and little people animals to be released from midieval bondage.

Mom's Top 5 Christmas Movies

One movie is conspicuously NOT on my list--I really don't get that excited about It's a Wonderful Life. Doesn't move me all that much, in fact, as things go from bad to worse, I dread watching the poor guy. My favorites may not even all be truly "Christmas" movies, but they are shown during the holiday season.

1. Elf. When it came out a few years ago, we all loved it, and it has stood the test of time not only each successive Christmas, but all through the year. My daughter and her friend have been watching it and acting out scenes since July. We know lines so well, we really should put it on as family entertainment.

2. The Bells of St. Mary's.  My family always watched this around Christmas when I was a kid, and I love both Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. Plus, we're Catholic, so we like to laugh at boxing nuns. ;-) If you haven't seen it, rent it. Jamie bought me the DVD a couple of years ago.

3. The Sound of Music. I love to sing with Maria, the songs remind me of being twelve. After watching, I sing Edelweiss to my kids every night for a week.

4. A Charlie Brown Christmas. Isn't this a favorite to everyone over 30? It was such a big deal to stay up after 8 to watch it on TV. Kids these days aren't as impressed with Peanuts, and they can watch animated movies anytime they want. When we were kids, it was event.

5. A Christmas Story. I think this one seems a classic to any age group, even though it came out in the 80's and is set in 40's. My husband just told me you can buy the Christmas Story Leg Lamp online. He also just saw that it is directed by the same guy as Porky's. There's some trivia to share at your next Christmas Party.

 I've only watched Elf so far this year, and a portion of Charlie Brown. It's time to dig out the Bells of St. Mary's I think! Did I miss any of your favorites? Let me know!

Chuckling at Sarah's "Lessons from the North"

I spent the first half of my growing-up years in Connecticut, and the second half in Alabama. Quite a contrast in weather, among other things. I always felt like a transplanted Yankee, as others would smile at how I said things differently. Like "aunt" instead of "ant," "grounded" instead of "on restriction," "swearing" instead of "cussing," and I called carbonated beverages "soda" instead of classifying it all as "coke." I always figured, since I don't talk like a Southerner, I would always stay a Northerner.

Then I married and moved with my husband to San Diego for the first time. I was taken aback when men would make off-color jokes at lunch in front of me. I told my girlfriends, when I was college in Georgia, guys watched their language in front of girls, and some of them even stood up whenever a girl joined or left the table! There was one sales rep in the office from deep in Louisiana, and I absolutely loved hearing her voice around the office. It would bring out my inner"ya'll." I missed sweet tea, barbeque, and country music. I began to realize I was feeling more like a Southerner than I ever expected.

But two years ago I brought my husband and kids with me to a very large French Acadian family reunion in Northern Maine. (You'd think Maine is ALL north enough already, but Northern Maine is just a little more dramatically north.) My grandparents, on both sides, are from opposite sides of a lake up there, and everyone seemed to be related to me. All the food seemed like home to me. Course, it was July, so the weather seemed fine and dandy, but everyone told me that there were only two seasons--July and winter.

Anyway, all this is to explain that I feel a bit like a chameleon, feeling at home in opposite climes. And I think my family, who still live in the south, can appreciate the differences between the North and the South as well as anyone any Yankee who has transplanted to Dixie.

Then there is my good friend Sarah Smiley, who has spent her whole life in the South (yes, Sarah, if ask a Yankee, Virginia IS the South) and has recently moved to Bangor, Maine. She writes a syndicated family humor column, and I knew the move and adjustment would give her material for a long time to come.You can read her column, like this one, at Military.com:

The oil tank, a big barrel of a thing, which looks like something people in my hometown in Virginia use to cook pigs, seemed very ominous. "You mean it's full of oil, right there in my basement," I asked my friend Stephanie. "Is that safe?"

To read more about her discoveries as a transplanted Southerner, click the link to her archives. I've been reading every week for a laugh.

Mom's Top 5 This week it's snacks

For some time I've been wanting to start a weekly meme, like so many other bloggers have, i.e. Manly Man Monday, Fun Monday, or Works-for-me-Wednesday. I feel like a Top 5 might be pretty generic, but it leaves the category wide open for whatever is on my mind each week. Maybe that will help me get it done each week.

This week's Top 5 is on my mind because my children seem to ALWAYS be asking for snacks. I try to re-establish regular meal-times, make them eat a full lunch to head of the afternoon of begging, but they will beg anyway. There are days I run out of healthy snack ideas, there are days I run out of healthy snacks! I really could use some suggestions from other moms for quick and easy snacks to stock.

I do NOT mean that I want suggestions for snacks we can bake together, assemble to look like cute animals, or spend a day cooking and preportioning and stocking the fridge with in advance. I mean something I can open the cupboard and fridge and pretty much hand over with minimal spooning, scooping, or unwrapping.

Hear are the Top 5 Snacks in my house:

1. Whole Grain Goldfish

2. Yoplait Dora/Diego Smoothies (the ones with no colors and less sugar)

3. Raisins

4. Apple slices

5. Orange slices

Clearly, I could use some more suggestions. The kids get tired of the same old thing, and I feel like variety is healthier, right? Please tell me, moms, if your kids are all-day snackers like mine--what snacks are Tops in your house?

Football at 9 AM? Bring on the Bloody Marys

We enjoyed the Army-Navy game tremendously over here this weekend. I myself didn't actually watch too much of it, but Navy seemed to always be winning, so I could focus on the fun. That would be the drinks, and the food, and the company. And happily, for everyone, the kids activities kept them mostly outside or upstairs. I really don't watch football much, but it was great because I DO really love socializing with grown ups. And I haven't done much of that while Jamie was deployed.

A 9 AM kickoff is always hard, though it is nice to trade the typical beer and chips and burgers for mimosas, bloody marys, and brunch. I love brunch. I would say that brunch is easily my most favorite meal ever.  I made an egg and sausage casserole, and blueberry muffins, and crab dip, of course. It was nice to cook good food, I didn't do much of that while Jamie was gone, either.

Not sure how happy I was to see my husband drunk by 11 AM, but at least we all had a good time. After the party was over, we still had to drive to the base because it was the last day to get his last few bags off the carrier. I was worried, afraid he might fall off the boat, I told he couldn't walk onto the boat drunk. He said something about how he can indeed, and has before, and it's done all the time. Chuckles from the other Navy men present.

He did manage to stay awake so I could take him to the boat. Maybe partially because I told him if he passed out he'd wake up without his mustache. He got his bags off the carrier, and I have to say, by the time he walked off the boat, he was stone sober. That'll do it, I guess.