Category: Commentary

On Christmas Day someone will be born. On Christmas Day someone will die. On Christmas Day someone will be happy. On Christmas Day someone will be depressed. On Christmas Day someone will want for nothing. On Christmas Day someone will hunger for food and a home. On Christmas Day someone will find peace. On Christmas Day someone will experience war. 

We spend much of December, and even November these days, preparing for a celebration of the season with family and friends, often forgetting that on this most happy day there will always be people who are suffering for one reason or another. Christmas as we know it in the modern world often strays away from the reason of the season with its conspicuous consumption of food, drink and material riches.

There is nothing terribly wrong with treating ourselves and those we love to feasts and gifts, but when we lose sight of why we have such a holiday to begin with, our efforts feel somewhat out of sync, devoid of a true kind of joy. Like Sparky Griswold we focus on all the wrong things to make our Christmases bright. Love is what should be our focus, love with a kind heart and compassion and sharing. 

Not everyone is religious or even of the same religious beliefs. We each find spiritual nourishment in very personal ways. Some don’t even need a church or particular beliefs to feel a connection to something bigger than themselves. Each of us require ways of explaining the world and the things that seem to so serendipitously happen to us. Our human need is to know the why of the events and stories that make up the sum total of our lives. 

The greatest percent of religious believers are followers of Christianity. They believe that Jesus was sent to the world by God as a savior for all of us. We don’t know the exact date on which he was born nor do we have photographs or paintings of him that were made while he was alive. What we do have are the gospels that tell his stories and report his preaching, which is a beautiful way of living even if one does not believe that He was the son of God. He gave the world a blueprint of how to treat one another with both His words and His example. It’s easy to follow because it always focuses on love. His only commandment is that we love one another as deeply as we would love ourselves. 

His is a beautiful philosophy, but not nearly as easy to follow as it may at first seem. Each of us is imperfect. We may have the best of intentions, but end up getting angry, hurting someone with our words or even with violence. We become jealous and selfish even as we try so very hard to be the best versions of ourselves. When we walk past a fellow human whom Jesus would have helped, we know that Jesus is willing to forgive us for our many sins against humanity. As long as we are genuinely contrite and willing to begin anew to be the people that He knows we can and should be we can find reconciliation.

The words of Jesus and his parables do not require that we follow sets of rules created by humans attempting to interpret His instructions for us. In fact, the evidence in the gospels is that Jesus revolted against any laws that restricted our ability to help the sick, the poor, the suffering. It is humans who dictate behaviors that restrict our us from being just and fair and kind. Jesus did not judge as much as He simply loved. Over and over again he ignored laws that might have prevented Him from saving someone in need. 

I think that even non-Christians and those who scoff at the idea of God, should read about this Jesus who really did live and walk on this earth. Everyone should learn from him. No church is required to emulate Him or to celebrate His teachings. If we focus on trying to be more like Him during these holidays, I think we might feel a calm and brightness about ourselves and the future that quenches our thirst to understand why we are here. 

A friend recently related an incident that occurred on a day when her throat was scratchy and things were not going very well. She ordered take out pizza for dinner and scurried to pick it up as soon as she got a notice on her phone that it was ready. When she arrived the place was in a state of chaos and her pizza was not yet prepared. She felt like complaining but something inside her heart told her to be kind. She thought of how this is a busy season, a time when things can go wrong even with the best of plans. Instead of fussing at the woman who gave her the bad news that she would have to wait, she smiled and demonstrated patience. It was then that the woman revealed that the place had just been robbed and that everyone was quite shaken. She thanked my friend for being so understanding. 

We have no idea what anyone is facing during the Christmas holidays or at any time for that matter. We would do well to be at our best, to demonstrate compassion and kindness. Our holidays will be so much better when we slow down enough to simply love the people around us with all of our hearts. That is what the life of Jesus was all about and what he wants our lives to be about as well. Whether you call in Christmas or the holidays it all about love actually.

I suppose that I am an enigma while also being easy to read. I’m very much a “what you see is what you get” kind of person and yet some people don’t quite understand my thinking. I am a bundle of contradictions in many ways. I abhor the idea of adhering to a rigid daily schedule, but I have an ironclad faithfulness to certain traditions. I’m quite sentimental about memories from the past while insisting that change is not just inevitable, but actually quite good. I eat exactly the same thing every single morning except on Sundays when my husband cooks an elaborate breakfast, but I enjoy variety in everything else. I like getting up early in the morning so that I can be alone as the day begins, but revel in visiting and talking with friends in the afternoon. 

I’ve taken tests that indicate that neither my right nor my left brain is dominant. I enjoy teaching mathematics but my true love is writing. I’m a people person who mostly likes to observe the passing parade rather than being part of it. I’m a quiet person who will talk your ear off if given the opportunity. I enjoy traveling, but I always hesitate to leave home each time I embark on a trip. I might easily evolve into a hermit, but sooner or later I would need to get out and be among people.

I’m a very spiritual person who prays throughout the day, but my words for God are mostly conversational. I find comfort in having an internal relationship with God rather than praying in a formal religious setting. I’m a Catholic, but have many questions about most organized religions including my own. My God is very personal and comforting and kind and wise. There is only love in the God that I know, forgiveness rather than righteousness and smiting. 

I suppose that in truth I’m much like anyone. Perhaps I question things a bit more than some people like. It is in my nature. I am adamantly faithful and loyal to family and friends, but not to any particular political group. I love my country, but see no problem in pointing out its flaws. In fact I have a tendency to see difficulties in almost all organizations created by humans. Nothing is perfect. Everything needs a bit of tweaking now and then to remain relevant and fair. 

At Christmas time I become childlike even as I pride myself on being the adult in the room. I love the lights, the music, the movies, the parties, the gifts, the food. I am my happiest in December while also thinking of the people all over the world who are suffering even as I am experiencing so much joy. I have moments of great sorrow as I think of them, those engaged in war, those fighting for freedom, those who are sick and dying, those who are hungry and homeless. I want to help them all even knowing that my reach is so small compared to the needs. I cry a bit inside even as I smile and celebrate. 

The ghosts of Christmases past, present and future are more with me these days than ever before. I am reminded each year of those who gave me so much joy who are no longer here and those who are new to my world as well as those who may one day be. I find myself realizing how important it is to celebrate each moment with gusto because I have no idea when my expiration date will come. I’ve met for decades with my church lady friends, a group that was once five strong that has dwindled down to two. I always enjoyed time with dear friends who are no more. I’ve become the matriarch of my family, a role that has yet to feel comfortable as I long for my mother and mother-in-law more at Christmastime than any other time of year. I feel joy in the moment nonetheless. I have learned to seize each day and find a way to smile no matter what may happen.

My energy is not what it used to be, but it is still enough to keep me going. I’ve learned to pace myself rather than behaving like a whirling dervish. It takes me longer to accomplish my Christmas rituals and I have set aside some that did not matter as much to me. I still send old school Christmas cards through the mail. I enjoy greeting my friends and family and cherish the cards that come in return, but I don’t mind that this old tradition is not as much in favor as it once was. Trends come and go and I have no problem with that. I try to stay modern while holding on to the things I enjoy.

I am approaching my seventy fifth New Year. My first one came when I was not quite two months old. I don’t recall much about that one but the rest have seemed to come with greater and greater speed of late. I don’t make many resolutions anymore. I just take things as they come hoping that I and my family will stay healthy and happy. I have learned that there will be surprises, some wonderful and some difficult to handle. I carry on just as I always have, a complicated yet quite simple person. So here we go with Christmas and a New Year on the horizon once again. May the holidays be merry and bright and may those who are suffering find comfort. Hopefully I’ll keep tapping away on my laptop sending you my thoughts and my stories for much more time to come.

I now have five Christmas trees in my home. They hold the sum total of the ornaments that I have collected over the years. I still use the inexpensive glass globes that my husband and I purchased to brighten the first tree that we bought together after we were married. Since then I’ve added ornament after ornament from gifts, travels, ornament exchanges, craft projects, collections and Hallmark. The decorations fill eight boxes and the branches of the trees of various sizes. 

The front room where I compose my blogs hosts the travel tree. I make it a point to purchase an ornament wherever I visit. I have a good story for every tiny treasure that hangs on the branches of a tree that has seen better years but still does the job of displaying my pretties quite nicely. Sometimes I think it may be my favorite because vacations are always filled with joy and adventure. Seeing other places and learning about other people is fascinating and eye opening.

Then there is my collection tree which holds elegant ornaments of greater expense that I purchased one at a time over a series of decades. Some of them were also gifts from friends that marked special occasions.These delicate treasures hang on a tinier tree that fits snugly into the corner of my dining room. They are as lovely as the china that once belonged to my mother which is on display near them. The tree I place them on lost its lights years ago so I have to place strings of illumination in the old fashioned way. Until the ornaments are hanging it is a sad little sight indeed but the finished product is a glorious transformation. In the midst of all the beauty there is a strange little ornament that may seem out of place. It is a plastic angel that was once sprayed with silver paint that has mostly worn away. It is not particularly nice in any sense, but it is one of my favorites because it once hung from my Grandma Ulrich’s tree each Christmas Eve. After she died I saw it tossed aside with things that nobody wanted and I saved it to sit in glory surrounded by new loveliness each year.

I placed another tree atop a table so that it shines forth from my upstairs window. I call it my Charlie Brown Tree. It is was on sale one year and once had lots of shiny lights, but now it too requires old fashioned strings put on by hand to be illuminated. The ornaments that adorn it are old and unmatched and sometimes seem to be someone’s cast offs, but they too have lovely stories. Some are made from the hands of children, both my daughters and my former students. Some are a bit broken but I have repaired them. Altogether they brighten the window and the room. They often make me smile because like all of the other ornaments they have special stories that would fill a book. 

This year I added a tiny “pig tree” to hold all of the “lucky pigs” that I have collected since 2005. I learned on a trip to Austria that pigs are considered to bring good luck in the New Year so I began to find and purchase little piggies of every sort wherever I went. At first I stored them in displays around my home but I grew weary of the clutter so I transformed them all into ornaments and gave them a spot on my desk with a tiny tree dedicated on to them. It is absolutely precious and I’m delighted with how happy it makes me feel.

The big tree in my great room is the one I designed for my grandchildren. It holds countless Hallmark ornaments that whiz and whir and makes sounds. It features photos of family members and friends. There are odes to Harry Potter, Mickey Mouse and Snoopy. It glitters with crystal snowflakes from Swarovski and holds favorite surprises like a homemade ornament with photos of a dear friend’s children and one of our departed pets, Red. It’s a fun tree while also being the most beautiful of them all. It entertains us with a Harry Potter sorting hat and songs from DisneyWorld. My grandchildren are older now, but they still come in to inspect the old ornaments and search for the new ones. This year I’ve added Oscar the Grouch for the first time and found that I just can’t seem to get enough of Snoopy or Mickey. 

It takes days to erect and decorate all of the trees but I’ve learned to start early and pace myself so that I don’t get exhausted. Nobody would be stunned by the beauty of my trees but they represent a physical story of my life, a tangible way of knowing about my family and its personality. 

I have to admit that my favorite ornaments are the ones that are homemade along with that plastic angel that once belonged to my grandmother. I have a sentimental cry every single year when I place them on one of my trees. I love the deeply wonderful memories associated with them. My Christmas trees make me happy because they “talk” to me about my many blessings over the years. I could gaze at them forever.

I once worked for a man who loved to chat. My coworkers warned me not to visit his office unless I had enough time to lose an hour or so listening to him philosophizing or telling stories about his youth. I actually enjoy getting to know what makes people tick so I was not averse to settling into a chair in front of his desk and listening to him taking up topics that don’t usually come up in a business meeting. He was a sweet man who had a way of spinning a tale that was folksy and interesting given my own propensity for relating the stories of my life.

One day he randomly began thinking about an old flame that he had in his high school days. He told me that he had once thought he was in love with the girl that he took to his senior prom, but his youthful romance never panned out. He moved on to college and then the beginning of a career where he met his wife with whom he had created a wonderful family and life. He assured me that he was still very much devoted to his wife, but he had sometimes thought that if anything ever happened to her, he might look up his old girlfriend to see if she was available. He felt that the two of them might enjoy living out their final years together because their common bond of the past would be comforting. 

I suppose my boss’s theory intrigued me because I remember that conversation quite clearly. Many years later when I met with him for lunch one day I saw how grief stricken and lonely he was after his wife had died. As usual he talked my ear off, but I did not mind because I understood how important it was for him to have an outlet for his sorrow. I found myself wondering if he had tracked down his old girlfriend, but I dared not bring it up because he was still working out his feelings. Instead I allowed him to do all of the talking for probably three hours before we finally parted. 

I did not hear from him for some time after that. I worried that he might be ill because he seemed to just drop out of sight. Then out of the blue a Christmas card arrived from him and I was excited to know that he was back with us so to speak. I opened it to see a different kind of handwriting than his. It was signed by a woman who quite proudly linked her name to his. I instantly remembered the name of the girlfriend that he had mentioned and knew that he had found her and renewed their youthful romance. Now she was his second wife just as he had imagined she might one day be. 

It was a sweet story of the kind that I have seen repeated over and over again. As my boss had noted, we humans feel safer with people that we knew well when we were young. We do not fear the dating game nearly as much if we already share commonalities and relationships. It is a kind of comforting way to spend our golden years after our first spouses have died or left us. I have countless friends who have done just that and they have found happiness that they did not believe would be possible with old friends from high school or college. Theirs are stories worthy of romantic movies. 

My own fifty year class reunion has led to renewal of old friendships and the beginning of new ones. The common memories of our youth along with our evolutions as adults somehow seem to mesh even decades after we once knew each other. It is as though we are able to complete each other’s sentences or thoughts. We may not think exactly alike, but our memories of past times fill in the gaps and demonstrate how much we were shaped by those crucial adolescent years. We are with people who knew us when we were awkward and lacking in confidence, unsure of who we were and who we might become. They seem to like us even with all of our flaws. We don’t have to put on airs around them. 

In a typical fashion I could hardly wait to graduate from my high school and strike out in new directions. I was not the least bit interested in looking back although I did maintain friendships with many of my former classmates. I was intent on shedding the image that had become my personality, even though it was nothing like who I knew I actually was. I had to free myself from the classifications that teens often implant on each other…the popular crowd, the nerds, the shy nobodies. 

My mother’s illness accelerated my transformation from an ugly duckling to a swan. I had to become an adult to keep her well. I no longer had the luxury of hiding behind my shyness. I became an advocate for her, and later for my children and my students. I became unafraid. 

Now I enjoy being with old classmates and listening to each of their stories. It’s amazing how strong everyone has had to be and how wonderfully they have overcome mind numbing challenges. Many have found happiness just like my former boss did, others find comfort from just being with old friends. All of us have benefited from the foundations of our youth that had seemed so silly at the time. Now we see that we are the sum total of all of our experiences, but the lessons we learned from our parents and teachers have guided us all along to do the right things. It’s very nice to realize that the world continues moving forward, but our relationships never really wane. We are part of a very big family of good people who helped us to take our first steps forward into the world. Finding them again is a blessing.

Starting with Thanksgiving I’ve been buzzing around meeting up with people and having a grand time in ways that I have not experienced since 2019. I have to admit that I have lost much of my socializing stamina in the past three years of mostly staying hime and being isolated. I don’t know if my reaction is simply a matter of growing a bit older or if I’m just out of practice. 

I used to flit around from place to place, task to task, visit to visit with ease. It was as though I had an unlimited supply of energy that kept me going from early in the morning until late at night. I seemed able to tap dance, juggle and spin a plate on my head all at the same time. Now as I attempt to revive all of my old ways I’m missing steps, dropping balls, and breaking plates. I shut down sooner in the evening and sleep a little longer in the morning. It’s frustrating to me to realize that for the first time in my life I have to admit to having limits to what I am able to do before giving in to the aches in my back and knees. I find myself wondering if I’m just out of shape or if I’m simply experiencing inevitable changes in my life. 

I recall a time when my mother-in-law was about my age and she announced that she no longer had the stamina to be the grand hostess of Christmas festivities. She turned those duties over to me about twenty years ago and I had to learn how to be the driver of Christmas activities rather than the guest who simply showed up looking relaxed and festive.  It took me a while to learn how to replicate the wonderful Christmas dinners that she had always so deftly produced. In the beginning I could feel the disappointment from those who compared my humble efforts to hers. Over time only a handful of family members actually remembered her parties and mine became the gold standard for Christmas Day. With the pandemic all of that changed.

I once heard a friend describing her very simple Christmas Day traditions. Each year she made lasagna for her immediate family and they opened gifts after the meal. They followed with a bit of chatting and laughter, but the big tradition of the day meant going out to see a movie together. At the time I thought that her way of celebrating sounded a bit sad, however during the Covid times when things really slowed down I found myself wondering if maybe she had found a nice leisurely way to spend time with her small family group. Somehow her easy going dinner sounded more and more wonderful and I tried to think of ways to emulate the joyfulness of it. 

There are countless stories and movies about families running themselves ragged trying to create the most perfect Christmas memories. Doing that eventually exhausted my mother-in-law and she had to cry “Uncle!” While I’m not yet ready to surrender, I’ve decided to try some easier ways of opening my home to my extended family while still being able to keep up my strength and actually become the biblical “Mary” rather than “Martha” when they arrive. This year instead of a sit down dinner with all of the china and crystal and neatly ironed tablecloths and napkins I am offering an open house in which people will be free to come and go at any time that pleases them. I’ll have paper plates and bowls for food that I can set out as needed. The emphasis will be on just getting together, not hosting a feast that keeps me puttering in the kitchen before, during and after my guests arrive. I no longer want to finally sit down only to hear everyone announce that they are tired and ready to go home. I plan to actually visit this year.

My brother and sister-in-law have already refined their traditional Thanksgiving celebration to suit their own need to slow down just a bit. This year their children and their spouses arrived the day before the celebration to clean the house, set up tables, wash the china and silver, fold the napkins. On Thanksgiving day they brought a fully cooked turkey and dozens of side dishes that they only had to heat up. My brother and sister-in-law greeted guests and enjoyed the day in ways that they had never before experienced. It was wonderful for everyone. 

I wish I had thought of such things before my mother-in-law had to retire from Christmas duties. I might have pulled together a group to help her with set up and food preparation so that she might still have been able to experience the joy of having her loved ones come to her home for the celebration. I have finally realized that things don’t have to be perfect or always the same for everyone to have a good time. The joy of working together is often more fun. 

I’m fairly certain I can do this, but not by myself. Everyone’s going to get a job of some kind. I am learning as I go and remembering how my mother often insisted that I know when it is time to let go gracefully. All we really want is to be together. Nothing else really matters. There will be no more rushing around in a state of exhaustion if I manage to do this right. Wish me luck!