The end of the year always gets me feeling philosophical. I could go on about this, but I think I’ll let Alfred, Lord Tennyson say it instead. He has a way with words.
Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
The Feast of the Holy Family is today. It’s a nice chance to think about families … big or small, biological or adopted, near or far away. Here are a few random ideas I had about how to honor the day. If I’m lucky, I’ll actually find the time to do a few of them.
1) Email a family member who lives far away … just to say hi.
2) For parents of young kids: put aside the dishes, the laundry, and the bills, and spend some time playing with the kids and their new Christmas toys. Depending on the toys, this may be a bigger sacrifice for some of us than for others (in my case, I’m getting off easy: Matchbox cars and the Thomas the Tank Engine are relatively interesting. I am SO glad Matthew didn’t get any Barney videos).
3) Say a prayer for a relative who is in any kind of pain: physical, financial, emotional, spiritual.
4) Pray with and for the family members who share your home. Keep praying together for nine days (a great novena to the Holy Family is here).
5) Think of three positive traits you have acquired from your parents … either through genetics, or their lived example. If you want to take it one step further, call and thank them in person (how cool would it be to get a phone call like that????)
Best-Behaved Boy at Christmas Eve Mass: Luke, who was awake throughout it all and just stared placidly at folks around him. Three months old and he already gets a gold star for good conduct!
Second Best-Behaved Boy at Christmas Eve Mass: Matthew, who colored with crayons on the music program and heroically resisted doodling on the pews.
Most Beautiful Christmas Creche: This one, at church. Wintry and magical. Matthew could not get enough of it.
Second-Most Beautiful Christmas Creche: this one, on top of our TV armoire. My horrid photography does not do it justice. It was a gift from Scott last year.
The Wise Men and camel were surprise gifts this year (thanks, Honey!) No, the looming Victorian Christmas doll in the background is not an intentional part of the scene. I just haven’t figured out where else to put her.
My Favorite Moment from Christmas Eve: Matthew relaxing in front of the fire with a book after dinner. I crept up behind him and snapped this photo, now one of my very favorites.
He’s a bookish boy after my own heart.
Best Christmas Hair: The Diego doll that Matthew got from his Aunt Amy, Uncle Tim, and cousins.
Diego talks if you press on his chest. Matthew does so with both hands and with great vigor, as if administering CPR.
The Christmas Gift That Was a Roaring Hit with Both Sets of Grandparents: the Shutterfly photo books of their grandsons. I designed them little by little, a half-hour here and a half-hour there, over a period of nearly a month. I’d like to make it sound like some heroic sacrifice of time and energy, but in fact, I think creating these things is the most fun you can legally have (The layouts! The backgrounds! The colors! The fact that even an artistically-impaired soul like myself can produce something that looks darn good!).
The Best Unexpected Moment: when Santa made an appearance at the end of the Children’s Mass. He sounded, in his voice and phrasing and diction, quite a lot like Father Francis. (Not implying anything; just saying.) He announced that he was going to pay homage to the Baby Jesus in the creche, and he did. One does not often see Santa genuflect. It was pretty magical.
It’s funny: the older I get, the more affection I have for St. Joseph. Not sure why that is, really. Maybe it’s because I’m a mom now, and I see — from the other side, the parents’ side — how beautiful it is for kids to have a strong father figure. Maybe it’s because Mary has become more real to me, and therefore, so has her husband. Whatever the reason, I have a growing spot in my heart for this quiet man who protected and raised a child that was not biologically his own.
That’s why I was pleased to come across this nice tribute to St. Joseph, written by James Martin. He’s the Jesuit who has written, among other books, the engaging My Life with the Saints. The article is worth a read, even on über-busy Christmas Eve. It just may make you look at your Nativity Set in a different light.
The neighborhood where we live is very festive. Many of our neighbors have Christmas lights lining their houses, white and colored bulbs that twinkle in the night. Huge inflatable holiday characters reign over the lawns, and reindeer made of white lights stand sentry by front doors. There are red bows on porch posts and huge colored ornaments in the bare branches of the trees.
And then there is our house. In our dark yard is a diminutive flag with a silkscreened snowman on it, which is utterly invisible by night, even with the porch light on. Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yes, the Halloween pumpkins, which are still on our front walk two months later. “We’re the lame house on the block,” my husband observed one evening, as we pulled into our driveway.
I’d like to use my newborn as an excuse for our lack of overt holiday spirit, but the fact is that we’ve never decorated the outside of our house. That snowman flag is an improvement on previous years. This is not for lack of Christmas cheer but for lack of, well, time. Decorating the inside of the house is my first priority. The outside … just never really gets done.
I realize here that I could easily slide into feelings of inadequacy and petty jealousy. That is a real danger when your neighbors’ homes look like floats from the Disneyland Electrical Parade and your home looks like the dwelling of Ebenezer Scrooge.
But actually, it occurred to me the other day that that’s entirely the wrong response. The fact is, my neighbors are giving me a gift. After all, when you decorate the outside of your house, you rarely see it yourself. It is really meant for others. If their visible Christmas cheer becomes obscured by my own insecurities, well, that’s a huge loss.
So I’m enjoying the lights and the reindeer and the bows and the inflatable Santa that descends into his inflatable chimney. Maybe one year, with a little more advance planning, my husband and I will return the gift and string up some lights. We even have the perfect lawn ornaments: a wooden Santa in a sleigh and eight wooden reindeer, which my dad and HIS dad painted in the 1950s and which are still in pristine condition. For years, they have been keeping a low profile up in the rafters of our garage. One of these Christmases, we’ll rescue them from obscurity and reintroduce them to the world. I look forward to that time.
And for today, I have one major goal on my To-Do list: Chuck the pumpkins.
If you like Christmas carols, remember this name: John Rutter.
And remember this title: The Angels’ Carol.
John Rutter is an English composer and conductor and, in my humble opinion, a genius. His original works and his arrangements of the classics (found on this album, among others) are drop-dead gorgeous. Believe me when I say that “The Angels’ Carol” is one of the prettiest songs I’ve ever heard. There’s something about this melody that is just … uplifting. It makes me happy. I know that’s not a particularly profound statement, but it’s the truth. Anything else is superfluous, really.
By the way, I recognize the angel in the second slide — he ( or she? How can one tell?) resides in Memorial Church at Stanford University. A familiar face! Nice.
A few years back, on a Sunday in December, I realized that my day was packed to the gills with plans. It was so full of plans, in fact, that the only Mass I could fit into my frenetic schedule was the 1:30 PM Spanish service. It was either that Mass or no Mass.
Here I must pause and share one little detail that is crucial to this narrative: I do not know Spanish.
But I went anyhow. (See, God? See how much I love You?) And as it turns out, God must have been up there smiling and thinking, “Ginny has no idea how GREAT this is going to be.” For the day was December 12, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
If you want to celebrate Our Lady of G, as I quickly learned, go to a Spanish Mass. It was, in word, fabulous. There was a procession to honor her, winding around the Mary grotto and into the church. There was a mariachi band dressed in white on the altar. “Viva la Virgen!” shouted the priest and various lectors. And, at the end of the service, parishioners crowded the altar, bearing small statues or framed images of Our Lady. They waited patiently for the priest to bless them before leaving, taking the icons back home.
Our Lady of Guadalupe has a huge following. There’s something about her that just grabs people. Maybe it’s the way she represents the marginalized, appearing to the disenfranchised Juan Diego rather than to the mighty bishop. Perhaps it’s because she is seen as a powerful advocate for the unborn (the black sash she wears is a traditional symbol of pregnancy). Maybe it’s the way she has become an icon of those who sacrifice themselves for the dignity of others; I think of how her image accompanied Cesar Chavez as he marched for the rights of farmworkers. She’s a Mary who feels particularly close to the people, all people. No matter how gritty or demeaned our lives may be, she is our champion. Not a one of us is outside the mantle of her love.
I think of a day I spent in San Francisco’s Mission District several years ago. It’s a neighborhood that is known for its Latino population and for its colorful, vivid murals. You can walk the streets and soak in these fabulous modern works of art, many of them dealing with themes of justice and peace and struggle. They are huge, these murals, stretching across entire buildings. There’s an alley, Balmy Alley, that is full of them, all painted helpfully at eye level.
And then, as you wander along the sidewalk, you happen to look up. Painted on the side of a building, way up high, is Our Lady of Guadalupe. And you realize that she has been there the whole time, and you didn’t even know it. She’s been there all along, watching over you, watching over everyone who walks the crowded streets and does their very best to make it, dignity intact, through another day.
Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. As the sisters taught me years ago, the I.C. was a part of God’s overall plan for humanity. Because Jesus grew inside Mary’s womb, she too needed to be sinless. As a result, God made sure that she herself was conceived without any mark of original sin.
Personally, I think early December is a good time for this particular feast day. In the midst of a season that is usually marked by frantic activity and the sense that there is just never enough time, it’s nice to pause and reflect on the immensity and gradual unfolding of God’s plan. God knew Mary would agree to become the mother of Christ long before she knew it herself.
This also seems like a fitting day for these lovely lines from Hildegarde of Bingen. They’re a beautiful, poetic hymn to Mary:
O branch,
God foresaw your flowering
On the first day of his creation.
You are the shining lily
You point before all creation
Where God fixes his gaze.
(translation by Barbara Newman)
The painting is L’Innocence, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Lovely, isn’t it? Somehow, it just seems to fit today’s feast.
I’m a sucker for Christmas carols: always have been, always will be. That said, I am a teensy bit picky about the kind of music I like. I’ll admit to having little patience with modern pop singers, who release seasonal albums that feature themselves on the cover, wearing some variation of a Santa suit and looking vaguely sexy. That just isn’t Christmas to me.
Christmas to me is Andy Williams. It’s Nat King Cole. It’s Bing Crosby. I love, love, LOVE these guys. Yes: I am officially the world’s youngest old fogey. But these albums just feel more heartfelt somehow, more about the music and less about the self-promotion. There’s the nostalgia factor, too. These songs are a part of Christmas Past for me. I hear them and I think of our living room and a Christmas tree strung with lights, huge primary-colored bulbs that got all scratched but still looked beautiful. And I am a kid again, lying on my stomach on the rust shag carpeting and coloring in a Christmas coloring book and basking in a season that was exciting and peaceful all at the same time.
Those were good days.
One carol that always takes me back is “Mary’s Boy Child” (called “Mary’s Little Boy Child” in some recordings). I loved it as a kid and I love it even more now that I have two little boy children of my own. It’s hard for me to name a carol that is more simple and more simply beautiful. Here it is, in a nice little video I found on YouTube and sung by the very great Harry Belafonte. I hope it takes you on a nice little nostalgia trip of your own.
I'm a formerly lapsed Catholic who likes to write about faith, real life, and how the two intersect. Oh, and I love Mary -- check out my book Mary and Me below!
