The Elephant's Child

Just Saying.

I could really use a fluffy, warm, better-quality hooded sweatshirt.  Bonus points if it's got a logo or design related to something I love.  Or has hilarious text. 

 

Because some days, you just neeeeeeeed jeans and a hoodie. And my current hoodie isn't fluffy anymore. 

 

It would also be ever so awesome if I had some of my very favorite movies on DVD.  Out of Africa and The Breakfast Club come to mind. 

 

 

The Christmas Spirit and Feeling Christmasy.

What if the real reason so many of us having trouble feeling "like it's Christmas" in the the weeks before December 24th is because Advent isn't Christmas?  

Maybe our brains and our bodies know intrinsically what the Church year confesses: that the time leading up to Christmas isn't Christmas. It's separate.  It's preparation, it's reflection, it's a time of looking ahead toward's Christ's second coming. It's penitential, like Lent is. 

But it's not Christmas.

Maybe it's ok if we don't feel Christmas-y on Gaudete, the third Sunday of Advent.  Maybe the sad feelings, the days of blue moods, the worry and bustle of the season are good in a certain way. They're pentitential, you could say.  And they do end, because by the time Christmas actually comes, the magic comes too.  The lights seem brighter, the tree is finally decorated, plans for visiting family are finalized, most of the work is done and most of the bustle and craziness has been dealt with, the food gets eaten, and the gifts get opened.

Then it "feels like" Christmas. You know, on Christmas. 

Family (Really Really Need) Christmas List

MM needs brown and/or grey socks. 

White queen sheet set; our set disintergrated.  Flannel or regular is fine, as long as either one is 100% cotton. Right now we're sleeping on our single set of guest linens. 

JoAnn gift cards so I can buy purse-making supplies and fabric to sew long-sleeved tops for myself. 

Sparkle Kitty needs:

winter pajamas, size 8. She's not a nightgown person - long john style or other pants-and-top style pjs are preferred.

white tights, size 10-12

Winter church shoes, size 1:  Mary Janes or ballet flats or similar in black and/or brown. 

Snow pants, size 10.  Snow boots size 2. 

Amazon gift cards to buy books for schooling. 

 

I Care About You Only As Far As I Don't Have To Do Laundry After You Visit.

Because I Won't Believe Myself Later.

Thursday: We leave at 8:10 am for Base #1, Mad Musician's brother's house.  Second half of trip was through heavy snow and then sleet. Rescheduled afternoon tuning customer for the next day.  About 9pm we get the call telling us that Mad Musician's dear Grandpa has died. 

Friday: We tune an organ where the organist tells us the pastor hates the organ and says it's junk and too loud.  We find this stunning; it's by far the nicest organ in that area of the state.  Friday afternoon we tuned the organ rescheduled from Thursday afternoon.  We make calls to cancel choir rehearsals back home, since we'll need to leave Wisconsin and drive across three states next Wednesday for Grandpa's funeral.

Saturday: We dig out of about 6 inches of snow which fell overnight Friday night. Praise band was practicing in the sanctuary when we arrived to tune the organ.  Things were sorted out amicably, though, and tuning proceeded.  Saturday afternoon we arrive at our second tuning of the day to find the heat off in the building.  We can't tune, but spend some time repairing dead notes.We then high-tail it out of there in advance of blizzard warnings and arrive safely at Base #2, my parents' house.

Sunday: We awake to some 8-10 inches of heavy snow over a thin sheet of ice. This marks the third storm we've dealt with on this trip. Mad Musician spends the morning digging us out; church is cancelled.  For the afternoon, we head out on county roads in high winds to a small-town church.  Spend the time mostly making repairs.  Car is idling badly, then actually dying when foot is off accelerator.  Seems fine when we drive it to a Sunday evening family gathering.  When we're ready to go back to my parents' house, though, Mad Musician smells raw gas and finds a severe fuel leak.  Fuel line is cut or burst or broken.  Snow or ice damage, maybe.  We leave car at relatives house and have someone run us home to my parents' house. 

Stay tuned.  We've got two more days of tuning, and then a road trip to the lower Midwest.  At the rate we're encountering changes in plans and minor disasters, I don't think I'd be suprised if monkeys actually did fly out of my butt.

Christmas Village with My Mom.

"I need a church for my village. Except I want it to be a Lutheran-looking one."

"Don't worry, Mom, I don't think they make mega-church style buildings for the little lighted Christmas villages."

"Well . . . some of the ones look very Presbyterian."

 

Elephant's Child's Christmas List

Bath and Body Works 'Japanese Cherry Blossom' stuff.

New dish drainer.

Four matching laundry baskets, so that they all stack together properly.

Books of Jeremy Clarkson's Sunday Times columns.

Solid color long sleeved v-neck tee shirts. 

Liquor gift set.

Good coffee.

Small accent lamp for by front door.

NON-nonstick 9x13 pans. Plain aluminium.

Spa supplies and products.

Brand name good-smelling fabric softener. 

Mad Musician's Christmas List.

Brown crew socks, cotton, causual or athetic style.  Not dress socks.

Jeans or cords for casual wear, boot cut or straight, regular fit, waist 35 or 36, length 34.

Beer.  Or rum, brandy, cognac, sherry or vodka.

Jeans for work, regular fit, waist 35-36, length 34.

V-neck sweaters in greens, blues, greys or warm neutrals, size large-tall.

Flourescent lights for the garage.

Summer sausage.

White v-neck tee shirts, size L.

Books: on Mercedes repair or history.  History of Triumph, MG or Jaguar.  On road rallying.

 

 

 

 

Sparkle Kitty's Christmas List

The Legend of Mistletoe and the Christmas Kittens.  It's on Barnes and Noble's kids' Christmas books table, and is about a cat who is green with red paws and a candy-cane striped tail. 

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.  Barnes and Noble also carries, in their children's section, a stuffed kitty that matches the one in the book.

American Girl's Ginger Pet and Craft set.

(Are you spotting a theme yet?  Maybe a feline theme?)

Klutz craft books.

Simple patterns and/or instruction books for beginning sewing projects.  (We have a good sewing machine for her already.) 

She is ready for and is showing some interest in things like weaving, friendship bracelets, crotcheting, maybe even knitting.   If there's such a thing as a small table or lap loom that can use plain worsted yarn, that would be a great gift. She does have a

Monopoly, which we don't have yet and I think she's ready for.

She loves making things, but almost never can you get her to follow directions exactly.  So, raw materials are a better idea than things that have all the pieces pre-cut or pre-made that you must put together in a certain way.

Anything cat or kitty related.  Kitty clothes or accessories.  Toys. Games.  Pictures.

Chapter books.

Non-fiction kids' books, like those by Eyewitness or DK.

 

 

Christmas is Getting, not Giving.

I don't like it when the pietists try to take my Christmas away.   I heard a run of it on the local radio station this week.  

The lady's heart was in the right place.  A preschool teacher, she was describing how she works so hard with the children to teach them that Christmas is about giving, not about getting.  She told of how the children served a Christmas Tea to their parents at the school, and how none of the children were allowed to eat or drink anything until all the parents had been served.

I felt so badly for those little kids.  Their teacher missed the entire point of Christmas.

Christmas is about getting.  Christmas is about receiving, joyfully, in full measure, filled up, pounded down, and overflowing, with an abundance that we can never hope to begin to repay.

There's nothing wrong with that.  It is ok to receive gifts.   It's not sinful to be excited about getting gifts.  Christmas is gospel - it is the free gift of God himself made flesh, humiliated by becoming a human child solely so that he could be brutally beaten and crucified thirty-three years later.

He did that.   For you.

And we do well to simply receive that gift.  

We do poorly when we teach our children that it is wrong to be excited about getting.   In the joy of receiving without merit or qualification we find we may also give to others with joy and without merit on their part.  

But first comes the gospel - the receiving.  The getting. 

The part about us giving to others? That is a good work.  Good works apart from faith in Christ are trash. And faith in Christ comes through the hearing of the Word - receiving the Word, hearing the gospel. 

Always, the gospel, the getting, the receiving comes first.

So you pietists, those of you who poo-poo the getting and receiving part of Christmas and prefer to wax eloquent about how you only care about giving gifts for Christmas, and how you are teaching your precious children to not care about getting some new thing for Christmas morning, please stay out of my Christmas.  

I will receive my gifts with joy and delight, reminded by them of the One True Gift, undeserved, received in my mouth on Christmas morning - the Christ Child, God incarnate, blood poured and body bruised, died and risen.

For me.  For you.