"If you sit on my lap today..."

I put up my Christmas tree this evening (to the great fascination of my cat) and, as is traditional with me, put on the DVD of the Rankin-Bass animation "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", with the voices of Fred Astaire and Micky Rooney.  I love Rankin-Bass animation, particularly the stop motion animation, and have collected a few DVDs as they've become available. They were mostly done in the late 60s/early 70s so they're not as politically correct as some animated films produced today. I realised just how much times have changed as I listened to one of the songs, sung by Kris Kringle when he first goes to Sombertown to give gifts to the children.  The chorus goes: "If you sit on my lap today, a kiss a toy is the price you'll pay..."

Strangely, that song is often missing when the show airs on television. Go figure.
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The consolation prize

I have several pieces of jewellery and I like them all, mostly because I chose them and bought them myself. I also have one ring that my parents bought for me, and I do love it, but story of how they came to buy it for me still makes me laugh (in a "laugh or cry" kind of way).

This is the ring. The stone is a grape garnet, which means it looks deep red when it's on my hand and has a purplish tinge if you hold it up to the light. I'd like to say that the channels on the sides contain diamonds but alas, they only contain cubic zirconias. (Zirconiae?) Anyway, they're shiny and I don't care that they're not 'real'. I love this ring.

In my family we no longer exchange Christmas gifts, but for a number of years there we did a Kris Kringle type of thing, where everyone draws a name out of a hat and you buy one gift and receive one gift. It's not a true Kris Kringle because it's not anonymous but the idea is similar.

A number of years ago I happened to be the first one to arrive at my parents' house for Christmas lunch. Neither of my parents had drawn my name in the gift draw so I wasn't expecting a gift from either of them. When I walked in my parents looked at me very seriously and said, "Sit down; we want to talk to you." I sat. My father continued, "Now... you don't have a husband." He paused and seemed to be waiting for a response. I said, in the type of voice one uses when addressing the dangerously confused, "No-o-o, I don't. Well spotted." My parents then explained that they'd become quite concerned about the unfairness of the Kris Kringle system, because it meant that I received one present only, whereas my siblings, who all have partners, received the Kris Kringle gift AND a gift from their partners. To try to even things up, they'd bought me this ring. So, in effect, they bought me a shiny, shiny ring to make up for the fact that I don't have a husband.

I find a whole lot of things about this very strange, but the weirdest for me is that they had clearly been sitting there for a couple of years doing a mental calculation on who gets what for Christmas. I hadn't even noticed who gets what and I had never given a second thought to the fact that my siblings might get gifts from their partners (and I should point out that not all of them do, but that possibility apparently didn't exist in my parents' minds). I would not describe my parents as materialistic by any means but they seem to have a blip in their brains when it comes to Christmas presents. Everything has to be FAIR and EVEN. In that spirit, they didn't want me to tell my siblings about the ring because they might find it unfair that my parents bought me a gift but not them. Anyone who's ever watched a sit-com can see the potential for disaster inherent in this whole situation.

Although I liked the ring, it did occur to me that this would happen every single year unless I put a stop to it. How to do that though, was tricky. I didn't want to throw the gift back in their faces, even figuratively, because although their reasoning both confused and annoyed me, it was well-meant. I decided the only solution was to make a joke of it... so for the next several months I took to referring to the ring as my "consolation prize gift" or my "husband substitute". My sisters joined in the joke and even my parents found it funny in the end. I had high hopes that this meant they wouldn't do the same thing the following year.

Who was I kidding? They bought me a camera.

The year after that they stopped buying me gifts and I think they've forgotten about it all now, but to this day I refer to the ring as the consolation prize - as in, "What jewellery are you wearing to the party?" "Well, I thought I'd wear the gold locket, my consolation prize ring and these earrings..."

Parents. Baffling, but mostly harmless.

A different kind of Christmas

I've just had the first Christmas where I didn't see a single member of my family. I'm interstate from the rest of my family and I opted to stay put this year (which caused its own hassles, but that's a story for another day). Generally in my family we all get together at my parents' house for lunch. This is fairly unusual in itself - I'm one of five kids and my siblings all have partners and children and/or stepchildren, yet the Christmas Day celebration is still centred around our birth family, not their own families. Of course they still have their own celebrations but the main shindig is the one where we all get together. Let me put this in perspective - my siblings are aged 50, 48, 44 and 30 (and I'm 38) and between them they have 8 kids/stepkids aged from 25ish to nearly 4, plus 3 (step)grandkids... yet up to this point no one has said, "Hey, we're a pretty big family in our own right - we want to have our own Christmas lunch this year. Maybe the rest of us should get together on another day." I find it kind of astonishing, really. If this continues it's entirely possible that my nephews will grow up and leave home never knowing what it was like to have Christmas lunch in their own home.

So this is what I was up against when I said, "Uhhh... guess what? I'm going to stay here in Melbourne this year for Christmas." My younger sister jokingly told me that I've RUINED CHRISTMAS... but then told me they've been wanting to have Christmas in the Philippines one year, with her partner's family, and she thinks I might have paved the way. Hey, that makes me a trailblazer!

My parents' real concern was that I would be spending Christmas alone - they just didn't get the fact that being part of a church means I would only be alone on Christmas Day if I went out of my way to be so. As soon as people heard I wasn't going back to Sydney I had about 12 invitations... and even if I hadn't had invitations from people I know, my church works very hard to identify people who'll be alone and to hook them up with families who can fit another person or two around their table at Christmas.

I haven't chatted with my family yet to find out what Christmas was like from their end. For me, it was incredibly relaxing. I suspect for many families, Christmas celebrations bring with them an undercurrent of tension. You're bringing together a group of people who have a long history together of the good, the bad and the very very ugly; and for many families, like mine, it's the only day of the year when you're all together in the same room. I keep in pretty close contact with my sisters but I only see my brothers on Christmas Day or if someone dies and we happen to be at the same funeral. This, of course, means that I also barely know my sisters-in-law. Christmas lunch tends to be awkward and slightly tense. My mother gets very stressed about the food preparation, my sisters spend a lot of time chasing after their kids and trying to stop them being maimed in drunken backyard cricket games, my step-nieces and step-nephews clearly hate being there because they haven't grown up with my family so we're virtual strangers to them, my brothers don't lift a finger to help with anything and invariably become drunk and very obnoxious, and my dad tries to keep everyone happy but usually ends up getting in trouble from my mother for... I don't know, breathing the wrong way.

Of course, there are great things too. We have a long-running contest about the Christmas crackers - we take turns buying them and there's always good natured rivalry about the quality of the gift inside the cracker, as well as the corniness of the joke. ("How do you get down from an elephant? You don't - you get down from a duck." Ar ar ar.) There is the tradition of walking down the road at night to look at the house with the truly horrendous, tacky Christmas lights all over their house and lawn. There is the unspoken agreement that at some point during the meal someone will hand my mother a paper napkin and say, "How did you make those elf shoes again?" (One year she folded the napkins into the shape of an elf shoe. They were very cute but by the following year she'd forgotten how to do it, and every year she tries and fails. It's fun to watch... yes, we're cruel!) There are lots of fun things and I was sad to miss them this year... but underneath all that I was relieved to enjoy a Christmas Day lunch with people I love, and to spend several hours there without anyone fighting, getting tense, getting stressed, getting drunk. I didn't even know Christmas could be like that. I'm not saying it was a Hallmark Christmas, but it was still pretty good and I came home feeling sated, relaxed and loved. It was a good day.
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What I celebrate

Luke 2:1-35:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived. When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord"), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: "a pair of doves or two young pigeons."

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel."

The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

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Slightly twisted Christmas traditions

As Christmas approaches I've been reading of some lovely family traditions for Christmas. People decorate the tree together, walk around at night to look at the Christmas lights, leave cookies out for Santa, write letters to children from Santa... it all sounds delightful.

Now let me tell you about my family's Christmas tradition. When we were children, at some point during the day on Christmas Eve my father would say, "Did you hear the news?" "No," we'd say, wide-eyed, "what news?" "There's been a storm," my father would say, "at the North Pole. It was just on the radio. Santa isn't going to be able to make it this year." We'd squeal and yell, "No, you're wrong!" Later on, when we'd established that yes, Santa would be arriving this year, my Dad would say, "I'm sick of those reindeer tearing up my lawn every year. I'm going to set a trap for them this year... see if I can catch one." A variation on this would be him walking casually into the room holding some rope. Curiosity would always get the better of us and we'd ask why he had the rope. "Oh, just setting a trap for the reindeer." And on Christmas morning, when there were clearly no captured reindeer, he'd say, "They got away! I came out here this morning and found hoof marks all over my lawn! And there was reindeer poo - eight of them... plus one red one at the front. That must have been Rudolph."

I've told people these 'traditions' before and they generally look horrified that someone would traumatise their children in this way. Let me state categorically - we loved it and thought it was very funny. To this day my sisters and I will ring each other at some point on Christmas Eve and start the conversation with "Hey... have you heard the news?" It's considered a huge feather in one's cap if the other person is too distracted to work it out and responds with "No... what news?"

So here's to weird family traditions - long may they continue!
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More cakey goodness

Below is a picture of the cake I made for our last Bible study of the year. Unfortunately none of us really wanted to eat it because someone else brought Chocolate Ripple Cake for dessert (the super-delicious dessert made with Chocolate Ripple biscuits and cream and other delightful things - yum!) but never mind. It was still fun to look at it!

And in other arty news... below is a painting I did the other day. It's pretty dodgy, really - I wanted to get back into painting since I haven't touched it for months, but I didn't have any ideas, nor did I have a lot of time so I just messed around for a bit... it's actually a diagram my counsellor drew the other day to illustrate a point she was making. Only she did it with a stick figure and without the pretty colours! :) Anyway it was good to play with paint again and I think I'll do a bit of painting during my holidays after Christmas.

Carol who?

I'm watching Carols in the Domain right now (on the television obviously, since the Domain is in Sydney and I'm in Melbourne). In the true tradition of stripping all religion out of a religious holiday, we've seen some pretty bizzare things at this yearly event - for a few years there they had a love affair with The Circle of Life, which is somewhat weird for a Christmas event. Particularly notable, though, was the year they had a couple singing Amazing Grace to each other like a love song. I kid you not.

All of this this makes me wonder what the singers and the audience think about the words of the 'traditional' carols (a few of which still get sung at these events). This is an event where God never gets a mention, and Jesus certainly doesn't, yet they still sing words like these:

He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of his righteousness
and wonders of his love.
(Joy to the World)

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark street shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
(O Little Town of Bethlehem)

...Man will live forever more because of Christmas Day.
(Mary's Boy Child)

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
(O Holy Night)

Watching this carols event I keep hearing the phrase "spirit of Christmas", by which they seem to mean 'family' or 'love' or 'togetherness' or whatever. It's all about being generous and being nice to each other. None of these things are bad... but is this what Christmas is really about? What do the songs say?

• God is righteous, loving, truthful, glorious and wonderful; and he rules the world.
• Jesus is the culmination of all humanity's hopes and fears.
• The world lay in sin and error, without hope until Jesus appeared.
• Because of Jesus, we can live forever.

I am so sick of this watering-down of Christmas. Don't tell me "we need to be inclusive". I don't ask Jewish people to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Happy Hannukah" because I think their religious holiday should include Christians also. Christmas is a Christian celebration. Yes, I'm fully aware that Jesus was not born on December 25; I'm also aware that Christians originally chose this date to coincide with a pagan festival. Those things don't change the fact that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus. Where did we get the idea that leaving Christianity in Christmas means we're not being inclusive? Christmas is all about inclusion... it's about God coming to earth as a man - and growing up, living and dying on our behalf so that everyone has the opportunity to be part of God's family.

I know some people will find this offensive, but frankly, I find it extremely offensive to be asked to say "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" when I want to be celebrating God's amazing love to us. "Joy to the world; the Lord has come!"
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Six more sleeps

No, not six more sleeps until Santa comes. Six more sleeps until my annual leave starts. Believe me, it can't come soon enough. Don't get me wrong; I love my job. When we had our Christmas lunch the other day my boss asked us all to name our highlight of the work year and mine was "landing this job" (I started work there at the end of April). It's a real blessing to work in a job I love - the people with whom I work are encouraging, friendly and lots of fun; and the parishioners who drop in (I work in a church) have embraced me warmly even though I worship in a different church. And I love working in a church... it's so great to chat about how things are going and then to pray together.

Having said all that... I've had a rough year from a personal point of view and an exhausting year at work, as I've learned the job and invested a lot of energy and time into relationship building. I am tired. I am finding it harder to be patient and gracious in a job that requires a lot of patience and grace. I look forward to the weekend with almost indecent enthusiasm and I find it harder to get out of bed on the days when I work. I'm grumpy, and it's not always hormonal!

So, bring on the holidays! I'll be off from Christmas Day until 14 January (three weeks - yay!) and I'm not going anywhere and I have no plans... except to recharge my batteries, and to return to work ready to run with endurance the race set before me.

Is it possible?

The evidence:

• I inhaled half a block of chocolate and most of a packet of BBQ chips yesterday and was still hungry when I finished.
• I'm about a kilo heavier than I was three days ago.
• I've gone up a bra size in the past 24 hours.
• I wanted to kill the man spruiking outside K-Mart yesterday because he kept using the phrase "Christmas Bear" ("Look, here's the K-Mart Christmas Bear; only $10! Do you want to say hello to the Christmas Bear? You know what would be a great gift this year? The K-Mart Christmas Bear!")
• When I got to work this morning I discovered that someone had been into my office (not unusual - I work in a church so people are always in here on Sundays) and moved things around - in particular, my sticky tape was sitting on the windowsill instead of back on my desk. I was so enraged as I rounded up my stationery etc and moved it all back that for a brief moment I seriously considered looking for another job.

The verdict:
I don't know... do you think it's possible I'm a teensy bit pre-menstrual??

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Home

I'm not entirely sure when this happened, but somewhere along the way 'home' has moved. When I moved interstate nearly four years ago the state I'd left was most definitely home. Over the Christmas break I would spend nearly two months there visiting family and catching up with friends, as well as coming home several times during the year for a week or two. That time was so important to me and really gave me an emotional lift. I felt like a stranger and an alien for a very long time when I moved interstate so coming home several times a year helped me to get through the rest of the year. Lately, though, I've realised that the opposite is true. I come 'home' to visit family and find myself anxious to get back 'home' to familiar and comfortable surroundings. How did this happen?

I think one thing that helped this happen is that, about 18 months ago, I finally found a church that feels like home, and where I have made good friends. Previously I longed for my old church where I knew there were people who cared about me and were praying for me; and where everything was familiar, because my 'new' church never ever felt like home, even though some of the people were friendly. Now, however, I feel like I have a church family again and that's made a huge difference to the way I feel about the place. This is not to say that I have abandoned my old church - I still miss the people there and I still feel a wonderful sense of belonging when I come back for holidays, but now when I say 'my church' I'm talking about the new(er) one, not the old one.

Church has been a big factor in my alliegance shift; and another thing that's helped is having a 'proper' job. I've had lots of jobs since I've been there but they've all been 'get me through uni' jobs. Now I'm not studying and the decision to find a job there instead of going back 'home' to find one was a big step for me. That's when I really felt like I'd moved for good.

Having said all of this, and given the supposed rivalry between the two states (which actually only exists from one side), I'll always be proud to say that I came from the first place, even though I now live in the second.

Ripped off (Christmas) joke #4

It's Christmas Day in a busy hospital. Twins are born - a boy and a girl. The proud father says, "Because it's Christmas, we're calling them Noel and Carmel." The doctor says, "I can understand Noel, but why Carmel?" The father says, "From the song... you know - 'O Carmel ye faithful...' "

Ho ho ho...

I blame television - especially Hallmark made-for-TV movies. Why else would we have such high expectations of warm, cozy family Christmas celebrations? I mean, nothing in my family experience has led me to expect a TV Christmas, yet every year I'm disappointed because it's not like that. This year has been a doozy, though, as the fights started before we even laid eyes on each other. A few organisational e-mails have been going back and forth... who's bringing the salad, who's bringing dessert, that kind of thing... and suddenly they degenerated into vicious attacks for no good reason. Well, no good reason other than the fact that the attacker was almost certainly drunk when he wrote the e-mail and possibly thought it was funny. It wasn't. There has been a half-hearted, almost apologetic e-mail since then, although the word 'sorry' was never used. It made things slightly better but I'm still rather dreading Christmas lunch.

I've been thinking about the old 'you can't choose your relatives' thing, which led me to wander over into thoughts about my Christian family. Sometimes I think I'm closer to my Christian family than my actual (blood-related) family, but of course that's taking a very narrow view. I'm very close to the Christians I know well, who love me and whom I choose to love, but there are many more Christians in the world and they're my family too. Like my blood family, some of them annoy me. I disagree violently with some of them. I vote differently. I don't like the way they dress, or eat, or the way they behave in public. Sometimes they embarrass me. But like my blood family, I am compelled to love them, care for them, pray for them and accept them - because we are family; united in Christ. Forgive me, my family. Happy Christmas.

Inspiring...

O Holy Night
(J S Dwight & A C Adam, 19th Century)

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night divine, O night, O night divine!