Christmas :: It is what it is

Last week I promised to share the results of the Audrey/Dagny photo shoot with you this Monday, and I did. You may see those photos here.

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I've got Christmas music blaring -- here in the family room through hidden speakers and outside on the deck, emanating from our speakers that look like rocks.

You're welcome, neighborhood.

My large main Christmas tree is sparkling a few feet away. A second Christmas tree twinkles in the kitchen.

Christmas presents are scattered beneath the Christmas trees.

The front of my house is decorated with Christmas lights, Christmas greenery, and a pointedly Christmasy door ornament.

There are Christmas cards waiting to be addressed.

There is Christmas wrapping paper and various related accoutrement sitting at the ready to be flung around Christmas gifts large and small.

In my email sit Christmas wish-lists that I requested from my children.

The Christmas menu is planned and although the Christmas food-foraging list has not yet been committed to paper, it soon will be.

And that reminds me: I still need to go Christmas shopping.

That's because it's Christmas.

Not merely a season. Not just another holiday. Not winter solstice. Not winter break. 

Christmas.

It is Christmastime.

Have you gone abroad -- at school, to work, to the marketplace both real and virtual, even to church, in some cases -- looking for Christmas and been offered, instead, all manner of lame, diluted euphemisms?

Worse yet, have you been indirectly shamed into not mentioning it by name? Have you bought into that particularly vile tentacle of political correctness?

Like most people, I've loved this time of year ever since I was a little kid with more nonsense in me than actual awareness of the significance attached to such events.

We didn't go to church so I was dumb as a box of hair when it came to what lots of things really meant.

So what was special about that early spring Sunday? Dressing up (maybe) and a basketful of jellybeans and chocolate bunnies. The thirty-first of October? Dressing up (certainly) and begging enough candy to rot both my own teeth and our dog's.

The fourth of July? Beach time. Mosquito bites and sparklers. The fourth Thursday in November? All manner of edible treats particular to that day, especially when we went over the bayou and through the woods to my grandmother's house in Baton Rouge.

Christmas? Getting stuff. Presents. Some Sanny Claus thrown in for effect.

Wait. Is there more?

As I learned when I was a young teenager, there is more: The purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ. It's a day on which we celebrate not what we can get, but what He freely gave.

Yet as years pile upon years, it seems the world is more determined than ever to mark the month of December with observance of anything and everything but the Baby born in a manger.

On Sunday morning I was getting ready for church, which I do upstairs, in a bedroom across the hall from our guest room. One of my offices, as it were.

There's a TV in the guest room so I flicked it on and turned to the DirecTV channel that purports to play music of the season. My ears were eager for O Come All Ye Faithful, O Holy Night, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and Away in a Manger.

An hour elapsed in which I gradually became bathed, perfumed, hosieried, robed, powdered, mascaraed, coiffed, bejeweled, shod, and gloved. And I accomplished same all by me onesie, my lady-in-waiting having weekends off.

It was while reaching for a lightweight shawl and turning off the TV, preparing to join my TG and go to church, that I realized: In an entire hour of "seasonal" music, the only mention of anything non-secular had been when Alvin and the Chipmunks enjoined us to give thanks to the Lord above because Santa Claus comes tonight.

Shopping was mentioned, and being home for Christmas, and seasonal depression, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and it being cold outside, and letting it snow, and rocking around the Christmas tree, and walking in a winter wonderland, and dashing through the snow, and long winters' naps and road trips to visit relatives, and Santa Baby, and Mommy kissing Santa Claus, and jingling bells and mistletoe.

Baby Jesus never made the playlist. No room for Him there.

Later I complained to Erica about it. She replied that she was having a hard time getting any clerk in a retail setting to say Merry Christmas back to her when she first said it to them.

Forget them ever saying it first. If that happens to you, I hope you'll tell me about it, because I'm pretty sure it's forbidden by most if not all store managers, for an employee to offer that greeting to a customer.

But that is not all. Now, someone saying it back when the customer says it -- which I do each and every time I shop during December -- becomes a notable event.

Now, I haven't been Christmas shopping yet (except online) so the opportunity hasn't presented itself.

But that very night TG and I swung by a major retailer so that I could pick up, among other items, Christmas cards and Christmas boxes (in which I plan to put Christmas presents to arrange under the Christmas trees).

And when we checked out, I said Merry Christmas! to our very efficient and pleasant cashier. It was latish; I'm sure she was tired and ready to go home.

But I got the biggest smile. Merry Christmas to you! she said. And it made my heart glad.

I'll stop soon -- you have that to look forward to -- but not before I make a solemn promise, both to myself and to you and to whomever else may be remotely interested:

I won't spend money on Christmas presents, swelling the coffers of retailers who aggressively promote the spending of Christmas dollars at their outlets, if said retailer refuses to acknowledge that what this spending and celebrating is all about, is Christmas.

All they have to do is use the word! In print in their advertisements and throughout their store. And verbally: Say it! Say the word Christmas. Say Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays. Because the word Christmas contains the name of Christ, without Whom there is no reason to say it at all.

Let's be honest: If His name sticks in their throats, my debit card sticks in my wallet.

Because although the season definitely does have to do with the start of winter, with invocations of Santa Claus, with spending money you don't have to buy stuff people don't need, with ice skating and hot chocolate and mittens and jingle bells and twinkly lights and sappy movies, with gingerbread houses and greenery, with snowmen and reindeer and bulging sleighs, with sugarplums and nutcrackers and traveling home for pumpkin pie, and with folks being simultaneously happier and sadder than usual, none of those things are the main message.

Certainly the parties and eating too much and drinking too much, the use of the sacred holiday of Christmas as (another) excuse to imbibe and indulge, is not the point.

Christmas celebrates the birth of the Savior of the world (even if He was not born on December 25th).

No matter what anyone says (or doesn't say), no matter how thoroughly the purpose for celebrating Christmas -- and even the word itself, offensive as it is to some -- is suppressed and ignored and covered with glitter that's not even close to being gold, they'll never succeed in changing what it really means.

And no matter how much red you wear or how blue you feel or how silver the bells or how much white you dream of, those things won't get you to the heart of Christmas.

But even that is okay. Do you want to know why? Because in the end (as at the beginning), it is what it is.

No amount of turning a deliberately deaf ear and a stubbornly blind eye, of making a point to ignore the reality of Christmas, or the Christ of Christmas, will alter the eventual outcome, which He has planned and for which He was born.

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

= Matthew 1:23 =

I pray this Christmas we will listen for that beautiful word, and say it both reverently and with joy, and savor it both on our tongues and in our innermost selves.

I plan to pursue and promote both its lovely timelessness and its eternal relevance, practicing forgiveness for those who don't understand and gratitude for those who do.

That is all for now.

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Merry Christmas

Don't say cheese. Say honey.

As you know I meant to take a bunch of cute candids of the grandkids over Thanksgiving.

I envisioned a perfectly sharp and heartrendingly adorable photo of the four of them smiling into the camera, all faces wreathed in joyful abandon, nobody frowning or looking at the ground.

I'd planned to caption it Merry Christmas! For you.

That didn't actually happen. I cooked for two days, and then we ate -- sort of, if you don't count the throwing up at the table incident (no; not me) -- what I'd cooked, and then it was too dark to take pictures.

And I was too tired anyway. Instead, to relax I went outside and installed multicolored lights on the porch railing. I love the seamless segue from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

But on the next day -- Friday -- we all embarked on a planned photo shoot to take the annual Christmas card picture of my daughter Stephanie's family.

This is something TG and I did each year when the kids were much younger: around Thanksgiving we'd go somewhere local and pose up and someone would be pressganged into snapping our picture and I'd pick the one most flattering to me, and we'd go with that one for our card.

I insisted on said arrangement for lots of years -- favoring many eager recipients with an updated picture of our branch of the Weber clan just in time for Christmas -- before, around 1995, finally giving up.

That's because whenever I would suggest it was time to capture the annual family photo, TG would begin acting as though he'd rather be kicking a radioactive can on Pluto.

Miserable. He doesn't like posing for picutres. And it shows.

Consequently it has been awhile since all of us -- if you don't count a couple of casual snaps taken over the last decade or so -- appeared all together in any sort of posed portrait.

So I packed up the tripod and the Nikon D7000 and the remote control so that I could operate said camera without being behind it, and we set out for downtown Columbia.

It was a very cold day, highs only in the mid forties, but there was considerable sun so naturally we scheduled the shoot for late afternoon.

The light, don't you know. There's love in the air at that time of day.

My grandchildren -- all except Dagny -- served as standard-bearers for the time-honored tradition of wearing classic argyle, which I thought was all kinds of cute.

Melanie and Allissa got new pale-pink tights and new black dressy shoes for the occasion.

I am prejudiced but I think the Bixlers are the cutest little family. They love being together and it shows. My son-in-law has never balked at posing for the Christmas photo.

But it's no pose when I tell you that everybody had a good time. It was cold and we worked fast, but there was merriment in the air. (I don't do Black Friday; I only do the First Day of Christmas.)

We'll pose up again in a few weeks when we all gather in North Carolina to celebrate our Melanie's tenth birthday.

I'll make sure to get plenty of sweet pictures of double-digit girl, our precious Melly Belle.

Meanwhile be patient until Monday, when I share with you the results of my Christmas card shoot with Audrey and Dagny. To tide you over, there's a sneak peek on my Instagram if you care to look.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Thursday ~ Merry Christmas

Guest poster: Dagny a/k/a Daggybug

Wot? Wait a second. December second?

It's not November no more? That means it's Christmas!

Yay my first Christmas! Outside the womb, that is. Wow guys. What a concept.

I wonder if my presents will bring as much joy to me this year as my presence has brought to others this year.

I seriously doubt it.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Tuesday ~ Merry Christmas Everybody