Joy to the World, Y'all.

The wigwam has been hit with a scourge of historic proportion. Todd got it first, annihilating the travel plans the Chief and I were on the verge of implementing. I was the second victim. From there we dropped by ones and twos until the Chief at last succumbed. So we've had a week of dreaded symptoms answered by tonics, sleep, despair, and misery.

I am better now, the only one who's completely better...which is good on one hand, because somebody can take care of the fallen...and bad on the other, because a whole Sunday spent in a convalescent home has real potential for sending you to a home of a different sort.

So I am escaping to here, and lacking any cohesive stream of inspiration, I think I'll just post disconnected thought-bites pertaining to Christmas.

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 I think we should petition the powers-that-be to ban those giant inflatables that pop up like boils on the night landscape this time of year, and collapse in big puddles of vinyl by the dawn's early light. I will not call them Christmas decorations. Classing them as decorations of any description would be too kind, and even though they appear with the lights and wreaths and garland characteristic of the season, whether they have anything in world to do with Christmas is clearly entirely optional. Take, for instance, the big yellow chicken in our neighbor's yard, located next to the Eiffel Tower right there where their garden had been located.

The next neighbors have a gigantic green helicopter with a slowly rotating propeller in their yard among numerous other inflatable things. Santa is in it, and I suppose it is meant to serve as gentle comfort against realistic worries the reindeer union may strike for better working conditions just when they are most needed....I don't know!  But it ruins their otherwise beautiful lawn!!!
 White lights, people! Colored lights, even! Candles! Wreaths!
Anything! Anything but those vinyl things!

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Christmas was entirely wonderful to me when I was a little girl.
I was analyzing the other day what made it so. The "Let's Make A Memory" enthusiasts would no-doubt be at a loss to find much. Mother "wrapped" all our gifts in brown paper grocery or lunch bags, taped them shut and scrawled the name of the recipient on it with a black magic marker. Maybe they had a bow stuck on top.
When we came down Christmas morning each child had his pile on one chair or spot on the couch. And Mother and Daddy had their spots too. We'd read the Christmas story, and maybe sing a few carols, alive with caged anticipation. And then we'd decide who would start... and we'd open gifts. I am sure they were modest gifts and certainly not numerous. I don't know that I can remember a single thing I ever got. But it was altogether wonderful, that much I know.

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One year, Mother bought a nativity scene. I think she got it at Glen's Fair Price.
Glen's Fair Price was a dusty, darkish shop in downtown Harrisonburg. Not the type of shop that will ever be a national chain, but the kind bursting with character, covered with dust, and crammed with second-hand stuff. I loved Glen's Fair Price.

The nativity scene had characters with slightly exaggerated poses and expressions, and they weren't fine porcelain, by any stretch, but when they were tucked inside that little stable and the lights were lit, I could sit  there entranced for long minutes, transported to another time and place by some artist's depiction of that first blessed Christmas.

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I think Christmas takes on a different aura when you find yourself in a position to be the one responsible for making memories for your own little people. At least, it did for me. The moms who create and implement all these beautiful and meaningful traditions to stock their children's memory banks full of haloed treasures, amaze and intimidate me. I bake special Christmas things, and two days later they are eaten, because I didn't quite get them to the freezer in time...and what else was there to eat anyway?

And what else do I do? Hmm I don't know. I do wrap their presents usually. Maybe only a day before Christmas... but they are wrapped. Not that it matters. It sure didn't matter to me.
I'm hoping a blanket of love and warmth will shroud their lack of concrete memories somehow....like maybe how wonderful it was when mom let them pack all those Christmas pecan tassies in their pre-Christmas school lunches.

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I love Christmas music. I do not get tired of it. I am not talking about secular Christmas music featuring Santa Claus....or Rudolf.....or grandma who met him and an untimely demise on Christmas eve. Or songs that were manufactured by recent artists to fill up the obligatory Christmas album. But I love the old songs. The ancient carols. The orchestra music. Handel's Glorious Messiah. Every year it is wonderful all over again.

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Some of those old songs have some phrases that bring me a lot of pleasure for a variety of reasons. Here's a sampling:

"E'en so here below, below,
Let steeple bells be swungen,
And "Io, io, io!"
By priest and people sungen."
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"The Master of the Inn refused
A more commodious Place;
Ungenerous Soul of Savage Mould,
And destitute of Grace."
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Bring the torch Jeanette Isabella!
Bring the torch and hurry and run!
He is born! Good folk of the village
Christ is born and Mary calls you
Ahh! Ahh! Beautiful is the mother!
Ahh! Ahh! Beautiful is the child!
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I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th'unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
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And I love the "Bohm" at the very end of  Carol of the Bells, which is a supremely enchanting song from the first note to the last.

Nobody writes songs like that anymore.

Joy to your world this Christmas! Stay well!  God bless us, every one!