Goin' Down to Mama's

Merry Christmas

This is one of my favorite Christmas pictures. It's most of my mother's family, photographed sometime in the late forties or early fifties, I'm guessing. Uncle Guy, the oldest, is missing. He and Aunt Gladys must not have made it back home yet when the picture was taken.

The Christmas tree is an impressive cedar, which would've been cut from a hedgerow back in the fields and pickup-trucked to the house. All the branches are covered with tinsel and snow (made by whipping Ivory Snow detergent and water with a hand mixer). Mama says they never would've had a tree if it weren't for Aunt Joyce, who decorated it every year. That's her in the white sweater, standing next to my mother, the young girl to the far right. Aunt Joyce was always artistic. She could sew beautifully and make just about anything.

Next to Mama is her mother, Grandme, trying to look happy about the cookware she apparently just received. Grandme despised Christmas and couldn't wait to clear her house of "all this gom"—her expression for presents and wrapping paper and anything else that disrupted the normal flow of business in her house. She still wore that same style of house shoes with the fur around the top when I was a little girl. She still dreaded the holiday season every year. And she never got excited about any present she ever opened. (Comments like "Who gave me this ugly purple robe I've got on?" still ring in my ears.)

I imagine this picture was posed, with everyone instructed to admire and smile at their presents. Clearly, Uncle Chick (in plaid) was having none of it. I don't blame him. He wasn't about to smile at a hammer:) Left of him are Uncle Bud and Uncle Ferrell. The two ladies kneeling are (from left) Aunt Vivian and Aunt Slimp, easily two of the prettiest women I ever saw. And since the children are wearing matching outfits, I'm guessing they are likely sisters—my cousins, Candy and Cindy, who seem to be focused on Aunt Vivian—entirely natural, as all children adored her. Remember that line from the old Mary Tyler Moore Show theme: "Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?" That was Aunt Vivian to a T.

If you look just left of the tree, sort of between Uncle Bud and Uncle Chick, you can just make out the top of the old hall closet door. It had a faulty latch that would wiggle itself loose, and the door would come creaking open all by itself, usually at night.  Whenever that happened, we used to say, "Well, Uncle Walter must be walking tonight." How nice—a family spirit is passing through from the Great Beyond and stopped to say hello!

I look at this picture and am reminded of so many Christmases over the years and the loved ones I miss always, but especially this time of year. My memory takes me back to that old house, with its creaky doors and drafty windows that had to be covered with plastic in the wintertime. I remember the teeny-tiny kitchen, which seemed to magically expand to hold all the women in the family, who would congregate there to catch up on each other's news— stuff the men had absolutely no business hearing.

I remember and I smile. And I choose to believe that my failure to put up a tree is not a sign of laziness but, rather, a tribute to my dear departed grandmother. Grandme, if you're looking down from above, you can see that my house is relatively gom-free. All the presents are at Mama's.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

This is my favorite time of day, especially during the Christmas season. The house is quiet. Sunrise is just beginning. Aunt Grace’s Yule log is playing on the DVD:) Hank is having a post-Fancy Feast nap, and Cheeto has gone outside to play, leaving me to my solitude and my coffee. (By the way, I seem to be turning into Aunt Joyce. Dave pointed out that I have taken to drinking rivers of java, just as she did. I’m not sure why that's the case, but if it was good enough for Aunt Joyce, why, it’s good enough for me.)

I guess I don’t do the hustle and bustle of Christmas very well any more. Truthfully, I never did, but there was a time when I didn’t seem to have a choice. When I was young and single and working for a corporation, I used to dream of skipping Christmas altogether, of getting on a boat or a plane and escaping to some tropical island till it was all over. Why? Have you ever jumped waves at the beach? Sometimes, if you look away for just a minute, you’ll turn around to see a huge one coming at you—one that’s too big to jump and too close to run from. That’s what the holidays felt like to me—just an overwhelming wave of gifts to buy and parties to attend and traffic to struggle through and parking spaces to fight for and church programs to practice, and, and, and . . . Every waking minute from Thanksgiving till New Year’s was spoken for, and even that wasn’t enough time to get everything done. I longed for a lounge chair on a deserted beach somewhere in the Florida Keys.  (I know. Scrooge. Bah humbug.)

It isn’t that I didn’t want to do all those things—I just hated doing them at warp speed, which is what you have to do when you’re working full time and suddenly quadruple the entries on your social calendar. What I wanted was a soap opera Christmas—time to lovingly hand-paint each family member’s name on an ornament like Mrs. Horton on Days of Our Lives. Time to sip hot chocolate and make a huge production out of putting the star on the Christmas tree like Laura on General Hospital, back when she was dating Scotty Baldwin. You never saw Mrs. Horton grabbing for electronics at Walmart. Laura never had to fight for a parking space at Target or load up on Jovan Musk gift sets just to be covered, in case she should forget one of her girlfriends and need an emergency gift. (Neither Laura nor Mrs. Horton ever had to confess, as I do now, that I did not manage to send Christmas cards this year, but I love you dearly, friends and family, and will strive to do better in 2015.)

This Christmas is, mercifully, so much quieter than holidays past. But there’s a flip side to the tranquility. I don’t miss the mall traffic, but I mightily miss watching Granny open her presents. (Whoever said “things can’t make you happy” had never met Granny.) I don’t miss all the parties, but I sure miss some of them—like an annual Christmas supper at Aunt Joyce’s, where you could count on candied sweet potatoes to die for and a big plate of fudge and divinity. I miss crowding around Aunt Mac’s coffee table, where my cousins and I would eat together before we opened our presents as kids. I miss the way that, no matter how many seating areas Dave and I tried to create for a choir party we used to host, everybody would end up crowded into our small living room because we had more fun when we were all together.

That’s the key really—being together with people you love and remembering that Christmas is (or at least should be) a celebration of God’s gift of love to the world. We need that annual reminder to be thankful for the wonderful family and friends who daily bless our lives. We need to remember what Christmas really means—that we are loved and valued and forgiven.  And we need this season to remind us that love is a gift we’re intended to share and pass on.

The Christmas I described earlier—the one with mall traffic and an overflow of social obligations, the one I wanted to run from—that was a Christmas largely of my own making. The Christmas of true remembrance, of thanks for the love I’ve been given, the Christmas I very much need—that’s a gift from God.

Wishing you the love and joy of God’s Christmas this year.

[Image by Freerangestock.com]

 

 

Cheeto Says: "You Look All Stressed"

"You look all stressed from the holidays.
Know what would make you feel better?
A live chipmunk to chase around your dining room
and burn off that nervous energy.
Here, let me get you one . . ."

Sunday Morning Serenity

Remember that song “Who Are You” from the seventies? The chorus went “Who are you, who, who, are you?” It was by (who else) The Who. (There’s a pattern here:)

A long time ago, somebody told me about this theory in psychology that says, essentially, your identity as a person is not determined by who you actually are, or even by who other people think you are—it’s determined by who you think other people think you are. Scary. Are we really that eager to reflect and measure up to the opinions of other people? One of my best friends tells me I suffer from only-child-desire-to-please syndrome, and that’s probably true. OK, it’s definitely true.

But there’s a problem with aiming to please. You can’t always be true to yourself and keep everybody else happy. And when your honest inner self eventually demands its due and you dig in your heels and say, “This is who I am, and this is what I have to do,” it can be a shocker for those around you. When I think about it, though, some of the people I admire most are the ones who are always true to themselves—who say what they think, even when their opinion isn’t the popular one; who do what they think is right, every time, without fail, even when that means swimming against a tidal wave of what’s easy; who are 100 percent themselves all the time.

I’ve been rereading some of the Gospels this December, and the “who” question comes up again and again, both from those following Jesus and those who feel threatened by Him: Who are you? Sometimes He sends the question right back: Who do you say that I am?

As Dave and I try to figure out what the coming year will look like—how far we can go toward some important goals we’ve set together, what our priorities need to be—I’m making the “who” question my prayer to God—Who do You say that I am? Who do You want me to be? 

He was in the world,
and though the world was made through him,
the world did not recognize him.
He came to that which was his own,
but his own did not receive him.
Yet to all who received him,
to those who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God—
children born not of natural descent,
nor of human decision or a husband’s will,
but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:10-14

[Image by AleksandarMomirovic @ Freerangestock.com]

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

I'm sure you're asking the same question that I am this morning: What do Peter, Paul & Mary have to do with Christmas? As I’ve been rereading the Nativity story this month, I’ve also revisited some of the Old Testament prophets and one of my favorite theological writers, Reverend Timothy Keller. Along the way, I ran across a PBS documentary on Peter, Paul & Mary. And my brain keeps trying to merge all of that, for some reason, so here we go.

When I was a kid, my parents had one of those great “hi-fi’s” that were so popular in the sixties and seventies—a turntable and radio in a wooden cabinet as long as a buffet, with an auxiliary attachment for the latest in audio technology, 8-track tapes. One of the few vinyl LPs my mother owned was Peter, Paul & Mary’s In the Wind. As a child, I just loved those songs, and I would try to follow Mary Travers’ voice as I sang along so I could be part of that amazing harmony. As an adult, I have to wonder—was my sweet Baptist mother just drawn to the beautiful vocals, as I was, or did that record reflect a secret streak of radical rebellion? Inquiring minds want to know.

As I watched the documentary on PBS, I flashed back to my childhood self, putting In the Wind on the turntable and listening to the story of Stewball, the racehorse.  I remember studying the pictures on the album jacket, especially the ones on the back—one of Peter, Paul, and Mary jubilantly running down a city street—probably New York—and another taken from behind the podium when they were singing at the march on Washington. The documentary brought that picture to life, with a video clip of these three young singers, standing before millions of people and asking, “How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?” As an adult watching those images, what struck me was the passion and sincerity on their faces—the belief that the world should and could be a better place, that justice really could “roll on like a river” (Amos 5:24).

Belief. That is what I hear in those songs. And it made me reflect on Christian belief. Where does it come from? How can we know it's real? In The Reason for God, Reverend Keller talks about the importance of honestly examining our own doubts and questions in order to find the firm foundation of our personal faith. One indicator of God’s existence, for him, is what I would now call the Peter, Paul & Mary factor—the belief that things should and could be better. Here’s what Reverend Keller writes:

We have a sense that the world is not the way it ought to be. We have a sense that we are very flawed and yet very great. We have a longing for love and beauty that nothing in this world can fulfill. We have a deep need to know meaning and purpose.

That longing, he believes, comes from God because there’s nothing in the world that it could come from. The great gift that we celebrate at Christmas—God’s only Son—not only brings grace, redemption, and hope for a better world to come but also, as Reverend Keller explains, defines our place in this world that we  live in:

The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.

A prayer, this morning, that the Christmas season will remind us to think of ourselves less, to feel assurance that the longing in our hearts comes from above, to believe that even in this imperfect “distant land,” we can believe in a better world:

Remember the Lord in a distant land,
and think on Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 51:50

Peter, Paul & Mary

[Image by Freerange stock.com]