Holiday Traditions

A relaxing puzzle

Happy Schmoo

Activities in Nisswa including warming fires

Santa makes a big entrance

Our feet still warm in this photo

Mayor's car? 

Mary has moon boots on under the traditional blue robe. . . burr

Minnesota is crazy like this. . . fireworks in winter

It's really good for Calvin to lose now and then

When I was a little girl, Christmas was everything. Our family traditions were thick. I could write a novel about the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mom made candy and cookies and decorated our house. We went to advent services and my sister and I made elaborate programs. I spent hours sequestered in my room embroidering gifts for my family. My grandparents had a whole series of intricate protocols surrounding their arrival on Christmas Eve. Like I said, I could write a book.

During this time. . . once we did something one year. . . it became. . . the tradition. And the traditions stacked up. Special dinner out, fondue, tour of lights. . . special concert. This cookie. That cookie. Hamballs. Lasagna. Cranberry candles.

It is the same with the Bill and Sara Kotrba generation. Our traditions are more than we can fit into the season. Joyful or oppressive? Jury is out.

Last Wednesday almost sunk me. There was more to be done than can ever be done and the Thanksgiving traditions along with packing and church and choir and having the kids home from school thank you very much ISD 196 threatened my very best self. On the phone between frantic scurrying I vented to my mother. There's got to be a better way. There's got to be a way I can do this better, I cried. I have an honorary doctorate in time management and multitasking, but even with that, I'm still struggling with bending time and space to conquer the to-do list on such days. I was not my very best self. I was a hot mess, saved only by my husband swooping in and taking over the drum lesson chauffeuring which bought me two hours of child free sanity to pack and practice.

We got up north, at midnight at five below. It was, I believe all worth it, to wake up on Thanksgiving morning and start RELAXING. Start checking off the traditions. Puzzle. Turkey. Nisswa activities. Shopping with Bill's mom. A movie in the actual theatre. Games. Verdict? Joyful. Truly. I wouldn't change a thing.

Our church's advent devotion for yesterday suggested we all make a promise and post it. I promise to not be psycho for the next two whole weeks.

Actually, I promised to try to keep Christ in Christmas. This morning on the way to school the Holiday Traditions station was playing Ella Fitzgerald. The stereo read: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christ. There wasn't room for the "mas."  Okay, so the Holy Spirit talks to me through pop-radio as well as yoga teachers.

Is there hope for fulfilling the tradition quota and keeping Christ in Christmas and even making it joyful?

Hope springs eternal. I'm gonna try it again. The journey of a thousand miles starts with December 1. I am a mother with two extended families, a piano teacher with a Christmas recital, and a church musician with a heavy advent role. My kids are church musicians, so they fill in any gaps in the schedule. I also have the unquenchable yearning to create the old fashioned sacred and beautiful and filled with every cookie and candy and candle Christmas. For my kids. For myself.

So, insert your own profanity, I love Christmas. Maybe there isn't a better way, Mother. Maybe it's just the hot mess that is me and maybe the occasional meltdown is just part of the deal. Maybe it's even a sacred tradition? Like the little Norwegian ornaments and the lingenberry juice. I've been simultaneously celebrating and complaining about Christmas for a very long time now. See the last few years' early December blog entries . . . I'm probably not going to change much this year.

Can you still love me?

I didn't promise to simplify.
I didn't promise to cut back.
I didn't promise to scale down.
I did not promise to not be psycho.

I only promised to try to keep Christ in Christmas.

I love Christ. . .mas.
And I'm going to embrace the next meltdown, as I know it will come. My attempts at a perfect Christmas season make me so far from perfect, I know. The meltdown is officially one of the essential holiday traditions. Sooner or later, it will have to be checked off. Why not face it a little more joyfully? Hey, maybe we'll do that one twice this year.

Christ is all about grace. Forgiveness. Not cookies and music and candies and decorations. The paradox is that I know this but I'm gonna do it all anyway. Squeezing every last drop from the season is in my DNA.

For me, this year, keeping Christ in Christmas might mostly mean being a little more forgiving of myself as I face the annual meltdown(s). I don't have to be perfect. That's why we have Christmas to begin with. That little baby Jesus I'm putting in the lighted manger whose little twinkling lights are busted again came to fix it all for us. Even the stress over celebrating his birth. I'm already forgiven.

Have yourself a merry little Christ.