STAVE I: CHRISTMAS

Everything about Christmas is fragile, especially at a 2-year-old's eye level. Shiny gold and red ornaments. Tapered candles. The special crystal and glassware and dishes. Candy canes. Colored lights. All the Christmas paraphernalia cries out to be inspected more closely, touched, handled and experienced fully. But they can break - so, no. They sparkle, shine, tempt, invite. But - no! Too fragile. Keep your hands away. No, no, no. Laurie, 2, stands on tiptoe, gazing in toddler adoration at ceramic Nativity figures. "Could I play with the breakable people?" she asks. Shepherd, angel and wise men are simply "the breakable people." It's sad, but that is her name for them. She has heard the Christmas story and knows "Away in a Manger." She wants more. She wants to move closer, to see firsthand the scene of the Nativity, to touch the jeweled turban of Wise Man No. 1, to feel the glazed wool of a sheep. She also wants to know more about that "Lord J...

Snow, or no snow, this time of year brings to kids those three words that mean so much. Not "I love you," "How r u?" or "Ho, ho, ho!" (Okay. "Ho, ho, ho" is not three words, it's one word three times; and "How r u only qualifies for online chat heads.) The words kids hear most often in winter are: "Shut that door!" In our house we have two doors that must be closed upon entry. The front door leads directly to polar air flow. An entryway between the front door and the door to the living room mixes that icy air with house air. The entryway serves as a buffer between Siberia and comfortable, living room heat.The kids rarely forget to close the front door. Somehow, frigid, arctic air jostles their brain cells enough to signal the door-closing response. But after removing coat, hat and boots, and basking in the warmth of living room heat as they enter the living room, the kids fall victim to drowsy, warm influences on those same br...

Early in December, when stars seem sharper and bluer than at other times, Christmas music seems to sharpen them even more. I unpack my age-old Christmas record collection.I'll put on “Goodyear's Great Songs of Christmas” with Mitch Miller and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I'll brew some cinnamon tea, light a mulberry-scented candle and write Christmas cards. Usually, when stamps, return labels, address book and cards are arrayed before me, the carols swirl up together with the tea steam, and my toes turn warm. A deep, bone-radiating satisfaction takes over.Renewing contact with friends is one of the best parts of Christmas. But this year something went wrong.It started when I tried to write a Christmas greeting to my aunt. How can you wish holiday cheer to someone who just lost a husband to cancer?Her chance of merriment at Christmas is about nil. My pen froze in midair as I tried to think of something to write. How jolly will her Christmas be, as she tries to mix celebratio...

The woman was young enough that most people called her a girl, but since she was pregnant there was little doubt she was a woman in body. Young, pregnant women are often sponges for advice, and this woman's difficult circumstances made her doubly vulnerable. Morality expert Dr. Laura Schlessinger told her that her horizon looked bleak. Low income, newly married to a man much older than herself --- but not the father of her child --- she should seriously consider adoption. And it was Dr. Laura's opinion that women who married older men were setting themselves up for trouble. Ann Landers also expressed doubts about the woman's prospects. "A man who first thinks of divorcing you, then makes you take a long trip near term without motel reservations is someone to watch out for. Ask yourself this question: "Would I be better off with him or without him?" Radio doctor Dean Idell told her that since she was so young she ought to give serious thought before contin...

The first magic flakes fell during church. By the end of the service, large, white flakes were dancing down from above. Surprise. Snow. The adults leaving church were properly awed, marveling at the first snowfall. That adults --- who very well know that they could be exposed to this cold, bleak material for five or six months --- still find it wondrous on the first day, is inspiring. Adults, who will rock cars out of it, slip and fall into it, tramp over it, writhe in pain after shoveling it, clean up after it; brush it, scrape it, salt it, shake it off; spend hours blowing it away and digging out of it --- still marvel on the first day of it, even in October. But all adult amazement is nothing to the sheer delight snow gives to the smallest kids. I don't know how developed the memory of a 3-year-old is, but I know that some glint in Laurie's eyes, when she saw those first flakes, indicated a memory. The sharp intake of breath and the smile that bloomed on her face as she cons...

If I hear another person complain that stores put up Christmas displays too early, I’ll scream. It’s not the stores’ fault thatChristmas cards and wrapping paper make an appearance next to spiral notebooks and colored pencils at August back-to-school sales. A certain shopper mentality drives stores to rush Christmas through Halloween and Thanksgiving. It’s holiday haste syndrome that does it. This disorder causes shoppers to order gifts in summer, to buy ornaments a year ahead and array them neatly in specially manufactured ornament boxes. Victims of holiday haste syndrome have dinner menus planned months in advance. Their Christmas cards -- purchased at last year’s closeout sales in January -- are addressed and stamped by Halloween. They spend hours on Christmas Eve searching for all the wrapped and ready presents they bought in June and tucked away safely. They shop online with credit cards, never needing to touch, wrap or even see the gifts they send to loved ones. If holiday haste ...

Christmas time in Aberdeen. Store windows, street displays, mall music all proclaim it. It's Christmas time everywhere but in the public schools where Christmas has been censored. Christmas concerts will now be called " holiday concerts" purportedly out of sensitivity to those religions other than Christianity. Calling Christmas " holiday " may seem to encourage diversity, but it really ends up doing the opposite. When my family moved to Aberdeen eight years ago, we were delighted with the school Christmas concerts because they were full of everything our California schools had abandoned years earlier: traditional favorites, black spirituals, medieval canticles, all rich in color and meaning. There were harmonized carols, rapped-up carols, jazzy carols and carols done with motions. There were sometimes Hanukkah songs, songs we enjoyed because they helped our kids remember their Jewish name and heritage. In California, all that was left of Christmas were a couple...

Harold grumbled when the alarm clock rang late. If there was a God, he thought, the alarm would never malfunction. Stupid clock. New one, too. But not made in America. If the clock had rung on time, though, Harold would have missed a very important phone call --- the job interview appointment he had been hoping for. After he hung up, he rushed to his driveway. Harold glared at the driver of the blue car across the street. Each morning that rude driver blasted his horn for five long minutes. If there was a God, this driver would have ignition problems weekly, Harold thought. What he didn't know was that on this fall morning, the honking had frightened away a thief who was about to break into Harold's garage and steal his generator and mountain bike. At work, Harold grimaced as Marsha the Chatterer cornered him in the corridor. Marsha began to bore him to death with tales of her aunt's latest illness. If there was a God, Marsha would have been transf...

Holiday airline crowd crunch, faulty computers and difficult weather relieved terrorists of any need to disturb airline traffic this Christmas . One airline, Comair, canceled 1100 flights Christmas Day . For the flying public, and worried relatives of the flying public, such delays meant frustration and waiting. And more waiting. When my daughter's flight failed to arrive late Christmas night , I checked the online flight status page. The flight from Minneapolis to Aberdeen was supposed to arrive late, but after a half-hour still no plane appeared. If it ever did land in Aberdeen, the flight was to continue to Watertown . The delay in that leg of the flight was due to "runway congestion." Runway congestion in Aberdeen? Perhaps there was an air show. Late Christmas night. Suddenly, I suspected mechanical problems, icy wings, a sick pilot, a fiery mishap. If you have to wait, there must be a calamity. Nothing les...

Maybe it's because her best friend is a stuffed lamb that 3-year-old Laurie is drawn to the lamb in every book about the Christmas story . Maybe it's just because lambs are fluffy, cute and more interesting than mangers and shepherds. She would like " Away in a Manger " much better if the second verse were "The sheep they were baaing, the baby awakes" rather than the cows lowing. She doesn't know any cows that low. We know that shepherds were part of the first Christmas, but whether camels were present is an open question. And the angels scared the death out of those who saw them. I don't think any Precious Moments angels had a part. The heavenly host was an army, not a cheery, smiling grouping of collectible figurines. Just about every angel involved started conversations with "Fear not!" Seeing one must have been petrifying. We like to arrange the Christmas story in warm, comfor...

You can tell who the Henry F. Potters are because they are the ones scoffing at idealists and prattling on about common sense, while crushing the weak and poor. In Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," the Bailey family's Building and Loan business helps families to live in houses of their own, instead of languishing in Potter's high-rent slums. The Baileys help struggling families get a foothold on the American Dream. Henry Potter, "the richest and meanest" man in Bedford Falls, opposes the Baileys at every turn. The spirit of Mr. Potter doesn't reside only in the very rich or just in Bedford Falls. Potters everywhere hate people who stand for something. They don't like people who cannot be manipulated by money or threats. They deride those with "high ideals" and decent character. You've heard them jeering at the George Baileys of the world, wrinkling t...

Rarely does December strike you just two days after Thanksgiving . This year Christmas was even harder to restrain than usual through the Thanksgiving holiday. I've never been an early Christmas shopper. And I have secretly despised those who completed Christmas shopping before December. There is just something unseemly about rushing things, riding roughshod over Thanksgiving in the pursuit of some orderly, polite, organized Christmas. In fact, until this year I have considered an unorganized, spontaneous Christmas to be mandatory. Organizing Christmas is like trying to organize a thunderstorm. Shop early, plan well, address Christmas cards in October --- and there will still be nights when a recital suddenly appears on the calendar without warning, an unexpected friend drops by just when you are supposed to be baking bars for a program, or you suddenly remember that you are responsible for a relish tray and all you have on hand are ra...

O pal Anne didn’t walk; she creaked. She creaked across the parking lot and she creaked up the church stairs. She didn’t mind creaking. She was just glad she could still move after 92 years. She had sat in the third pew at Church Street Fellowship for more years than she cared to count, and she had seen it all. As she creaked to her place in front this Sunday, six weeks before Christmas, she smiled with satisfaction at the faces she passed and the lives she knew. In the back pew sat Orville Plunk. Orville had a heart of gold, but rarely said a word. He’d arrive late, sit in the back and leave before the pastor finished. He skedaddled long before the last song and certainly before anyone could snag him and ask how he was doing, and only Opal really knew that he was doing fine except for his back. Orville lived a quiet bachelor’s life. He worked at the stock yards and worked at a job few others would want to do, but he worked for the Lord and not man and put his heart into every shovelfu...

Have yourself a merry, little Christmas, says the song. What’s “little”doing there? Who wants a “little” Christmas? No child wants a little Christmas. Over-stressed parents might want a littler Christmas than usual -- after watching fifteen ads for the coveted, expensive, Christmas toy of the year – but even they, surely, don’t want a little Christmas. When you think of little Christmases, you might think of the Cratchit family celebration from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Cratchit, Ebenezer Scrooge’s clerk, scrapes out a family Christmas on the skimpiest of wages. Though the Cratchits’ Christmas goose is minuscule, the excitement over a simple, Christmas dinner in Dickens’ tale was massive enough to revive flagging Christmas traditions throughout England during Dickens’ time. The Crachit Christmas was meager but it wasn’t small. Dickens knew what a big Christmas was, despite his father’s stint in debtor’s prison, his mother’s failed girls school, and his own flirtation with pov...

The reject cookies – that’s what my husband gets: The lopsided star; the hunchbacked gingerbread man; the rock-hard brownie; the runny, chocolate chip blob; the overly-crisp, deeply “tanned” Santa; the peace dove, packing an A-bomb cinnamon candy. My husband never complains. The kids don’t complain either. They’ve learned to be grateful for small favors. If Mom’s making cookies, the good ones are going to someone else. But the kids have cultivated ways to obtain rejects. They stand, expectantly, with big doe-eyes. Other times, they speak up: “That camel’s head fell off. Can I eat it?” The family can always count on reject cookies because I rarely have time to be precise. After making just enough good ones for the potluck, prayer group or helpful neighbor, I’ll do a slapdash version with leftover dough, producing plenty of rejects. Sometimes, the kids will try to convince me that a perfectly good cookie is a reject. They will point out small flaws that should disqualify the cookie from ...

My son Richard suggested this week that we hide his younger brother’s Christmas presents and first give him several beautifully-wrapped, empty boxes. He would then unwrap gift after gift and find nothing. A variation on the box inside a box inside a box prank. Wouldn’t that be a grand joke? No. It wouldn’t. Why would he think of such a thing? Well, Richard remembered when we once gave him the stocking filled with coal. His real stocking was hidden away, emerging later. That year Richard, the King of Tease, earned a coal-filled replica because he was merciless in teasing others. It seemed fitting somehow. For his more serious-minded little brother, though, to unwrap and unwrap and find nothing? That would be cruel. But what if he opened package after package, and then found – buried deep in shredded paper – a check for $5,000? (Note from Mom: This will not happen.) I know my son. After opening and looking over one or two empty boxes, he would give up. I would, too. You get the joke, and...

“I wish,” said Laurie, 6, “that the sunlight would freeze on the sidewalk.” I could wish for a lot of things, but frozen sunlight would not be one of them. “But why? Why do you wish that?” I asked her. Her face beamed. “Then, I could scoop it up, take it under my covers and read in the dark!” When sunlight melts it doesn’t leave sopping sheets, just a slight glow that fades to nothing by morning. I’d rather find time frozen on the sidewalk. I’d scoop that up and keep it under my covers. Or maybe in the freezer so it could last longer. If I could scoop up my own frozen stash of time, I could get everything done. It wouldn’t matter if I wasted an hour looking up a minor medical malady on the Internet. Or if half the day vanished while all I’d accomplished was undoing everything I’d done yesterday. I could just open the freezer, take the frozen scoop of time from a Zip-lock bag and let it thaw. When the freezer ran out of time, I’d just go to the sidewalk and scoop more. If I could freeze...

Retro is back. Again. What is it about old stuff that makes people return to it repeatedly? Last year, we gave our daughter a 40s-style radio that also played CDs and tapes. It was clever and original. This year, it is one model among 50 designed along the same lines. Retro gifts are hotter than ever. Hundreds of sites offer items to help you relive those golden days of yesteryear. Remember Captain Astro? I don’t either, but he’s got a fish bowl on his head and you can order a lunch pail with him on it. You can get that pedal fire engine your parents could never afford, although it’s a little late now to show it off to that spoiled, rich neighbor kid. For some, it must be worth the $289 to have the pedal fire engine they’ve always wanted. For $80 you can get a Chatty Cathy doll. That’s $80. The Easy Bake oven is back. Strawberry Shortcake and Hello Kitty are back. Cabbage Patch dolls are back. I will not buy a Cabbage Patch doll. Last time -- 1985 – my daughter fed it popcorn. The popc...

Kids are always fun to watch, whatever they sing at school productions. But something is shallow and tinny about a collection of songs missing the deep, rich cultural traditions of a society. I recently attended a school Christmas concert in which no one sang old, traditional carols. It would be one thing if we included Hanukkah or Kwanza songs at school concerts. But we don’t. Instead of adding to the rich texture of voices singing about important themes of a culture, we leech out the meaningful songs and replace them with superficial ones that will be forgotten in five years. It’s like saying that instead of adding raisins, nuts and rum flavoring to our cookies, we’ll take out the sugar to make it fair. Though there’s nothing wrong with change, change lately has resulted in flavorless fare, to be frank. Incensed, some groups take to boycotts while others use a blunt ax, especially on the wackier expressions of anti-Christmas sentiment. Reaction to the slow censorship of Christmas isn...