Memories Monday -- It's Still Christmas Until Epiphany

Even The Holidays don’t keep Karen, Nikki and me from our Friday nights.  The first Friday after Christmas (or Saturday if Christmas was on Friday) we get together to exchange presents and eat leftovers. This year, I gave Karen a miniature music box that played “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with skaters twirling on a  mirror pond and Nikki a page a day calendar with cartoons from The New Yorker.   Karen gave me a set of Victorian-looking Christmas placemats and Nikki, who loves flea markets, gave me a little china dog from occupied Japan.  There was something different about him that I couldn’t figure out at first.  Then I realized that his eyes were “slanted.” 

Karen wondered if that was racist.  I said I didn’t think so, since he was made in Japan.  If his eyes had been round, that would have been racist.  I named him Nick, after Nikki and Santa Claus.

Sometimes we have horror stories, like the time Nigel knocked over the Christmas tree or when the flame on the plum pudding set off the smoke alarm.

But Christmas was pretty peaceful this year except for the Great Christmas Tree Debate. 

We don’t have a big dinner until Christmas Day;  Christmas Eve is pizza between the family church service at four and the eleven o’clock candlelight Mass.  My parents always stayed over to watch the kids so Ed and I could go to the eleven o’clock service and they could be there for Christmas morning.  My father still does, although without my mother as a restraining influence, he fusses about “that nonsense.”  I used to tell him not to talk like that in front of the kids, but now I just let them argue with him.  He enjoys it.
 
This year they got us up at six.  Kate and Janet came over for dinner, but he was too tired for any Discussions.

"He was quite cordial this year,” I said.  “He and Kate played Monopoly with the kids.”

“He must be getting some,” Nikki said.

“No!” 

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Karen said.  “You know, he caught the bouquet.”

“Well, if he gets married again, maybe she can do dinner.”

“But they’ll be coming over here on Christmas Eve.”

I sighed.  “Well, the more the merrier.  I’ll have to see what Ed thinks.”  

 

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

Merry Christmas from the McDonalds

Ed, Charlie, Betsey, Josh, Cilla, Duke and Nigel

 

 

Memories Monday -- Christmas Eve Eve

When I was a child counting down to Christmas, I would say, “If you don’t count today and you don’t count tomorrow, Christmas is X number of days away.” 

When I told my mother this, she said, “Why wouldn’t you count today and tomorrow?”

I said “To make it come faster.”

“Now, Charlie, you know that doesn’t make sense.”

Later I heard her telling one of her friends about this on the phone.  “She’s such a funny little thing.  I just don’t know how she’s going to get along in the world.”

If she’d sounded amused, my feelings would have been hurt, but she sounded concerned.  So I never shared the countdown with her again, although I kept it up.

 

I did tell my cousin Bethany, who thought it was a neat idea.  Aunt Pooh suggested that we could also count down to Christmas Eve.  “And then there’s Christmas Eve Eve.”

The day before Christmas Eve always had a special feel.  It was the last day of school before Christmas vacation.  I’d get to stay up late.  There would the final deluge of Christmas cards waiting to be gone through when I got home and my parents brought home the schmooze food gifts they’d gotten from business contacts.  It was a preview of Christmas.

As an adult, with the job of “doing” Christmas, I count today and tomorrow to try and make Christmas come more slowly so I can get things done.  I’m not sure if it works.

But by Christmas Eve Eve, I either have finished everything or given up.  The children come home from school all excited and I let them have some of the “not until Christmas” cookies that I’ve been guarding.  We sit around and they try to get me to let them open “just one" of the presents that Ed and I got for them to “help Santa out.”  Somebody says, “If you don’t count today and you don’t count tomorrow, it’s Christmas.” 

And we all understand. 

 

Memories Monday -- Christmas Traditions at the McDonalds' House

Every year, the children fuss because the Church doesn’t decorate or sing carols until Christmas Eve.  I tell them they can get as Christmassy as they want at home the Sunday after Thanksgiving. (I used to tell them that the Advent Police check churches, but Betsey asked Kate if it was true.)  But every Sunday in Advent on the way home from church, they complain.  I kind of agree, so it doesn’t get on my nerves.  I even join in.  Ed asks me why I encourage them, and I say that it makes them appreciate the fact that the Episcopal Church allows disagreement.

 The first step is getting out the Christmas tea towels and mugs.  Then we change the message on our voicemail.  It’s just “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the McDonalds.  Please leave a message.”  The children take turns each year.  I used to be more creative (“Now joyous Christmastide is here/The halls are decked with red and green/We hope you find a lot of Christmas cheer/And that you’ll leave message on our machine.”), but I decided that was too cutesy even for me.

We put the tree up about two weeks before Christmas.  Ed takes the kids to go out to buy it and I stay home to make cocoa and bake cookies.  The children come home all excited, sucking on the candy canes the tree place gives out, which they never finish.  We haven’t gotten The Elf on the Shelf yet, but we have The Half-Eaten Candy Canes All Over the House.  After we get the tree in the stand, Ed has a drink.  I tell the kids we can’t start decorating right away because the tree has to “settle.” 

This year, one of Betsey’s friends told her that cutting down trees was bad for the environment.  So Betsey suggested that we get an artificial tree.  Josh said, “No way, Jose.” Cilla added, “Like Hell, Emmanuel.”  Betsey said that when trees were cut down the birds and animals lost their homes and even died.  Cilla said Betsey just wanted to spoil things for everybody.  Betsey said Cilla was a selfish moron and didn’t care about animals or the planet or anyone but herself.  Cilla asked Betsey what she thought Jesus would say if he heard her talking to her sister like that.   Then things got really ugly.  Josh just listened;  I’d like to say that he was horrified, but he was amused.  Nigel took off for the cellar. Duke started joining in the shouting.  Ed was in the bathroom.

I prefer to let the kids work out their disagreements, but things were getting out of hand.  “That’s it!”  I shouted.  “We are not having any goddamn artificial tree in this house!  Ever!  Now everybody shut up!”

The girls were so shocked that they stopped yelling.  Josh remarked that all he had said was “No way, Jose.”  Betsey ran up the stairs, nearly knocking Ed over.  Cilla looked like she couldn’t decide whether to cry or not.

Ed said, “What the f . . .heck is going on?”  After Cilla and Josh had filled him in and Cilla said, “We’re going to get a real tree, right?”  Ed explained that if everybody stopped buying real trees, the tree farmers would stop planting them, which would hurt the environment, and anyway, the factories that made the artificial trees were really worse for the environment than cutting down trees. 

I told him to go talk to Betsey.  It would sound more logical coming from him.  I gave Cilla and Josh some cookies.  I thought they would run off, since they had won, but they sat very quietly in the kitchen, only asking for milk.  I think they were afraid of what I would do next.  I told them I was sorry for yelling.  “That’s okay, Mom.”  Josh patted me on the shoulder.  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

There seemed to be something wrong with this picture, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what.  Where is Dr. Phil when we need him?

In the end, everybody made up and they came back with an enormous tree.  We had to make paper chains for filler and the girls cut out stars from aluminum foil, which I’d done as child.  And, of course, it was the prettiest tree we’d ever had. 

Memories Monday -- Reflective Discussion at Midnight

“You know,” I said to Ed last night, “If I were Rudolph, I would have told the other reindeer to bug
off since they’d been so mean to me.”

“Oh, dear God!”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Ed sighed.  “I don’t know.  But it was Santa who asked him.  I would have done it for him. ”

“Of course, you’ve always been a team player.  I never played team sports.  But it would be hard to turn Santa down.  I bet the other reindeer were still nasty to him as soon as they got back to the North Pole, though.”

“Can’t you talk about this stuff with the kids or Karen and Nikki?”

“You’d think Santa would have put a stop to it.  I guess he was too busy.  Maybe he didn’t even notice.  You can sit and watch TV when the kids are fighting in the next room.”

“Maybe he thought it was best to let them work it out for themselves.”

That is a good idea sometimes, especially when you’re too tired to do anything.

Then I thought of something else.  “What if the next Christmas Eve wasn’t foggy?  They wouldn’t need Rudolph.”

“You do know that this is just a story?”

“Oh sure.  The only real Santa’s reindeer are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen.  But it’s fun to pretend.”

Ed laughed.  “Well, maybe what’d I’d do would be to eat a lot of beans before we took off.”

I didn’t get it at first.  Then I did.  I had to laugh.

Memorie Monday -- Is this my fifteen minutes?

Sometimes all you can say is, “What the heck happened?”  Karen put it in stronger terms and asked
 me if I was related to Ned Flanders.

Our local paper read my story about Cilla and Fr. Barryfitzgerald and called for an interview.  But not with me – with Cilla.  I said they could talk to me.  As much as Cilla loves the spotlight, I didn’t think it would be good for her.

So the reporter said, “How did you feel when your daughter insulted a priest?”

“Not as bad as I felt when he told her that her grandmother was going to Hell.  It was a very bad thing to say.  Of course,” I felt obliged to add, “that doesn’t make him a bad man.”  (“Though he probably is,” I added in my head.)

“So you forgive him?”

“As a Christian, I have to.”

“Are you going to pray for him?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess so.”  (Not the best attitude, I suppose, but it was the best I had.  I’ll have to pray for a better one while I’m at it.)

It must have been a slow news day, because they ran the story with the headline, “Priest Damns Lesbian Couple to Granddaughter.”    They recapped the story and quoted me.  They said that Fr. Barry and the church had no comment.  Janet told me later that they talked to Kate, probably looking for some feminist or gay rights comments, but she just dazzled them with theology.  She didn’t get a mention.

I cut out the story and put in the pile of things to be put in the family scrapbook it I ever get the time.