early christmas morn

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.  It was taken with my iPhone rather than with a good quality camera, because a good quality camera does not offer the convenience of an iPhone.  Or fit in my back pocket.  And also, since it was around 3:00am on Christmas morn, it’s probably a good thing that it isn’t too clear.

Christmas Eve day dawned foggy and cold.  I awoke before the darkness lifted though, as I was in charge of the family lunch and the house was a mess from the previous day’s baking with my mom, sister, and husband.  The kitchen was a nightmare, with pans piled on every surface!

I cooked and cleaned and washed and laundered and set the table, and before long everyone arrived, laden with goodies.  We sat and ate and talked and laughed and ate and drank some more.  The lunch stretched into the dinner hour.  Noticing the lateness and marveling at how quickly time passes, we put a stop to all the fun and festivities and prepared ourselves for church. On Christmas Eve we always go to church.

And, oh how beautiful it was!  The brass band blew away on their trombones, their tubas and their horns.  The one hundred person choir performed O Holy Night and Handel’s Messiah, and it truly felt as though the angels of heaven descended on earth with their tidings of great joy.  My spine was tingling and my hair stood on end, from the beauty of it all.

After church we hurried home and changed into comfortable clothing.  It was time to make our rounds to the Christmas Eve parties already in session.  We didn’t linger long for we wanted to be at the party where traditional carols and carolers would be.  And so we went to my friend’s beautiful estate high up in the wooded hills.  The food was amazing and in abundance.  The company awesome!  Even Santa paid a visit, handing out bonbons to the wide-eyed children.  There we stayed caroling and listening to visiting carolers, eating, socializing, and telling stories until 4:30 Christmas morning.

The kids who had been playing with the other 20 or so children, fell asleep the moment we put them in the car.  And we did too, just as soon as we brushed our teeth and tumbled in bed, 15 minutes later.

my darling babies on Christmas Day

Christmas Day was quiet.  We got up around noon, opened our presents, and had our breakfast.  We read, watched movies and took long naps.  The skies were beautiful and blue, sunshine streaming brightly, but we just ventured out for a little bit as the wind was quick and sharp.  At night we read in front of the fire and fell asleep in a pile on the bed, the kids tucked in between us.

And so today, this second day of Christmas we celebrated some more, and tomorrow and the next we will too.  The presents that most children would receive on just one day are spread out until the twelfth night (January 5th), the eve of Epiphany.  On the 6th, on that Three King’s Day, we will have a special cake, wearing silver and gold (foil) crowns, searching in the richness of the cake for the King’s ring.

Then the season will conclude.  Our hearts will be lighter, our spirits richer, our bodies probably fatter.  But who cares?  Lent isn’t too far off.

full moon (but not last night's)

The moon was full last night, and the wind so strong it broke the clouds apart and scattered them across the sky.  Husband was gone to one of his soccer matches, and I was alone with my little darlings who were running crazily upstairs and downstairs playing hide-and-seek, by the light of amber colored lamps.

Hide-and-seek was a favorite childhood game for us as children.  As I gathered my darlings around the Advent wreath and switched from lamps to candles, I told them the story of how I had gotten lost during a game of hide-and-seek I had been playing with my cousins one summer at my Tanti Marie’s place in the village.

Tanti Marie had been gone to tend to her large vegetable and flower garden across the dirt road from her house that morning, leaving all the cousins in the charge of the oldest, who couldn’t possibly have been more than fourteen.  This cousin was in love with Luca, the neighbor boy (we called him Luca Buca), and she had no interest in minding half a dozen kids.  And so we made our way across the road, through the narrow alley between the gardens and down to the river.

Now we were not allowed at the river by ourselves.  Although shallow and narrow, the waters were fast moving and the man made bridge, usually a thick tree trunk the village men had placed there, could roll and trap someone underneath.  But we didn’t understand these warnings because we were children and words such as these meant nothing to us.  So Tanti Marie scared us with the threat of being kidnapped by the band of Gypsies who camped down the river, where the village ended and the wild forests took over.

We had seen the gypsy women before with their colorful kerchiefs and embroidered aprons dangling gold coins.  How fascinating they were!  Some had mouths filled with gold teeth!  They came through the village, knocking at the courtyard gates, asking if there was some work that needed to be done.  We wanted to stare at them just as openly as they were staring at us.  Yet Tanti Marie would have none of that.  They were after fair-skinned children, they would put us in their sacks, carry us to their camp and make us their slaves.  We didn’t know what slaves were exactly, but we didn’t want to find out.

As we started playing, I forgot about the warning, and ventured far off along the banks, in search of the perfect sized cluster of bushes where I could hide.  I hid and waited.  And waited.  And waited. But no one came to look for me.  And other than the chirping of the birds, the air was silent.  Suddenly I became fearful.  I had no idea where I was or how to get back.  There were no houses or gardens around.  Only trees, some so low their branches almost touching the water.

I got myself into such a state of panic, that I just sat and cried.  Suppose the Gypsies came.  Or suppose the wild bears came out of the woods in search for fish.  And what if it got dark, and no one would come looking for me?  What would I eat and where would I sleep?  I don’t know how much later it was that a Gypsy woman came into the clearing with her metal tub filled with wash.  She saw me crying and stopped, setting her wash down and slowly coming to me.

She knew who I was, and where my Tanti Marie lived, and took me there promptly.  And Tanti Marie, despite her love and her tenderness, felt she had to teach the other kids a lesson about obedience.  She asked that my cousin and I go and pick out a switch from one of the trees in the courtyard.  With tears streaming down her face, she asked that we hold our palms out, lashing across each ten times.

As I tucked my son in, he asked if I had learned to be obedient that day.  He knows just as I did and still do, how difficult obedience is.  And I admitted to him that the experience taught me to equate obedience with fear.  It wasn’t until years later that I learned to equate it with responsibility.

“The whole concept of God taking on human shape, and all the ritual and liturgy around that, had simply never made any sense to me.  Because it was so simple.  For people with bodies, important things like love had to be embodied.  That’s all.  God had to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never, in a trillion years, understand about love.” (Lauren Winner)

The Advent season is upon us and this is my favorite time of the year.  I am big on rituals and festivals, sharing and expressing my love of my family and friends, and of music and books that speak to my heart.  Perhaps because I have been a child in a different culture and experienced the magic of the season there, I have not fallen prey to the consumerism aspect of what Christmas is in the States.  Having purchased my gifts weeks in advance, I avoid the false cheer of crowded malls, and rude, impatient shoppers.

I focus inward instead.  What greatness am I willing to allow be born within me during this time?  As we prepare the Advent table with its silken blue cover, the color of Mary’s cloak, and light the candles of the Advent wreath, I hold my children near me, and read stories of Christmas and sing the old fashioned carols my grandmother taught us as children.

And I tell them stories of my childhood, sledding down the hills with my other four siblings in the stillness of a starry night, going caroling to the houses of family and friends where we were eagerly awaited with warm drinks and tables heaped with food, spending whole days at cousins’ houses where the parents cut the goose and the pig and made pates and sausages, while the kids had merry snowball fights.  Oh and then there was the anticipated arrival of Saint Nicholas.  Not Saint Nicholas aka Santa Claus, but Saint Nicholas of Smyrna himself.

On the eve of every 5th of December, we shined our shoes and placed them in frosted windows.  Sometime during the frigid, glittery night the dear Saint would come and leave behind an orange, a golden walnut, a little cookie, a few candies, and a little treasure.  And always besides all the goodies, was the prettiest silver switch, a reminder for us to behave ourselves.  My children love Saint Nicholas day, and we use the example of the switch as an opportunity to discuss the areas that need strengthening and growing in the coming year.

Although I am a woman of faith, I feel uncomfortable wearing it on my sleeve (because it looks self-righteous and arrogant on me, perhaps?), but have to ask, what greatness are you allowing to be born within you, and transform you to the highest possible best you can be?