Tag Archives: Christmas

Content

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It’s Christmastime again. I know, it’s not December, but trust me, I’m not ready for this, and I need to start readying now. Friday night my family sang Christmas carols around the piano. (George boomed them out then slumped in his chair and pretended he hadn’t.) Saturday my dad and I drove back up to school and snowflakes flurried at the windshield, and I pretended that I didn’t like it, but I did. (Don’t tell.) On Sunday I made plans with friends to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and probably Shop Around the Corner too. Yesterday, I read a couple favorite T.S. Eliot poems about Christmas, “The Journey of the Magi” and “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.” They are about death in life and life in death and the awe-filled Coming.

I am tired. Tired and full, and tired and waiting. I am full from this semester. I am full from running with Abby and writing poetry and early mornings and Sassy Tuesdays in Physics with Jackie (and Libby) and cleaning house and long showers and lunches with Laura and lunches with Heidi and weepy Friday afternoons and visits to the ABT hall and a carnation from my brother and rides to church with Haley and reading  good poetry and the Lizzie Bennet Diaries and playing in the pit for the musical and Monday-Wednesday-Friday lunches with the girls and dropping things in intercampus mail and pie in Fantasy on Tuesdays and writing a story with chapters and hugging people on the sidewalk and watching my five-year-old friend Josiah draw a picture for me and write “ALAS” at the top.

I am waiting for finals and Christmas, for travel and rest, for this to be over and what’s next to begin. I’m waiting for birth and for death, and T.S. Eliot speaks true—I’ll find both with the Child in the manger.

I am content.

Things Change

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Really, they do.

I don’t think I’d properly begun to realize that until this semester, perhaps even this Christmas. You see Christmas used to be this great shining thing set gloriously at the end of the year. School let out, we opened all our presents and drank eggnog, then the next day we were off to my grandparents’ in dear old Brookfield, MO.

It was just us and my Aunt Amy’s family when we were kids. Mary and Peter and Jacob and I sat at the kids table and wreaked havoc. Grandma would proudly set out her little individual salt shakers, and we would spend Christmas dinner salting each other’s milk and making up stories about my brother George’s latest escapades. Even when it wasn’t mealtime we would sit at the card table playing long games of Mille Borne (Creve! Creve!) and Monopoly. Usually Monopoly. Peter was always the banker and he always won, Mary cheerfully came in second, I came third for lack strategy, and Jacob came dolefully last, because Peter always had it in for him. Thus began the illustrious cousin tradition of bending and even, yes, breaking the rules.

As we got older, and my Uncles Bill’s kids also began to descend en masse every Christmas, we played Mafia just to cheat and peek, and generally win unfairly. All part of cousin bonding, you know. There was also an official cousin basketball game, in which I was always the official photographer, a job I was very bad at. Here we are in 2007 after that year’s game.

As I remember, 2007 was a particularly red-letter Christmas. Emily brought her new husband André, and we took joy in initiating him and giving him the official stamp of cousin approval.

Some of these signatures are forged, but who’s telling which?

The other notable thing about Christmas 2007 was Poopsie. Billy and Hannah went into town with Grandpa one day for some inauspicious reason, and came back a couple hours later with a puppy. He (she? I can’t remember…) was very cute, and also entirely unhousebroken (thus the name…) It wasn’t until Christmas night, when Mary and Tina and Joe and I took him for a walk that he did his business outside for the first time and we rejoiced. Then, while star-tripping, Joe fell and got that business all over his jeans, and we rejoiced only slightly less. (“Joe! That was Poopsie’s Greatest Achievement, and you fell in it!”) Wonderful Christmas.

Since then we have had a few family reunions in hotels which have brought us to some truly marvelous locations, like this unique antique mall.

As you can probably see written all over my face there, that was the Christmas that eight of us girls crowded into one hotel room and stuck this sign on the door.

It truly was, my friend. Santa was spotted just down the hall.

Mostly, the thing about Christmas with cousins is that it is a lot of very tall people in a house with very low ceilings sitting on couches together singing carols and giggling.

Three or four days full of lots. Lots of jokes about pantyhose, lots of games of Authors, lots of re-watching of State Fair, lots of racing out to the cold breezeway to grab orange balls, lots of Christmas.

Here we are, last Christmas—grown, haven’t we?

BUT…

This Christmas we couldn’t get there till the 23rd. It was the McLellans’ year off, Uncle Jon (better known as UJ) had done his familial duty at Thanksgiving, and as for Uncle Bill’s—Hannah and Billy had to work and couldn’t come, and Joe had already left for St. Louis. We had a nice evening, sang carols and all, and the next day an attempt was made at a cousin basketball game, which I rather spoiled, and that was it. The rest of them left. We went ahead and did the present opening on Christmas Eve, just to get it out of the way, it seemed. Christmas felt like any other Sunday, except quieter. Even in our unusually small numbers, we more than doubled the attendance at my grandparents’ sadly fading church. Merry Christmas and all that…

The holidays seemed to have matched my semester a little too well—quite lost from what I thought it would be. It all leaves me holding fast to the things that haven’t changed:

When we spent the night in Nashville, and the question of the evening’s entertainment was brought up, Peter Immediately said “We could play Monopoly…” and we all said “NO!”

When asked to pick a carol George made a show of deciding and then grumbled “We Three Kings.” It used to be the only song he’d sing with us, even in the summertime.

There was still a card table in the breezeway piled with cookies and leftovers.

A Christmas Carol was read aloud in the car, and It’s a Wonderful Life lives in that glorious black and white.

There’s something else too, that hasn’t changed. However I feel about the day, whether or not I even remember that it’s Christmas, it’s still the day Christ was born. It’s still the incredible beginning of God’s plan of redemption. It is a day that means even in the dreariest, most disenchanted place A SAVIOR IS BORN. Even when I’m drowning in self,  and dull, adopted hurts, my God sent his Son as a baby, even more vulnerable and prone to tears than I am, that I might know hope. And that will not change.

Tomorrow is new day and a new year in which I get to serve a living God who came to save me. Please remind me when I forget. Please.

Colors

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My junior year of high school I was in a creative writing class, and in my journal I always told my teacher what color my day had been–a linoleum green, aubergine, festive red, or a warm, linty grey. The bad days, the gag into a corner days, were always tan. I hate tan.

Recently, though I haven’t been paying a great deal of attention, my days have been mostly the same color. Not quite sure what color that is–not tan–(okay, maybe kind of tan…) This is why I haven’t been writing. I actually have a list of possible topics living on my desktop, but it takes at least a tiny bit of Walt Whitman’s “urge, urge, urge” to make myself write, and the urge only lives in color.

But I have been thinking about some nice things today. I picked up a copy of the Quad, because my poem is in it with a whole page to itself (!!!) and then I started thinking about the book review I’m going to write on academic tenure, and that made me very happy, and then I remembered Christmas and cousins, and I watched this video. Then I felt just a little bit like I’d found my feet, and I started writing to you.

And now for some more things which have the potential to make the days change color. Classes are over and finals are coming, and I’m looking forward to them just a tad. I’m good test-taker. I’m comfortable there. At some point Heidi and I are going to go to the library, find a T.S. Eliot anthology, and I’m going to read her “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees,” sitting there in the stacks. I’ll drive to Missouri with my family, and Scrooge and the Grinch will probably come with. Over break I plan on reading The Hunger Games, Huck Finn and John Green’s new novel, if I can get a hold of it, along with some of those tenure books. And Hannah’s getting married–in January. A few sparks of pigment there, don’t you think?

One of my favorite lines of poetry from this semester is in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese  about the “gold and purple of thine heart.” She’s talking about an innate, unfaltering royalty. A nobility that lives behind the plainest faces, and beneath the flattest places–rich and deep and velvet. The color, perhaps, of peace, of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “dearest freshness deep down things.” Fresh, warm, patient, Princely peace.

So here’s to gold and purple days, friend. Happy Christmastime.

Cousins, California, and Christmas itself…

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Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Hello. In case you were wondering, exams went well, except for one. Then after many hugs, and fending off the last wisps of stress, I boarded a plane to Iowa. Of course, I do not live in Iowa, but my family was there already with my Mom’s side at the Wasserbahn Water Park. (What a place!) Thus began my vacation of lots-of-people-for-not-long-enough. I did see my cousins, of course, and it was a good time. Since United didn’t get my bag to me on time, we had an adventure to some nearby outlets to buy me $70 worth of clothes for which I will be reimbursed. There was also an extremely satisfactory Secret Santa, a rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” which we found so entertaining that it is posted on Facebook, lots of Uno and Telephone Pictionary, and much cousin bonding on the couch in the hospitality room which was also Uncle Jon’s room. Poor UJ. We spent a quiet Christmas day at my grandparents in Brookfield, MO, and were up very, very early to get on a plane to San Francisco.

My dad’s entire family is in California, but except for him, the rest of us hadn’t been out for six and a half years. There has been some pretty awful drama which you may know about, and the details of which I’m not going to go into right now. Suffice to say, I’m so thankful we went, and that such a thing was even possible, but it was a surreal experience. We met my Granddad’s new wife, Shirley, and saw lots of cousins, whom I knew I had met before, but whose faces were unfamiliar. Last time I saw my cousin Lorenzo, we were kids and we visited the Jelly Belly factory together, this time he got more cheerful with each of four beers. It has been a very long time. We visited St. Mary’s Cemetery where my Grammy’s memorial is. We all stood around in the grocery store beforehand and said “I have never bought flowers for a grave before. How does one do this thing?” We got yellow because that was her favorite color. We visited my Aunt Sharon in the little house in Sacramento where Grammy and all of her siblings grew up. We drove down to Orange County to see my uncle and aunt and cousins. We went to a beach (a beach!) on New Year’s Eve. There was Bananagrams and a deeply competitive game of Silver Screen Trivial Pursuit.

I’m still sort of in awe that all of this could happen. That we could get on a plane in ten degree weather, and get off to see trees heavy with oranges down every other block. That Mary and I could sit there and watch as Grammy’s sister, my Aunt Marge, and Granddad’s new wife next to each other on my cousin Nancy’s couch making friends. That my family could step out of the car on Partrick Road in Napa, where my dad grew up, and smell the eucalyptus, and chew on stalks of anise. I had not remembered that California was so beautiful. Wherever we went I always felt like we were in a valley, surrounded by mountains that looked like cozy giants sleeping in extravagant positions. I could pick out a rumpled shirt-tail here, the crook of an elbow there. The palm trees that were not pruned looked quite silly—as if they were wearing shaggy fur coats beneath a bad hairdo. I looked out the window a lot.

Yet the trip was not idyllic. I suppose I am too old for that to be possible, but it was more than that. We never saw anybody long enough to get properly comfortable with them, and even then my aunt and her lies seemed to lurk a little triumphantly in the corner of every conversation. And there’s another thing. I think I missed Christmas. I mean, really, where was it? There was that one quiet day at Grandma’s, but I was busy packing. It is a silly thought, but I feel as though Christmas and I planned to meet, but missed each other by a few minutes. That doesn’t mean, though, that it didn’t happen. When I got off the plane from Pittsburgh and walked toward the baggage claim, there was a large group with American flags and signs, waiting for their soldier. I was a little shamed to walk past them in my dress and leggings. I was so obviously not the hero they had come to meet. Then my sister jumped suddenly out from behind them trying to scare me and hug me all at once, and I could feel their smiles at our little reunion, and I didn’t feel embarrassed anymore. That was Christmas. In Iowa, we took a cousin picture wearing light-up necklaces. That was Christmas. In California, we drove down the road in our cramped rental car listening to Simon and Garfunkel, and George snored on my shoulder. That was Christmas. Last night driving back from the Kansas City airport the stars above me refused to come into focus. They stayed icy and soft no matter how I squinted, so I closed my eyes and went to sleep. That was Christmas.

Christmas is no less than a promise fulfilled, an expectation realized. We are told every year that Christmas will come again. It does. “When we are faithless, he remains faithful.” He does. “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  And He is.

A Haphazard Winter Tears Christmas Entry

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This morning I woke up to go to my eight-o-clock and looked outside to find that it was snowing heavy and windy. Tramping through dry, slippery winter without a hat sounded unappealing, as did Civilization class, so I stayed in bed. Already you and my day have been properly introduced. Isn’t she lovely? At nine I went to Brit Lit where I blinked my way through “Gray’s Elegy” and Christopher Smart’s cat. As I was walking out, Dr. Brown stopped me, and said that I’d seemed so tired lately, was taking fewer notes, and did not seem to be concentrating very well. Was I getting enough sleep? I said I was just ready for the semester to be over. Then I hurried away and tears sprung from some hitherto unknown reservoir of weariness.

I called my mother just to ask about a novel and she heard my panic. I did my French homework, and began to calm down. I walked over to the SAC to pick up a package from home. On the outside was written in sharpie “Dear Alice, Don’t cry in the mailroom. Mom.” I was startled. How had she known? It wasn’t as if she’d sent the package in the last twenty minutes, and all of this fatigue had only hit me today. As I walked back to MEP I wondered, was there something inside so touching, so personal…? That wasn’t like my mommy. Then I remembered something she’d mentioned several days before. She was only joking, saying that now I wouldn’t feel left out while all my friends were opening their big fat care package ordered by their parents for a campus fundraiser. Of course. She did not expect tears and melodrama, she expected laughter and good sense. That was the mother I knew and loved.

This afternoon I sat in the lobby with friends, and just happened to look up my house on google maps. Then I looked up my grandparents’ house,  then Karen’s, then Caldwell… I gave myself a virtual tour of home. In fact, I even tried to drive home from school using street view, but the going was a little slow. So I just switched back to my house and stood in the middle of Scott Avenue, spinning in circles, watching the summer leaves shading my front porch race by again and again. It was almost as good as the real thing. Well, not almost. Just sort of.

As everyone else is beginning their Christmas season, we here at Grove City are entering our stress season. I already have friends studying behind locked doors, and I myself am contemplating who exactly would be a good jailer for my computer. Maybe Katie? Anyhow, true to form, I’m not worried about exams, but I hate them just as much as everyone else. They haven’t begun yet, though… On Saturday night I went to a lovely Christmas party with lots of families. There were about seven different kinds of soup for supper. Then we went caroling and had a gingerbread house competition. I wished I was nine years old again, sliding around in sock feet with a sparkly Christmas sweater and my hair falling into excited, sweaty wisps about my face.

Then last night were the candlelight services at the chapel which are famous, and rightly so. Lots of people from the community come, touring choir sings, the Christmas story is recited, and then everyone lights their candle and Harbison Chapel’s sanctity seems to be consummated yet again as the organ swells and we all sing Silent Night. At “Christ, the Saviour is born; Christ, the Saviour is born” as everyone lifted their candles in solemn unison, and Liesel and I snorted back laughter, I forgot my constant wish that Christmas would arrive faster. Why wish for something you already have?

So to summarize this jumbled entry: Don’t cry in the mailroom, Alice, because in eight days you will be on a plane zooming toward the dear sister you haven’t seen since August, your tall baby brother, your parents, and assorted cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Also, go ahead, be nine years old with pink cheeks and a sugar high, for “Christ, the Saviour is born!” Happy Christmas, goober. Study hard.

December

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All day fat snow has been falling–the kind that frosts my coat, clogs my eyelashes and makes me feel quite Puckish. This afternoon, friends and I are walking to Salvation Army to buy sweaters and flannel and Christmas presents. There is absolutely nothing I would rather be doing this particular Friday than tramping through northeast-midwest snow in a hat and red peacoat with the FamPan.

When I woke up on the first of December to see the world white-washed, I groaned. “A great, suffocating blanket of ugh has descended,” I told myself, “not to rise again for months on end.” But I put on a sweater-dress and marched out to face it. Then came a peacoat in the mail. And boots out of my closet. And finally Christmas wormed into my soul, (“Well, in Whoville they say the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!”) and, also, the flakes gained weight. Really, who can resist a pudgy snowflake? It’s even more adorable than  pudgy baby! Dozens of them nestle in hair, looking for all the world like Titania’s Cobweb and Moth. When I open my mouth to speak, they wander right in tasting of Christmas and glitter. I catch them, and they melt, but while they last they look ever so cuddly. How could George Bailey have jumped off a bridge on a snowy night?

To me, until I tire of it, this snow is useless, glorious manna inspiring my most dire creativity. I will skip my way to Salvo, and buy the biggest sweaters, the brightest flannel, and the most devilishly perfect presents. If only this particular snowfall will keep up I, myself, may demand to carve the roast beast.