Advent Journey

Our Advent practices vary from year to year.  The Advent wreath and candles change. I choose different books to read from.  But we always set up the Advent calendars (we have several) and our grandchildren love keeping us "up to date" with them.  Here, Skye is adding a little wooden figure to the tiny numbered peg where it will hang, joining those already there and waiting for the rest of the nativity scene to join in this little folding wooden box. In recent years, I have added a daily post during Advent to another blog  www.stonesandfeathers.wordpress.com.  These and other practices help me choose wonder and joy in the middle of all the lists of things to do at this time of year. It is my gift to both myself and my family.

What traditions are important to you in all the busy preparations for Christmas?  How do these change your "list?"

First Christmas

Nora is discovering Christmas for the very first time this year. Her eyes are full of laughter and wonder and she delights in every small new thing she has never seen or touched before:  twinkle lights, red balls, music boxes that tinkle "Joy to the World."  I remember holding her Daddy up to find joy in the same things, some of them the very same when we stand in front of the Christmas tree at our home. We enjoy all the sights and sounds and the fragrance of cinnamon and cloves, press our hands to window glass to feel the cold, and sing the simple carols.

This is my 74th Christmas, but in her delight, I find all of it new again.  Thank you, Nora.   Merry Christmas!

Christmas Past, a Story

                                      1970 -    Joe's paper sculpture angels, at our house on Willow Green in San Antonio, Texas.  This is the only picture I have of them, and they got folded and hidden in one of our moves!

Recently a group of friends gathered for a meal and story sharing. We each told a story of a Christmas remembered. How valuable it is to hear each others' stories! Most of the stories were fond memories of a childhood Christmas experience. So much of our family preparation for and pleasure in Christmas includes ways we have done it before - stockings, and where they are hung, manger scenes and where they are placed, tree decorations, taken out of the box one by one with memories of each, carols around the piano, lots of family around for help and hugs, and cookies baked from recipes so old they are spattered and yellow.

I recounted the tale of our first married Christmas, when Joe and I were far from family and were beginning our own Christmas traditions, starting from scratch for Christmas decorations. I told part of this story in a previous post.   Our First Christmas

In our conversation and shared storytime that recent evening, I also told of disappointment (we would have to go back to Texas the first of the year), of grief due to the death of my beloved grandfather and the fact we could not leave in time to drive back to the funeral, of uncertainty for what the future held, and some of the ways those beginning traditions and stories have played out in our lives. Since that first Oregon Christmas, except for the Christmases we celebrated while living in Indonesia, we have always had some of the decorations for our tree that hung on it the year before. Those years from 1987 to 1991, all of our Christmas decorations including family stockings were mistakenly sent to storage when our overseas shipment was packed in California! That was one of the first boxes I looked for when we got the storage shipment back in 1992!

Even though the beginning Parker family Christmas may have seemed like starting from scratch, it was not entirely. We each brought to our marriage a faith that had been nurtured in our families of origin that was the reason for celebrating Christmas anywhere, at all. The trimmings for the tree, our handmade gifts, the clever folded angels Joe cut from paper for me - all of those were not just traditions carried on from the past, they signified the reason for those traditions:  the coming of God to be with us in the form of a human baby, to show us how to live and love. Fifty one years and many many Christmas candles and carols, evergreen trees and manger scenes, stockings and presents, boy grins and grandgirl giggles later, the traditions are precious, and the Christmas Story remains the same.

After Christmas Surprise!

I have always been slow to pack away the Christmas decorations for our home.  While I drive down the street and see some trees already stripped and hauled out for pickup a day or two after Christmas, and know that many people like to pack away decorations after the first day of the new year, I am known for lingering over the task.  It is not all because I move a little slower these days.  I simply enjoy savoring the last drop of twinkle lights and tinsel, and choose many years to leave out a manger scene for awhile.  This past week, as I stood in front of our mantle deciding whether to put our largest manger scene back in its box, I started laughing when I saw that Joseph had an extra staff!  I knew right away that Maddie had left me another surprise to find after she went back home. At 7, she delights in tucking a bow here, a flower there, and I delight in discovery!

Thank you, Maddie!

Thank Heaven for Little Girls, and their Daddies

O

Christmastime is a time for reflection , remembering, and for savoring moments of love and tenderness.  I love watching my sons with their daughters.  I love watching my granddaughters with their Daddies. In this photo, Jordann has found a sweet safe place in Jeremy's arms.  Both of our two older sons have 2 daughters, and now our youngest son and his wife are expecting their own little girl.  When baby Nora arrives in the Spring, she will have a circle of girl cousins to welcome her and the adoring attention of her Mother, Grandparents, and Aunts and Uncles.  But I can hardly wait to see her Daddy hold her. 

Happy Anniversary

                                                                   December 28, 1963

At 7:00 this evening, Joe and I will be enjoying an anniversary dinner at Mia Bella, an Italian trattoria, Texas style. Forty-nine years ago at 7:00 in the evening, the organ chimed seven times, I put one hand in my muff, with the other took my father's trembling arm, and walked toward Joe at the altar of the church in Jacksonville, Texas where both our families worshiped while we were growing up. Our meal that evening was a plate of waffles where we stopped the little blue Karman Ghia on our drive back toward Oklahoma City.  When I bent my head to look at the menu, rice fell all over the table.

We decided in October to get married in December during my Christmas break from my senior year in Oklahoma Baptist University. I was in the clinical portion of my studies (which took place at that time at John Wesley Methodist Hospital in Oklahoma City).  In the weeks between our decision to move our wedding date and that week after Christmas, we made a couple of trips to East Texas, picked out china and silver and linens, ordered our wedding rings,  I made my wedding gown, took finals, and planned the wedding long distance and low budget.  With less than thirty dollars for fabric and supplies, I made the dress from creamy peau de soie, appliqued lace and pearls, and sewed on all those tiny covered buttons.  My veil hung from small pillbox hat (did you know an oatmeal box is just the right size to cut down and cover for a tiny hat like that?)  and my only flowers were pinned to the muff I made from the leftover fabric.

  Joe was handsome and happy in his dark grey suit and butonierre.  My sister and best friends wore cranberry faille coat dresses with white organza collars and carried candles.  Joe's brothers and best man dressed up in their suits, too.  Our only decoration was a bank of magnolia leaves, leftover from a wedding the night before!  A friend of Mother's made our wedding cake which I decorated by sugaring little Christmas bells the night before. The wedding rings didn't arrive, so we borrowed rings from Arnold (Joe's brother,  and his wife Judy.  I honestly do not remember feeling anxious or stressed.

And it was beautiful.  Beginnings are like that.  The start of our fiftieth year is another new beginning. Beautiful.

Carol of the Birds

I am strangely attracted to a Christmas carol rarely sung -

 treasure of music, words with sweet mystery,

 quiet, wondering melody

Questioning feathered twitters.

“Whence comes this rush of wings afar,

Following straight the Noel star?

Birds from the woods in wondrous flight,

Bethlehem seek this Holy Night.

Tell us, ye birds, why come ye here,

Into this stable, poor and drear?

Hastening we seek the newborn King

And all our sweetest music bring.”

Stirring some ancient warmth within me

I play the notes and sing each verse,

 decorate a small Christmas tree

with vines, berries, woodland birds.

Greenfinch, Philomel sing

Re, mi, fa, sol in accents sweet

from woodland edges, farmland hedges

Noel, Christ on earth with man to dwell

Someone singing this tune for 400 years,

before that, once an older one now lost?

Could it be I am pulled by what I cannot remember?

Song and my great grandmother both born in southern France

She died when I was a baby.

Did she sing it, rocking me

in the old wooden rocker in which I rock my own grandchild?

Noel.

Trees and Trims

Our Christmas house has more than one tree to trim.  We have artificial trees these days, but the decorations that dress them have been on many trees in many different places.  After the spare snowflake and string ball trimmed tree of our 1964 Christmas, Joe and I added an ornament or two or three every year.  So that our sons would have their own Christmas ornaments when they left to begin their own traditions and families, we let them choose an ornament for their own each year which was stored in a box.  I love visiting their homes and seeing a few of those childhood choices on their trees this time of year.  This tree is in my kitchen.  It celebrates family and the cooking we enjoy together, and is trimmed with cookie cutters I used when I was a little girl, cookie recipes handwritten  by grandmothers and friends, and little gingerbread boys and girls. The gingerbread family is over 35 years old, so of course is not real gingerbread.  When my sons were all in the same elementary school, one year we made baker's clay ornaments colored with instant coffee for all their teachers plus some for our own tree.  They come back out to dance on our tree and remind us of many happy Christmas times together in our kitchen.

My granddaughters are a delight all year 'round, but Christmas brings more fun than ever.  We enjoy making this tea tray with a tiny tree, teacups and teapots. We add a mix of pretty tea bags and Joe's mother's small spoon collection plus the book A Cup of Christmas Tea.

Snowflakes

Cutting paper snowflakes can make young children into magicians and grandmas into little girls again.  There is mystery involved in the folding, choosing just the right place to cut, and carefully trimming little triangles and curves and slashes.  But there is wonder in the unfolding!  Much like the real ones, no two snowflakes turn out exactly the same.  I have never lost that sense of expectation and trying to imagine how this one is going to turn out.

Forty-nine years ago Joe and I celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple.  That December found us far from our Texas family and friends, in Corvallis, Oregon.  The original plan for Joe to enter graduate school there had been delayed.  In the meantime, he did any odd job available, including painting houses.  I worked as a nurse in a busy pediatric practice within walking distance of our apartment.  One of our doctors had a farm outside of town where we were invited to come cut a Christmas tree. We tramped around the hillside brushing away blackberry vines to find a perfect small Grant pine.  Its symmetrical, graceful branches had wide spaces that were perfect for decorating.  But we were beginning our home and our traditions.  We had no old familiar ornaments to unbox and remember.  We also had no extra money in the budget for buying same.  So we hung a few candy canes, made some string balls from twine and starch and balloons, and carefully cut lacy snowflakes.  That year I knitted my new husband a green sweater with sleeves twice as long as his arms.  He painted a tiny recipe box for me and pasted "Good Things You Can Fix" on top.

The photograph is the few snowflakes that remain after all these years.  I framed them last year for a gift for Joe.  This year we will remember our 1964 snowflakes when we make paper snowflakes with our grandchildren.  If you have never cut a snowflake, try this project.  You will agree with Charles Dickens - "It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself."

For some wonderfully fancy paper snowflakes, visit  www.bontempsbeignet.blogspot.ca/2011/11/faux-sneaux-flakes.html

Again!

                                   
                       Howard Teal and his first grandson, Sean Parker, Christmas 1968


This picture speaks to me of Christmas past and Christmas present, even Christmas yet to come.  My Daddy is holding our first son. How proud he was!  Sean loved his Papa, and already loved books. They are delighting each other with the reading of The Night Before Christmas.  Can't you hear "...up the chimney he rose?"  With this book, as in most, arriving at the last page meant "again, read it again!"

So, as I bring in the boxes of decorations and begin pulling out all the old familiar ornaments and set up the manger scenes, I am brimming with both tears and smiles, thinking how good it is to do it again.  I set up our advent wreath and candles and fill the big basket with all the children's Christmas books read and reread so many times.  I stack my Christmas piano music and practice the arrangements of White Christmas and Silent Night that I have played for so many years now.  I  am thankful that I did most purchases for gifts before Thanksgiving, so that shopping is not on my to do list, and I can spend  more time re-calibrating during Advent.  I listen to my favorite Christmas CD, James Galway's Christmas Carol.  On the way to Bethlehem, again.

Innkeepers

At this time of year for a number of years, Joe and I became innkeepers.  No, we didn't open a  Bed and Breakfast, but we did set up a cozy inn with a fireplace and welcome guests so that we could share our stories.  Our church, First Baptist Church in Richmond, Texas, has a custom of offering a gift to our community each year at Christmastime, called Experiencing Christmas.  This is not the expected scenes from a live nativity, as special as those can be - but a group of people who put on the characters from the Christmas story like they put on the robes and headwraps.  We became Jacob and Rachel, innkeepers who find a place for the holy family that is clean and quiet and away from the public, their stable.  As small groups of guests came in to sit by our fire and talk to us, we talked about our fears, our amazement, our wonder, our belief.

Every year, the drama changes to tell different parts of the story, and this year, the inn changes too.  It will come after groups have finished their walk through the story scenes.  But Jacob and Rachel will still offer their hospitality in a reception area.  No cookies and punch though - there will be flatbreads and cheese, olives, and dates, and pomegranates.  Looks like I just can't get out of the kitchen.  But then I don't really want to.  Welcome to our inn!

Beginnings

I guess the beginning of a new year is a time for thinking about beginnings of all kinds. This little box is a recipe box. Joe painted and decorated it for me for our first Christmas after we were married. It was pretty empty for a long time because I didn't have many recipes. The only thing in the box was a small note pad on which I had written menus and my grocery lists for the first six weeks we were married – our beginning meals! I even kept tabs on how much I spent for groceries – part of our beginning budget!

I enjoyed cooking and learning to make new dishes, but I was definitely a beginner. The little white box was, too. As I collected recipes from friends and family, the box filled until it needed tabs and labels for indexing – the beginning of a large cookbook and recipe collection. I think all these beginnings led to the start of a lifelong love of cooking and joy of hospitality. I am grateful for the beginnings.

I am sure I do not have to tell you - not all beginnings have happy endings. That same Christmas I knitted Joe a green mohair sweater. He was proud of it but the sleeves were twice too long and the yarn (purchased on sale for such a good price!) was so itchy he could not bear to wear it. I still love to knit, and have produced lovely baby shawls, warm capes, and colorful scarves... but I have never tackled another sweater.

I Choose You!

I have so many reasons for loving Christmastide!  Faith and family are intertwined during these days in powerful ways.  As we gather at Christmas and live the days (all twelve!) to Epiphany, today, January 6 - we make choices, year after year.  Clyde Reid's book You Can Choose Christmas is one of a number of books I enjoy reading each year; it lies on a table beside my chair right now. It is true, we can choose Christmas...that choice lies within us. We also make choices in relationships, the most important ones in our marriage and family.  When Joe and I were married on December 28, 1963, the vows we made to each other used some important phrases beginning -" I will" and " I take"  and " I do" that are really saying "I choose.  I choose you."  Since our anniversary always falls in the middle of the week between Christmas and New Year's,  it is always a special time for remembering that choice.  So, last week marked 48 years of saying "I choose you!"

Christmas 1963

I remember a blur of travel, anticipation, last minute preparation.

The memories rush by like scenery from a train window.

family and friends gathering, arms open

happy voices

bells

church

prayers

the color cranberry

boughs of green

candlelight

gifts in fat boxes with shiny paper

white ribbons

a muff where I hid my hands

a dress I sewed with lace and tiny buttons

Mother's sweet smile

Daddy's shaking hands

chocolate covered cherries under the Christmas tree,

his gift to me each year.

In 1963, he gave me

To a man who said he would love and honor me.

My love gave me my new initials.

1963, the year of my Christmas wedding.

Come Into My Christmas House

As this year comes to an end, I am thinking of joys we have shared in our journey as a family, just as the blog subtitle suggests. This year has included many changes as Joe had surgery after surgery and has bravely met challenges of severe pain and limited mobility.  Our outings have been mostly to medical appointments, and gatherings have been different. The joys of this journey are nonetheless vividly apparent.  The love and caring concern of our sons, daughters in law, and granddaughters is lavish and intense.  They have helped with household chores from changing lightbulbs to moving furniture.  Meals have been joint ventures.  Phone calls "just checking on us" are frequent.  Little hands have helped set the table and take trays to Papa. Michala gave Joe his medicine.  Teion worked on the broken dishwasher.   Skye read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to Maddie and Jordann.  Kristen played dominoes with Maddie.  Jeremy played the Indonesian shell game with Lauren.  Ben gave Jordann rides on his shoulders. Sean started a fire outside to roast marshmallows.  It is not that these things never happened before, it is that they are intensified now, and deeply appreciated.  We decorated together, cooked together, prayed together, and even if our meals were not always around Grandma Terrell's table, they were family celebrations and joyful occasions.  So, come into my Christmas House, and share the joy of our journey as a family. Winter is upon us, but Spring is on the way.  I am grateful.    "With" is a powerful and joyful thing.

December 24

December 24

 

December 24, 1959

Daddy bought roman candles

to celebrate Christmas Eve.

My little sister and I knelt on the ground watching.

Each pop and whoosh threw red and green trails

into starlit sky.

We thought it was how he liked to spend Christmas eve.

Mother never joined us, staying inside,

then coming to the screen door

“Come fast, guess who has just been here?”

Santa came and we always missed him

but gathered our presents and drank hot chocolate -

No visions of sugar plums when we dreamed because we already had them.

December 24, 1963

I gave Joe a tiny red book

with poems about love.

He fastened three pins on my jacket

three letters: M, A, and P

my new initials.

We were married three days later.

.

December 24, 1964

In Oregon, our tree was a tiny Grant pine

cut from a friend's farm.

hung with snowflake cutouts and lacy string balls

I knitted a green sweater,

sleeves twice as long as his arms.

He painted a recipe box

“Good Things You Can Fix”

December 24, 1965

Planning a time full of surprises.

driving four hours on Christmas eve.

Our gift would be an announcement,

a grandchild!

Good news faded, pain exploded,

no tree in the operating room, no joy in the telling.

December 24 1968 and 1970 and 1973...

Lights shining in the eyes of a new baby.

Is there anything more beautiful?

What better time to celebrate birth and babies?

Christmas carols make wonderful lullabies.

December 24, now.

We go to church on Christmas eve

Once it was snowing when we came back outside,

something that never happens in South Texas.

We danced in the snowflakes.

Then we came in for mulled cider and tamales.

Licking the Spoon

Licking the Spoon

Sliced red apples sweet and crisp

to dip in hot caramel

Pumpkin Bread and Gingerbread

Candy Cane Cookies, Thumbprints, red jam in the middle

Toffee with almonds spread quickly to cool

German Butter Balls rolled in powdered sugar

Peppermint Bark

Fudge cooked in an iron skillet, the old fashioned way

poured onto a buttered platter

Cranberry Crisp

Turkish Delight

Pecan pralines tasting of brown sugar

Haystacks – butterscotch and chow mein noodles!

Sweetest of all -

Licking the Spoon.



Stirring Moments

Among all the wonderful together times at Christmas, some of my most favorite are those I spend in the kitchen with my family.  In this picture, Skye was only four years old.  She just celebrated her 9th  birthday.  We enjoy cooking together.  I am happy to make cookies, candy, and a gingerbread house just like I did when her Daddy and my other sons were growing up.  I love remembering happy times past, and love even more making new memories.  This afternoon, no one is in the kitchen with me, but as I turn up Andrea Bocelli's Christmas CD, turn on the oven, and pull out the baking pans, my heart is singing.  And remembering.

                                                 

The Little Golden Book Story of Christmas With Its Own Advent Calendar

                                                The Little Golden Book Advent Calendar




One window at a time, our sons opened the view to Bethlehem,

from the Little Golden Book Story of Christmas with its own Advent calendar

I found the book on sale in Cokesbury, downtown Dallas

displayed with all the wonderful children's Christmas books.

never knowing it would become a treasured vehicle

for keeping Christmas as three boys grew strong and tall



In the beginning a story was read from the book and they took turns (reluctantly)

opening windows, naming what could then be seen

Years passed, they read their own story.

How did those little cardboard windows last?

They were not always opened slowly or gently!



First page, first image –sad swirls of darkness, clouds

As windows and story opened more -

angel, donkey, closed door, open stable,

cow, shepherds, sheep, one star

kings, camels, presents

Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus



Tiny windows in Bethlehem, opening one by one

counting down the days to Christmas.

telling hope and mystery and miracle

singing He is coming, He has come.

Story not finished but beginning! Jesus, born once more

entering our world bringing light and life.



Christmas does not come all at once.

One window at a time, we open our eyes to Bethlehem.

One step more and we are home.

Content

Today is my 71st birthday.  I am content.  Just like Angel and Bella, I choose my spot in the sunlight and find peace.  My circumstances are not all that peaceful, to be sure.  We spent the morning going to medical appointments for both of us.  Joe has three doctor's appointments this week, and will very soon have another surgery, totaling 14 for both knees.  I have made to do lists for this week which will undoubtedly be unfinished by the next.  Thanksgiving is next week!  The first Sunday in Advent is 3 days later, with Christmas on the way!  And although I love all the special ways we celebrate and decorate and participate, these are busy days.  My contentment comes from choosing to be in the light of God's love and being given the peace that only comes from Him.  November 11, 2011:  a very happy birthday. 

Packing the Christmas Dress

When my mother was growing up, they never put up the Christmas tree until Christmas eve.  All the festivities and celebrating came after Christmas.  They  celebrated the 12 days of Christmas beginning with Christmas day.  Now that we decorate our and trees much earlier (ours is usually done on Thanksgiving weekend) we have longer to enjoy our house with its Christmas dress on, but I still don’t like to take anything down until Epiphany.  As I pack away ornaments and manger scenes, I remember that I am not putting away the Christ-light.  Nearly 30 years ago I wrote about “undecorating”. 

The mantle seems lonely without the little manger scene.

The house looks plain, bereft of red and green.

The tree is down, the front door bare.

No wreath or garland festooned there.

Our mailbox no longer yields its daily harvest of cards.

The lights and Santas are gone from all the yards.

We packed away the manger scene,

But not the shine of the star!

For His new birth within us, no time or season can mar.

Because He was born, we have Christmas.

Because He died we have life.

Because He lives we have new years

No matter what serves us with strife.

We thank Him for peace and for promise.

We thank Him for love and for sight.

We thank Him for meaning and purpose.

We live to show darkness the Light.

Definitely older, hopefully wiser...I sing along to Andrea Bocelli's Christmas album, allow a few tears to fill my eyes, and am aware that the gifts of Christmas continue.