Untraditional Christmas

Have you ever just had the urge to stick a pair of antlers on a white Siberian tiger?  Like slapping the trappings of something you're used to onto something a little foreign to you?  Okay, I'm stretching the metaphor a little bit.  The Boo decided it would be fun to decorate Grandpa's stuffed tigers.  They don't seem to mind, and they make for a great photo opportunity.  Thinking seriously about this Christmas, though, that's the sort of Christmas we had.  Not quite traditional. 

 The traditional Christmas at my parents' house has a very specific structure.  Everybody arrives at least two days in advance.  We go to the Christmas Eve service.  When we get home, we eat scrambled eggs and badger my parents into opening presents that evening. Present opening has a very specific structure too: we turn out all the light except the ones on the tree, we start with a reading of the Christmas story, my brother Ted passes out one round of presents, we sing a Christmas carol, and then he passes out another round of presents, and so on. Then the next morning, after everyone is awake, we open our stockings, drink lots of eggnog mixed with orange juice, eat cinnamon rolls, and prepare to eat ourselves silly, play board games, and complete at least one jigsaw puzzle.  That has been Christmas up to this point.   

But this year, the combination of economy, life changes, and just plain growing up induced us to alter a few things.  None of us live at home now, so three of the siblings didn't get in until Christmas Eve.  (I, on the other hand, being devoid of a husband, showed up a week in advance to help with the baking.)  We decided to exchange names instead of getting presents for everyone from everyone, so there was only one round of presents, and it happened on Christmas day, after the Sunday morning service, at the same time as opening stockings.  We did read the Christmas story.  We did not sing any carols.   There was no jigsaw puzzle.  But most striking of all, we didn't even finish one carton of eggnog between the nine of us.  Mom was sincerely distressed because she's supposed to be avoiding sugary foods, and she'd bought three cartons of eggnog to make sure there would  be enough for my hollow legged brother and brother-in-law. 

I'm not complaining about the changes, at least not seriously.  The idea that Christmas is a flexible entity has been coming on gradually for me.   I remember feeling a lot more awe of the sacredness of it when I was little.  Then the dimmed lights and the carols sung felt like a connection back to the first Christmas.  I remember lying under the tree and staring up through the branches at the patterns made by the lights and thinking abut nothing but the lights and how beautiful they were.  I remember Christmas presents being a lot more exciting (possibly because I didn't have to tell people what to get me) and stockings being at once mysterious and satisfyingly predictable. 

But then the order started getting mixed up, and I went off to college and got married, and I had to get in on the Christmas rush myself, being possessed of my own househod, and things just got screwy.  Like my mother-in-law told me once, Christmas isn't as magical once you're responsible for making the magic.  It's better when it seems to come out of nowhere, like Santa Claus or the angels.  It used to just develop around me and then sink slowly back into the tide of the new year.  Now, I'm behind the scenes, and even in my simple home, it's quite the production.  This year, like several years past, we didn't get a tree because Seth wasn't going to be home.  I didn't get Christmas cards out again (my apologies), and we had no family picture to send either.

Still, I think I liked this year.  It was nice to cut back on the shopping and focus on three people instead of eight.  Comforting economically too.  It was nice to spend time with my folks and watch eagerly for snow that never came (as per usual).  With less time an attention spent on presents, Boogaloo got to play more with her aunts and uncles, and she didn't get bored with anything, like she did last year.  I got to spend a little bit more time reflecting on the enormity of God's love and the promise of peace on earth and a lot less energy worrying about making an unforgettable experience.  (Of course, it helped that the celebration was at my parents' house, and they had the majority of the responsibility, but I like to think that I lightened that responsibility somewhat.)  Maybe Christmas should always be this simple.  Then we would like it more. 

Meanderings of the mind.

It's Wednesday, and I have nothing to write about.  I have to write today because I didn't write on Saturday, and if I let myself slack until next Saturday, well, I know it just won't happen at all.  But while I've been musing on any number of things lately, none of them seem worthy of a whole blog post.  I wish the sports commentators would just let Tim Tebow play football, and Kardashian headlines are beginning to disgust me.  I have promised myself that I'm not going to look at anything regarding the presidential election before January 2nd, and life is just life as usual. 

Isn't it funny how life as usual can seem like a bad thing?  Somewhere in one of my notebooks I have a collection of lines that I'd like to build a novel around, and one of them is, "Everyone wants to live on the edge of the epic.  No one realizes that epics only happen when the world has been turned upside down."  I meant it as a corollary to Gandalf's "So do all who live to see such times."  People living in peaceable places want excitement and heroism.  We want to be part of something exciting and gripping.  People who are heroes, if they have any sympathy with their fellow man, wish that their actions hadn't been necessary.  After all, in order to save someone from a burning building, the building has to be on fire. 

I don't go around looking for burning buildings, and I pray fervently that I will never have to make the decisions that characterize the epic or tragic hero.  But I, and I think a great many Americans and probably Europeans too, feel separated from the great struggle that we know is part of life.  The popularity of RPG video games and fantasy novels.  We want a struggle.  We want a challenge, and we don't want it to involve paying bills or being nice to that person in the next cubicle or making sure the toddler brushes her teeth.  I think we want to feel that we're having an impact in a style of life that seems casual or even isolated, and the daily routine of keeping our heads above water doesn't satisfy that feeling. 

It's silly really.  We only need to look at our current economic state to see that when one man can't meet his daily obligations anymore,  it pulls the guy who's next to him and who depends on him down too.  One man can't pay his rent.  Without the rent money, the landlord can no longer pay his mortgage and send his son to college at the same time.  Etc, etc, etc.  If my house isn't clean, I'll get ants, and the landlord will have to spray.  If the laundry isn't done, then the Boo has to wear pullups.  Trees get cut down to make the paper.  My carbon footprint increases.  Our little decisions to be responsible do make a difference. 

And even we, in middle class suburban America, are in the heart of epic conflicts that are hard to see but are no less real.  The battle against death and his cohorts disdain and despair is multi-faceted and never ceasing.  It engulfs the poor and the homeless, the unborn, the lonely, the elderly, the environment, and the ill.  Just because we aren't facing dragons or invading hordes doesn't mean that we can't shape the world.  We just have to be willing to invest persistently and keep our hobbit sense handy.  After all, the struggle is a lot more epic when we remember how small we are and that we have to be faithful with a little before we can be trusted with a lot.

Hearing, asking, doing

Oh, what a day.  It seemed like one continuous litany of "no."  "Boogaloo, come upstairs and go potty."  "No."  "Boogaloo, let's get dressed and take Max outside for his walk."  "No."  "Boogaloo, stay out of the fridge." "Boogaloo, let's clean you up." "Boogaloo, stay in the cart."  No, no, no, no, no. 

Does it not occur to kids that parents have reasons for decreeing what they decree.  I'm trying to remember back to my early childhood, but my brain is just too foggy.  I'm pretty sure I was a lot like my daughter (though Mom says she resembles my little sister more in attitude.  Go figure!), but that's not really the point.  When do they begin to see reason?  Or when do they begin to accept the pattern because I know that I'm being consistent, at least in all the important things. 

Case in point, this morning after breakfast, I was on the computer, and I hear the familiar 'pop' of the fridge opening.  Now she knows that she is not allowed to get stuff out of the fridge.  If she gets something out on her own (juice is the usual culprit), she loses that privilege for the rest of the day.  So I say, "Boogaloo, close the fridge."

She gets an impish grin on her face.  "No."  Then she runs for it, leaving the fridge open, of course. 

"Oh, that's cute," the observer says, and some small, treacherous part of me is inclined to agree, hindering my attempts at discipline.  Boo wants to play with Mommy.  Oh boy!  However, when the entire day from morning hair brushing to evening tooth brushing is made up of these antics, I begin to wonder what I'm doing wrong. I am so tired, so tired, of being thwarted by a three-year-old in all of the simplest necessary matters of daily life.  She's not being mean or rebellions, just mischevous, stubborn, self-willed, and difficult. 

As always, reflecting on my relationship with a child leads me to reflect on my relationship with my Father in Heaven.  You know, there are passages in the Bible when he calls Israel (and by extension all of humanity) stiff-necked and harded headed.  How many things out of the things I do all day are the rough equivalent of getting into the fridge without permission or soiling myself on the playground and refusing to admit it  (she got a spanking for that one.  Yuck.)?  How maby times a day do I do something without thinking or just because I want to do it even though I know that it doesn't square with the guidelines that God has laid out in plain view?  And how does he feel about that?  There are times in the Old Testament when God seems torn between hugging Israel close to his breast and throttling them within an inch of their lives. 

But love always wins out.  God's love won out with Moses.  It did under the prophets.  It does with us, little though we deserve it. (Sometimes I think the little, persistent sins should do more to frustrate God than the big, once-in-a-lifetime sins.  Such sins are like saying, "Lord, I know you're great, all-knowing, and have my best interests in mind, but I'd really rather have this than you." Sheesh.  Very Romans 7).  I suppose it helps being omnipotent and omniscient.  He knows that it will all work out in the end. 

My love for Boogaloo wins out.  She's still in one piece, happily fed, cleaned, and snuggled up in bed.  I hope she has no idea how frustrated I got today.  For one thing, she seems to think it's funny when I pull out my hair, and for another, it's not about me anyway.  It's about getting the job done. 
Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof, and today is done. 

And then Calvin gets into it.

Remember Calvin and Hobbes, the comic strip from about ten years ago (or maybe fifteen.  I lose track of these things) -- the bratty little kid with his maybe-imaginary-maybe-not pet tiger?  He's been making a reappearance at my house lately.  Boogaloo discovered him on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in Mommy and Daddy's bedroom and has been dragging him all over the house.  Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat is downstairs by the printer while The Essential Calvin and Hobbes is peeking out from under our dresser.  Revenge of the Babysat occupies a permanent place in the diaper bag.  There are enough pictures in it to get a cranky Boogaloo halfway through the grocery store. 

So I've been refamiliarizing myself with the antics of this spiky-haired six-year-old.  He's such a devilish little manipulator with such a huge imagination. I was a little like that as a child.  The real world wasn't half as exciting to me as my imaginary worlds, and I would gladly have kept a pet tiger if my stuffed animal collection had afforded it (I did have a baby seal and a stuffed unicorn.  They were exciting).  The scary thing is that I can really see bits of him in Boogaloo.  Not that I'm worried about Boogaloo picking up on any of his behaviors, but some of them might be there already. 

It's such a treat to see my daughter picking up something I love and enjoying it on her level.  Granted, she's three.  She doesn't even read yet.  She has to rely on the pictures and the facial expressions for her entertainment, but that's more than enough.  Bill Watterson is such a talented illustrator that even a three-year-old can get something out of his pictures.  She reads the books so studiously too.  She doesn't laugh or comment.  She just raptly turns the pages.  I hope she isn't mistaking Calvin's world for reality.  In a couple of years, she might be asking us for a tiger.

But the reason I'm thinking about Calvin tonight is that when I'm not picking up Calvin and Hobbes,  I've been glancing through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion ( the former is named after the latter, you know).  The Institutes makes a good break from Augustine and The City of God, and sometimes they even play off each other.  I was just reflecting on Augustine's studied abhorrence of the pagan gods that were set up as rivals to Christ.  Then I turned to Calvin and pick up his analysis of the Ten Commandments.  It was a completely random justaposition.  That's just where I happened to be.  Calvin goes the same way.  Anything is to be done rather than to set up a rival to God.  As Calvin points out, everything we do is done in front of God's face, so setting something up in God's stead is like a wife cheating on her husband with him in the room. 

Instead, Calvin encourages us to simply give God the credit for everything.  His is a simple formula:
1. Adoration -- Recognize everything that God is, does, and had done.  This includes obedience and submission of conscience because obviously, God being God, he's right. 
2.  Trust -- I like the way he phrased this one.  "Trust, is secure resting in him under a recognition of his perfections, when, ascribing to him all power, wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth, we consider ourselves happy in having been brought into intercourse with him." 
3.  Invocation -- "the retaking of ourselves to his promised aid as the only resource in every case of need."
4.  Thanksgiving -- because everything comes from Him, all of our gratitute goes to Him. 

Calvin presents this formula with a "duh" sort of attitude that would have done his namesake credit.  You can tell that the majesty of God and the following submission, trust, invocation, and thanksgiving, are all very obvious to Him.  He understands that some people don't accept what he's saying, but that doesn't stop him relying on it.  And yet his world was no less complicated than mine.  Gosh, it was a good deal moreso.  He had the reformation of a whole city, a whole continent, and the analysis and expression of the whole truth of the Word to worry about.  I'm just trying to be a wife and mother.  The winds of thought and whisper don't shake him;  why do they wobble me?