And on earth: peace, goodwill towards men - a defiantly Christmas-y MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was going to write something profound and inspiring about Christmas, but I’m feeling rather devoid of inspiration at the moment. It’s weird - Christmas has always been such a big deal for my family, but now that my brother and I are living half a world away from our parents, it’s become of minor significance. Last year was the first Christmas I spent away from my parents, but I didn’t exactly spend it alone, since I was with my great-uncle’s family. It was still a weird Christmas since the gift exchange consisted of all us kids getting a nice crisp Benjamin Franklin as a present. The rest of the day was mostly us eating too much and playing Texas Hold 'Em. There are worse ways to spend a Christmas, I suppose, but I do miss the small family dinner with my cousins, the lazy time afterwards when we lounged around and did everything from pretend we were squid to take pictures of ourselves imitating fallen zombies.

In Korea, Christmas is not really a family holiday. It’s a couple holiday, or a going-out-to-fancy-parties holiday. Kinda like what Halloween has become (in Korea). My friends thought I was odd for spending Christmas with my family while they went out to nice bars with their boyfriends. I found their Christimas customs just as bizarre. Not that I ever had a boyfriend for Christmas. Which again makes me weird by Korean standards, since most people date around the holiday season simply for the sake of having someone to spend it with. :rolleyes:

I am not a very religious person, but there is still something about Christmas that is able to affect me, that makes my throat tighten and my heart fill with emotions unadulterated by my customary cynicism. Some of it has to do with family and memories and things that have nothing to do with the birth of Christ, but some of it is firmly tied to the Nativity story - not as a religious story exactly, but more as an allegory, and the belief that we are celebrating the hope that one day, humankind will know peace. Every other day of the year, I take the gloomy outlook that violence and hatred, ignorance and bigotry are an inherent part of humanity - but on Christmas, I put aside my jaded self and indulge myself in the fantasy that perhaps we are not quite yet beyond salvation - religious or otherwise. And this is why the whole debate over whether saying Merry Christmas is PC or whether we’re allowed to talk about it as a Christian holiday or not really pains me - it shouldn’t matter. How ironic is it that this holiday has become an excuse for people to further drive wedges between “us” and “them?” I don’t care whether you think Christmas is about Jesus or the rebirth of the sun god or worshipping Wal-Mart. Just let’s, for this one day, pretend that we are not already on the inevitable road to self-destruction; that there is still time for us to hold hands like stoned flower children and hug each other in a cloud of pot and patchouli.

I leave you with lines recalled from Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, where Linus is telling his audience the story of how the birth of Jesus was revealed to the shepherds. This part of the story has always touched me the most - the idea of these shepherds, lounging around, maybe knocking back a beer or two around the campfire - and then suddenly, coming face to face with a supernatural glory that declared to them: yes, there is still hope for us all.

*And there were, in the fields, shepherds, guarding their flock by night; when lo! the angel of the Lord appeared to them, and they were very afraid. But the angel said to them: “Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born a savior, which is Jesus Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you - you shall find the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly the skies were filled with heavenly angels, singing:

Glory to God in the highest!
And on earth: peace, goodwill towards men.*

Merry Christmas!

2

And a very peaceful Christmas to you.

I’m spending one hour to myself. Taking deep breaths. exhale

I love Christmas, but it can get hectic.

3

Great OP, Haze. I would say that it was fairly profound and inspiring.

Thanks!

4

Great OP, and a Merry Christmas to you, too!

Funny – you echo almost my precise sentiments towards the Christmas season. Though born a protestant, I am not practicing, and I have never held the holiday in any religious regard, but rather consider it a time of year when I like to think that people are just a little nicer. Thinking just a little more about friends and family. Unwrapping themselves just a little from the cloak of isolation they normally wear during the rest of the year. Putting aside just a few of their personal problems and issues to celebrate the joy and beauty of the season, whether or not they are sharing it with someone else. Maybe, thinking a few of the same things as I, and taking a little comfort in the belief that others are feeling the same way.

Christmas has always been a big deal for me, even if I don’t always express it with elaborate decorations or can’t always afford big, fancy gifts for people. It’s the one time of year when we can gather with our closest friends and family and enjoy a little familial cheer or personal bonding and maybe exchange a few gifts, even if they are just of our time. The rest of the year is pretty bland and faceless – even my own birthday doesn’t really mean anything anymore. But Christmas – ah, now that’s a time of year I can get into and make something of. There are always pretty displays in the malls, people’s houses, apartment balconies, great Christmas movies and specials, crooning yultide oldies on the radio – Sinatra, Davis, Crosby – heck, even Burl Ives. It’s just all around cool, and it’s the one time of year that lifts my spirits like no other.

I love hearing church choirs do the seasonal traditionals, too. It doesn’t matter that I’m not religious here. They are rife with feeling and spirit and they never fail to move me.

5

And from the previous MMP:

Doggio/Roo - You have to try mincemeat at least once. (Despite its name, Roo, it generally contains no meat, so it’s good for vegetarians, too! Well, as long as you have it in a crust that contains no animal fats. There are some variations of mincemeat that do, in fact, have meat – but really, that’s just weird.) It’s different than most pies, particularly due to liberal use of allspice which gives it a wonderfully sweetly-spiced flavour. I suppose there are some [del]heathens[/del] people that don’t care for it, but it must be tried at least once. I was raised on the stuff and have always loved it.

6

Whoa. . . fantastic OP, Haze! You’re a fabulous writer!

Your OP really hit home with me. Although I’m not a Christian, I go to church every Sunday. And this Sunday, I spent part of my day listening to a pastor go on about how we should say Merry CHRISTmas instead of Merry Christmas. And I wondered if God really worried about such things. You really hit the nail on the head about the real meaning of Christmas for me. . . such things as hope, love and peace.

Merry Christmas to you.
Mork, I think it’s a little late to find a mincemeat pie before Christmas this year, but I’ll keep my eyes open for it during the season. And I googled mincemeat pie filling and every recipe I’ve found so far has some kind of meat in it. One had ground beef, another beef suet and the other chopped beef and beef broth. Finding one without meat seems to be trickier than just finding one.

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Morning all. Merry Christmas to all! Great OP Haze, I think you have really captured the feeling of Christmas!

Roo, try this recipe if you feel like making mince pies (aka fruit mince tartlets). For me they are a very English thing, but the fruit mince mix is also very useful if you plan to make Christmas pudding. That said, this year we are not doing Christmas pudding, rather I have made an executive decision to serve sticky date pudding with caramel sauce and vanilla custard for dessert! YUMMMMMM!!!11

So, I think I have the food sorted. We will collect the turkey tomorrow morning (pre-cooked, with stuffing/dressing, gravy and cranberry sauce), my friend is making the roast NOTs and parsnips, and I will occupy myself with all the rest - cheese platter for horses doovers, salt and pepper prawns (aka shrimp/scampi) with lemongrass mayonnaise and chilli calamari salad for appetisers, followed by green beans with hazelnut gremolata, asparagus and snow peas/mangetout with almonds and lemon and baby carrots with cumin and coriander. When you add those to the turkey and roast carbohydrates, we should all be laying on the ground groaning about how tight our pants are by the end! :smiley: I had contemplated doing brussel sprouts, seeing as they are so “Christmas”, but I just couldn’t do that to my sister, even though I have a new recipe for them that I want to try. Maybe next time!

Apart from food, I still have stockings to stuff and a few presents to wrap before we assemble everything tonight once HRH has gone to bed (with visions of sugar-plums dancing in her head). I haven’t been this excited about Christmas since I was a kid. Having a child really does give you back the joy and excitement for the simpler things.

Okay, back to pretending I have work to do …

8

Morning Mumpers. I’m with Haze about Christmas. The way work is, Christmas really doesn’t start until 11:00 Christmas Eve, when the Midnight Mass music program begins. Before that, it’s just extreme work, and screaming cranky people.

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Ummm, Hank, I think your lack of inspiration ended with your first sentence. You’re an awfully good writer, you know. Interesting to hear what Christmas is like in Korea. I agree with you about the spirit of Christmas.

Here’s another meatless mincemeat recipe Roo.

Need to vacuum before I leave for work.

Off to work, then back to prepare to receive guests.

GT

10

Morning, Mumpers! Great OP, Haze - I’m with you on the whole Christmas thing. I was raised in a nominally protestant family although neither parent was bothered about church attendance but they did value Sunday School as a means of getting rid of the kids for a couple of hours every week.

We don’t really celebrate it as such, we have no decorations and no tree and we don’t tend to send cards either (instead I make donations to various charities). Sometimes on Christmas Day I’ve been up early to help out for the day at a local shelter for the homeless, they are always glad of an extra pair of hands when they have a lot of people to feed.

So this year’s preparations are pretty much done. I’ve bought presents for friends and family, delivered most of them, wrapped and hidden the rest, done the food shopping, bought large quantities of alcohol and pretty much planned the week.

As usual, I’ve taken the opportunity of a few days’ off work to plan a rigorous cleaning schedule for the house - we’re generally pretty lazy about cleaning most of the time and don’t do much more than just the basics so just once I try to give things a proper clean. Hardly my favourite way to spend time off work, but these things have to be done.

In which case, I should stop reading here and get on with cleaning the kitchen worktops.

11

Very nice OP, Haze; interesting to know about Korean Christmas traditions too, thanks. I probably won’t go to church tonight, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have faith–I just don’t show it in a traditional way, I guess! And I’ll chime in as well that you’re an excellent and moving writer, Haze!

And so …

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MUMPERS!

12

Haze what a great OP! I think you made your point.

For me tonight is the beginning of Christmas. I’ll go to the Eucharist Service AKA Feast of The Nativity, AKA Christ Mass at 10:30 (choral presentation) with the service at 11:00. That’s when Christmas begins. Of course tomorrow we’ll eat too much (see what Mom hath baked in last weeks MMP), open presents and all that fun stuff but I like the fact that churchwise this begins a “season” of Christmas that concludes with Epiphany and a party for that too.

Ok, in a bit I’m hittin’ the road. Sis waits impatiently for my helping hands to get stuff ready for tomorrow. I know this cause she’s already called. :smiley:

Soooooo…

MERRY CHRISTMAS MMPERS!!!

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And, Roo, to answer your question from the last MMP. Yes, I’m exactly like Goldy the Caterer except that I’m not married, have no son, and don’t live in Colorado. :smiley:

I LOVE that series of books. The one where she’s working in a medieval castle is my favorite.

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What a wonderful start to the day, Haze. You and I share the same feelings for this time of year. Hope of peace! You are such a great writer.

I’ve got tons to do today, so I will leave you all with my special wish of a Merry Christmas for you all. I love you guys!

15

Beautiful OP, Haze
I think I may have related this story last year, but we’ve added more cool kids since then.
I was about 5 or so - my first year in public school making friends of all religions. Teacher read us children’s Christmas stories about being good so Santa would come down the chimney. My friends told me about coming downstairs and seeing soot on the carpet and around the fireplace, and mountains of brightly wrapped packages where the night before there had been none.
So, comes the morning of December 25, and I run to our family room (mind you, Hanukkah had already come and gone and I’d gotten toys and clothes and all manner of things, and on each night I got chocolate coins) and :eek: no decorations! no presents! no footprints in the ashes! I run to Mommy, crying. She realized it was time to explain some of the differences between the religions. Then she enrolled me in Sabbath School.
Growing up, I loved looking at the light displays in the neighborhood. The family on the next street over, whose house we could see from our kitchen window, had planted a fir tree in their front yard (obviously when it was only two feet or so tall - long before we got there) that they covered in lights each year - we thought of it as our own private Rockerfeller Center tree. Each January, they took the lights down, each Decembr they put them back up, all the while the tree kept growing, as trees are wont to do. Eventually, it was too tall for them to unstring and restring each year, so the lights stayed on the tree, and additional strings and extension cords were added as necessary.
When I got to college, I finally had the chance to decorate my own space, mostly for my Christian roommate’s sake, but also because I’d always wanted to and was never allowed. Christmas is so colorful.
Sophomore year, my roommate (this yeear I had a Jewish roommate) and I participated in a hall-wide grab bag. The two names we pulled lived across from us, next door to each other. So we built a little Nativity scene (we found a box of figurines at the second hand store, we built the manger ourselves out of cardboard and painted it) and hung it from garland strung between the two rooms.
At work, my desk is always one of the most ornately decorated, including, of course, a Menorah. I’ll take a picture this week and post it.

16

Much sadness in the VunderLair. VKind should be landing in Indiannoplace right about now… A good visit, nonetheless.

Geting my ass out of bed at 2 AM to get him to the Norfolk Airport for a 6AM flight really sucked, too. It was already packed at 4:30.

17

sigh I hate to be the one to mar the Christmas spirit and nostalgic tales but Meli wanted me to post this since she isn’t up to it at the moment. Her grandfather died late yesterday afternoon. He had been taken to the hospital a few days ago with, among other things, pneumonia. Luckily he was awake and coherent long enough to request a Do Not Resuscitate order, so he knew that it was coming and was ready.

None the less Meli is ready for this year to be over. Having lost two grandparents and her pet dog of fourteen years this year I am not sure how high 2007 is going to rank for her.

18

That’s awesome, rosie.

Haze, that was great. A merry and fun and cynicism-free Christmas to you, and to all the MMPers. I was brought up devout Anglican, and have become Catholic, and Christmas and Easter were always both religious holidays and foodfests for my family. Lots of going to church, lots of eating. An unusually small amount of drinking, for Whiskeypalians. :smiley:

Our Christmas starts tonight at seven, at Christmas Mass. We’ll be heading over to my Mum and Dad’s place after, and sleeping there, with Mr. Lissar in a heady state of “Aargh! What if you go into labour?!?”, to wake up tomorrow and open presents and then eat all day. On Boxing Day we’re having a Christmas party with QD, Driving HUsband, Attacks Husband, and Mr. Lissar’s godparents. We generally do it on the 24th, but it was too complicated with work and church this year.

I have A Child’s Christmas in Wales, The Journey of the Magi, and A Song for Simeon competing in my head right now.

And, although in general I don’t think the government is filled with Christmas charity, they came through, and I got my maternity leave money, starting today! I woke up, checked my bank account, and they have very kindly deposited money!

And upon preview, ((((meli)))) :frowning:

19

Merry Christmas, Mumpers!

Haze, your post brought tears to my eyes. Great job!

I am still in a little disbelief that it is Christmas. Everyone I know, from my coworkers, to my family, to my mom’s coworkers have agreed that it seems Christmas snuck up on us this year (personally, I think someone moved Christmas up, but no one else is buying that.) No one was motivated to shop, bake, decorate, send cards. Of course I did all of those things, but…it’s kind of like my heart wasn’t really in it. I am excited to see my family open their presents, and I’ve been enjoying the goodies I’m baking :slight_smile: (Hey! Who ate all my cherry kolache? :dubious: ) I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel like Christmas.

We’re all settled into our new apartment - it’s very nice. We had a lot of help moving and were all moved in within a morning, and had the rest of the weekend to unpack and rearrange and settle in. My mom and brother will come over tomorrow to visit for Christmas day and to see the apartment for the first time since it’s been furnished.

I am loving the time off work - a four day weekend, since we’re closed today (explaining why I made it into the MMP so early!). Of course, my husband’s shop is closed from last Friday through Jan. 2nd - brat! I’m glad for him though, he needs the break!

I still have to bake my world-famous pepperoni bread today to take to my grandparent’s this evening and my BIL’s tomorrow. I’m not sure that we’re welcome to come over to either place unless I bring pepperoni bread. :smiley: The kolache I made last night was the first I’ve made without my grandma - she moved to Phoenix about four years ago, and we always used to do our holiday baking together. I have her recipe for nut filling, but the husband turned his nose up at that so cherry it was. I promised some to bring in to work, so I better stop eating them to avoid the angry masses on Wednesday. I think I’ll make chocolate chip cookies tomorrow though…

Our new years eve plans are finalized! We’re going to a party center nearby that has dinner and dancing, and I guess a lot of our friends are going - we made reservations under a friend’s name, and he had reserved thirty seats. I need a dress, and Flusband needs his dress-up clothes altered, but I’m excited!

Phew, I am rambling, and I have so much to do today! Enjoy your days!

20

Annually, it is only about the time that Christmas Eve rolls around that I start to feel peaceful and in the spirit. As a kid, it seemed every other year there was some kind of blow up, disagreement or crisis around Christmas. As an adult, I’ve rolled into a kind of a funk each year right after Thanksgiving, knowing and dreading that Christmas is on us again.

I’ve learned that the smaller, more spiritual themed festivities are the best for me. Though I don’t feel all that spiritual in general, and haven’t spent 10 minutes in a church in a few years, this time of year - and at Easter - I get very nostalgic about the celebration.

I used to think of myself as a Scrooge, but in the last couple of years I’ve come to realize that it’s Charlie Brown that’s my model. I like hearing a choir singing carols, sitting around with family, enjoying a nice informal meal then just sitting and relaxing.

The three of us will spend the day in jammies or sweats. Dinner each year is decided upon by consensus, and is seldom anything resembling a ‘traditional’ meal. This year will be baked mostacioli, with sausage, garlic bread, and a green salad. We welcome friends, family, just anyone can drop in and join us, but it’s always low key.

Merry Christmas mumpers!!

**{{{meli}}} **