Holiday Spirit

If you are gaga about Christmas, you might not want to read this. You've been warned. But then, if you are gaga about Christmas, you might have some words of wisdom for me.

I'm not big on Christmas. No, I don't think that makes me Scrooge. Actually, I'm fine with everyone else being all Christmas. Generally, I try not to tear it down. I listen to people who are all excited, but I generally try to refrain from commenting. (Yes, this is an exception!)

I just think that the holidays are hard for a lot of people:

• Maybe there is a loss associated with the holiday
• Maybe they are lonely
• Maybe it causes a lot of financial stress
• Maybe they work retail where the holiday spirit is really more like a feeding frenzy and you ask someone if they want to donate to the holiday book drive and you get snarled at. (Not that anything like that has ever happened to me!)
• Maybe people are far away from family
• Maybe 100% Christmas music (30 different renditions of Jingle Bells in one day) just grates.
• Maybe all the activity makes someone dizzy
• Maybe things get lost in the shuffle
• It could be any number of things
  

I wish I loved the holiday season. I really do. I'd love to be swept away by it. But then, I don't really get swept away by much.

I struggle with the holiday season, but I do love the meaning of it. I love the word Emmanuel, God with us. I learned once that literally it means that God pitched His tent among us. I love that idea. He made His home with us.

And I love that Jesus came in the dark of night. I love that His birth ended 400 years of relative silence from when the Old Testament ends and Jesus is born. I love that Jesus was born in a manger. Some of it is nostalgia from my horse riding days. I know that stables are smelly places, but there is a warmth there too. In terms of the big picture, a stable was a place where even shepherds could go unimpeded. Jesus came to the common man, not just the rich or the kings.

Mostly, I love what I imagine would have been a pause among all creation, when Jesus struggled into the world, and let out that first cry, and then was snuggled close. I love that Jesus knew comfort that way. I love that in the prodigal son, the father ran to hug his son. And though the cross was cruel, I love that Jesus chose to throw open his arms for all eternity because he wants to gather us close and never let go.

I struggle with the holidays for lots of reasons. But I love the meaning behind it. So, I'm praying that the peace of being held close to Jesus would prevail over the chaos and even the anxiety I am already beginning to feel.

Where Memories Are Kept

I have known for a while that the time was coming, that soon a piece of my life would be no more or at least not in the same form. Even though the cover had been loose for a time, it was hard to see the cover completely torn away from this much used book.



With most things in the kitchen, I make do. I cobble things together, sometimes shooting an email to a friend to find out what is really meant by "browning" or "saute" or any other cooking type word. However, I do really well with baking. My specialty is chocolate chip cookies. Though I've given the recipe with explicit instructions to numerous people, aside from my sisters no one has ever managed to duplicate them. Someone with whom I reguarly share my cookies, recently bemoaned the fact that I had brought them. She is on a "plan" and cookies aren't part of them.


The book in question is my mother's old cookie cookbook. It has her name and the year, 1979, signed on the opening page. While there are hundreds of recipes in the book, it naturally falls open to the stained and dog eared page that announces "Best cookie of 1945" and my blue sticky note doubling the recipe.



I am not a great collector of things. But when my mother died many years ago, I snagged her cookie book for my own. There is always a bit of nostalgia in using it.



The thing that makes it precious are the memories it evokes. My mother was hard to please and I often wondered if I was ever good enough. She rarely said, "I love you." But the one way I knew her care was in the baking. When we were young she would tease that the cookie or brownie fairy had come while we were playing outside or at school. We would eat them warm, oozing with chocolate.



My sisters and I are far flung. They have married and have children of their own. There are in laws to see on holidays and no one wants to travel at Christmas -- prefering that their children wake up to see Santa's presents under their own tree.



I am graciously and warmly included at a friend's. But at times the talk will turn to "remember when . . . ." At times like these it seems to me that when one goes home it is to where the memories are kept. Home is where the shared memories, the shared past, binds hearts together.



While I cherish the newer memories I make with friends and their families, my heart still yearns for the emotional place, home, where memories are kept.




This was written for this contest.