Boxing Day and After

 Christmas was enjoyable if uneventful--at least until late on Boxing Day.

Our younger son arrived in the early evening of the 23rd and we had dinner at home. Christmas Eve morning, he and Jill and I had breakfast at a lovely little cafe nearby. (If you're local to Ridley Township and/or Ridley Park, I heartily recommend The Brickhaus on East Hinckley Ave.) Just before noon, elder son and daughter-in-law arrived and we opened presents and stockings and then had a late lunch/early dinner at Iron Hill in Media. On our return, elder son and daughter-in-law left to journey to her parents in Maryland. (We'll see them again on Tuesday on their return trip to New England.)

So, Christmas Day was quiet three-person affair. Jill baked soda bread for breakfast and roasted a turkey breast, and tried out a recipe for a pumpkin cobbler. (Not being a fan of anything pumpkin, I have no personal report on that, but she and son suggest the spicing needs a tweak.) Son watched a good deal of football.

Sunday morning, Boxing Day, we generally slept late, I made our usual Sunday breakfast of rolls and bacon and then our son began packing for his return to New York around noon. Here's where things got eventful. About dinner time, we discovered the toilet was clogged. I worked on it most of the evening and got it to a point where it was usable, if we were careful. I called our usual emergency plumber, but they had no one available until this morning. I checked on it a couple of times overnight, to make sure it wasn't getting worse. The plumber arrived about 8:20 and by 8:45 everything was back to normal.

I'm just back from a quick grocery run and trying to catch up with on-line stuff.

"Happy Christmas to All..."

"...and to all a Good Night!"...as Clement Clark Moore wrote. (And, yes, he did write "Happy Christmas," not "Merry....")



This is my chance to talk about how I feel about Christmas. I'm with Charles Dickens, who put these words into the mouth of Scrooge's nephew, Fred: "I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

There is practically no version of A Christmas Carol that I cannot stand to watch at least once, although I have a favorite--the 1984 TV version starring George C. Scott, which I consider closest to both the spirit and the letter of Dickens' work. I will confess a soft spot for The Muppet Christmas Carol, in part because my kids love it so (despite their being college graduates now).

So I will close this post with the immortal words of Tiny Tim:

God bless us, everyone!

Christmas Comes Just Once a Year

 ...and I thank the Lord for that! Particularly this year, as circumstances seem to be re-arranging our plans on an almost daily basis. 

Travel plans for our kids seem to be in constant flux, even now, just three days before Christmas Eve, mostly due to pandemic concerns. Plans for what to do when they get here are also unresolved as of right now. We'd planned to go out for dinner Christmas Eve, but at least one child is wary of the lack of mandated precautions in our area. We'd considered going to see a movie on Christmas Day (most likely West Side Story), but the same wariness seems to have scotched that idea as well.

Still, Christmas remains one of my favorite holidays--probably my favorite--despite all the planning and re-planning required.

Christmas Prep

 When do you "put up" Christmas? When our kids were younger, we always made sure it was done before they were off from school, usually the weekend before their last day. We would put up the tree and we would decorate it as a family. Sometimes, I would get the outside lights done before that.

Since we became empty nesters, it seems to be getting later and later, with the only requirement being that it be ready before one or both of them came to spend time over the holidays. Confession: Last year, with the pandemic and neither of them traveling, we did nothing at all, not even a tree.

This year, I suggested we put the tree up this coming weekend, especially since we have acquired a much smaller one than usual and it will take up less space. My wife wants to wait until next week. I have acquiesced.

Of course, when I was growing up, nothing happened until Christmas Eve itself...but that's another story.

Lighting It Up

 Jill and I tried to watch the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center on NBC last night--but didn't actually make it to the moment when they threw the switch.

The show began locally at 7 PM, with an hour that was obviously prepared for local stations and the network's owned-and-operated stations to run and sell advertising for. Then at 8, they changed over to the nationally broadcast show on the network. We were disappointed that the tree lighting didn't occur by 8, but when the network show began, we figured that they would do it by 9. But, no....the network show ran until 10 and tree didn't finally light until a few minutes before that hour. 

Clearly, like the Thanksgiving parade last week, what was once a local kick-off to the holiday season, scheduled so that New Yorkers could see it and even bring their kids to see a little Christmas wonder in person, is now just a performance put on for the convenience of the TV network that has bought the broadcast rights. As we watched, we realized that the "audience" that was closest to the stage (and thus the tree) were invited guests (perhaps employees of Rock Center and NBC and their families), because they were all armed with the same light sticks and wearing identical Santa hats.

I pity any parent who went to Rock Center with children to see this: First of all, they could never have gotten close enough to really see anything...and they would have been standing in the cold and dark for three hours (actually longer--they probably would have needed to be there by mid-afternoon to get within even two blocks of the site) until well after the kids' bedtime.

Bah, humbug!

Mid-Holiday Doldrums

 Even back in my childhood, I always found this time between Christmas and New Year's to be problematic. All the excitement of Christmas had usually dissipated by the morning of the 27th and the weather was not often conducive to being outside. (Staten Island rarely got snow before January, so sledding was out, but it was too cold to be out biking or something like that.) As a kid, New Year's Eve was nothing special, really...my parents would get me up around 11:30 so I could watch the ball drop on TV, but our big celebration was dinner the next day with my father's family.

As an adult, it got better--I would attend New Year's Eve parties, for instance. But December 26 to 31 often felt like a long period of nothing much.

And, of course, in this time of pandemic restrictions, it's even worse. There's so little to do in normal circumstances that the letdown from Christmas just feels that much worse. Don't get me wrong--I'm not depressed, just feeling a bit at loose-ends. Jill and I both have lots of time on our hands...and nothing we can do with it. Normally, we might plan a night out--a movie and/or dinner--but that's not possible now.

I'm hoping it will all make next year's celebration that much brighter.

Peace On Earth

 I don't think anything else needs to be said:

Box It Up

 Happy Boxing Day (or, if you prefer, the Feast of Stephen, as it is called in the carol "Good King Wenceslas"). Here's a little history on the name:

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest attestations from Britain in the 1830s, defining it as "the first weekday after Christmas day, observed as a holiday on which postmen, errand boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas box".

The term "Christmas box" dates back to the 17th century, and among other things meant:

A present or gratuity given at Christmas: in Great Britain, usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement is becoming at Christmas.

It is also the "second day of Christmas" (Christmas itself being the first), so give your true love a pair of turtledoves, if you are so inclined.

 

Merry Christmas

 I wasn't sure what to post for the holiday, so I decided to get a little traditional, from the Gospel According to Luke:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.  (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

 “Glory to God in the highest heaven
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

 

Christmas Prep 2

 You would think that the pandemic would have given us so much extra time that we'd be ahead of schedule on Christmas...and you'd be wrong. We are at least a week behind our normal timing on shopping and shipping. Packages to our children will not be shipped until later today...which means they more than likely will not arrive in time to be opened on Christmas morning.

Of course, we had things beside the pandemic to deal with. The death of Jill's mother and the planning to attend her funeral took up most of a week that normally would have been our wrapping and packaging time. Then, of course, the snowstorm last week meant getting out to the shipping places was delayed as well.

So, we're working on the idea that anything that arrives by Epiphany on January 6 is on time, since the 12 days of Christmas are the period between December 25 and that date.

Christmas Prep

 Did you decorate for Christmas this year? We didn't--except for putting up lights outside.

We disposed of our artificial tree after last season (it was on its last legs) and had intended to order a new one for this year. But as the holidays approached, we realized that we would undoubtedly have no visitors over Christmas--the pandemic restrictions and their own requirements meant that our sons and their significant others would not be joining us.

Getting a new tree. putting it up and decorating it seemed like an awful lot of fuss for just the two of us. It would have meant clearing space in the living room (always more of a hassle than it seems), hauling the decorations out of the attic--and then undoing it all just a couple of weeks later. So, we decided to skip it this year...and maybe do it up even bigger and better next year, as a celebration of getting out of pandemic.

How has your Christmas planning changed?

Lights Up!

 Christmas has arrived in the O'Neill front yard: