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Category: holidays

Tale of Tears

Tale of Tears

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Speaking of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I watched it last night. It was the perfect way to end Boxing Day and our two-day celebration at my sister Ellen’s.


Every time I watch the movie (and I watch it almost every year), I’m glad I did. Not many movies hold up to multiple viewings, and the fact that this one does proves its depth of feeling and detail.

I woke up this morning thinking about George Bailey’s righteous indignation (“this rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this town”), of the tender scene between George and his mother (played by the actress Beulah Bondi, who was Stewart’s mother on screen five different times) and of Uncle Billy’s animals (the pet crow was actually a pet raven named Jimmy, which Capra used in every film he made starting with “You Can’t Take it With You” in 1938). 

I learned these factoids this morning, and they make me marvel … but it was the beautiful and steady build-up of details last night that left me … as usual when I watch this movie, in tears …
Appreciation

Appreciation

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Once again the days have passed, the splendid ones and the trying ones. Once again we’ve come back to this point, which is for me, and for many, the great pause. Christmas Eve. Christmas Day. Soon to be followed by New Year’s Day and the delicious week in between. Once again I’ll re-run this blog post, one I wrote in 2011. Merry Christmas!


12/24/11

Our old house has seen better days. The siding is dented, the walkway is cracked, the yard is muddy and tracked with Copper’s paw prints. Inside is one of the fullest and most aromatic trees we’ve ever chopped down. Cards line the mantel, the fridge is so full it takes ten minutes to find the cream cheese. Which is to say we are as ready as we will ever be. The family is gathering. I need to make one more trip to the grocery store.

This morning I thought about a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, one I hope we’ll have time to watch in the next few days. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart has just learned he faces bank fraud and prison, and as he comes home beside himself with worry, he grabs the knob of the banister in his old house — and it comes off in his hand. He is exasperated at this; it seems to represent his failures and shortcomings.

By the end of the movie, after he’s been visited by an angel, after his family and friends have rallied around him in an unprecedented way, after he’s had a chance to see what the world would have been like without him — he grabs the banister knob again. And once again, it comes off in his hand. But this time, he kisses it. The house is still cold and drafty and in need of repair. But it has been sanctified by friendship and love and solidarity.

Christmas doesn’t take away our problems. But it counters them with joy. It reminds us to appreciate the humble, familiar things that surround us every day, and to draw strength from the people we love. And surely there is a bit of the miraculous in that.

Photo: Flow TV

Bouncing Back

Bouncing Back

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It was dark 15 minutes ago, at 7:30 a.m. Now, at 7:57, a wan winter light is finally seeping through the window blinds. But this is fine. I’ll take it. Because from here on, we’re getting lighter.

Reaching the Winter Solstice is like touching the bottom of the pool in 10-feet water. Slight scary and other-worldly—but also buoyant. Touch the bottom firmly enough and you will bounce back, all the way to the surface, where life is how it’s supposed to be.

For me, it’s supposed to be summer. This doesn’t mean I want to live in a place of eternal sunshine. But it does mean that normalcy is shorts, t-shirts and long evenings. Strangely enough, we may just have some of this today, as the temperature hits a freakish 65.

It may almost feel like Summer Solstice. But the early darkness will give it away.

Holiday Time

Holiday Time

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By December 20 we are deep into Christmas territory. These are days shaped before I had the knowledge to shape them. Days that lasted years when I was a young girl—and that never seemed long enough when I was a young mother.

Now they vanish quickly like the other days. Another work day, check. Another run to the store, to the mall, to the post office. Check, check, check.

How do we get back to the slow times?

Holidays offer promise. They can be fluid and what we make of them. They aren’t bound by the rules of typical time passage. I am holding out hope for them—as I do every year.

Wrap On

Wrap On

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The wrapping station has moved downstairs this year. No more bending over a bed or spreading the paper on the floor. I’ve (mostly) cleared the table behind the couch and will wrap at waist height with a Christmas-tree view.

So far, only a few gifts done … but looking forward to more soon.

Every year I remind myself that the days before Christmas are the best, that as much as I try to enjoy the week between, there’s often an anti-climax about it that requires pushing through.

This requires a two-fold approach: enjoy this time as much as possible … and the days to follow, also.

Hmmm … sounds familiar.

Lighting Our Way

Lighting Our Way

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Last night, Copper and I took a walk after work. I slipped on my reflective vest and we trotted off into the dark evening. It was chilly but not frigid, and Christmas lights made our way much brighter than it would have been otherwise.

Each year I need these lights even more, need their candles in the darkness, their collective fist shaken at the void.

I have my favorites—the classic white-bulbed colonial with the graceful fir swag, the spotlit front door with the fruit-studded wreath, the house with lights around the entire perimeter of the backyard. That house also has a star perched high on its chimney.

I wonder if the people who live there ask themselves, “Do we really want to do this again?” It must be a lot of work, tacking up hundreds of feet of lights. But every year they do it anyway. I hope they know that their lights, their effort, lifts the heart of this pilgrim, and, I imagine, the hearts of others, too.

(Pictured above: outdoor lights of a different sort.) 

We Brake for Trees

We Brake for Trees

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I can’t remember how we discovered Snicker’s Gap, the Christmas tree farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I do know that Claire (pictured below with her puppy Bella; her beau, Tomas; and their older doggie, Reese) was in middle school. So it’s been a few years.

And in those few years, a few other people have caught on that trekking out to the country and felling your own fragrant Douglas fir provides more seasonal cheer than driving to the shopping center at the corner and choosing a tree from the parking lot. We did that often, too, when the children were younger. But Snicker’s Gap has been the tradition for 15 years now.

What’s become abundantly clear, especially since yesterday, is that many others have made the same calculation. We waited 30 minutes to get into the place. The lesson for next year: Leave earlier, arrive later … or find a nice tree in a lot somewhere.

Shopping Season

Shopping Season

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What’s the saying, when the going gets tough, the tough go … shopping?

As Americans hit the malls and big box stores, as they weed through websites in search of cyber deals, I think about the pastime of shopping, what it can do for you and what it can’t.

My mother liked to shop. If she had time to kill she would while it away in a store or two.

This is not the way I unwind. Put me in a darkened movie theater or downstairs in the basement with an episode of “The Crown.” For me, shopping is a means to an end.

But the shopping season is upon us, so today I’ll do my bit for the economy. Not with joy or gladness but with a sense of duty.

Gratitude on Ice

Gratitude on Ice

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It’s one of the coldest Thanksgivings on record here, with wind chills in the teens and temperatures that won’t make it out of the 30s. A perfect day to stay inside, chop onions, peel potatoes and baste the turkey, all in a steamy kitchen.

Though it’s tempting to put heat at the top of the list of things I’m most grateful for today, I’m going to push it aside for friends and family. We haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving here for a couple of years, Suzanne and Appolinaire having stepped in as the hosts with the most lately, but today the clan (minus Celia, who’s in Seattle) is gathering here, and by late afternoon there will be a full house.

It has lately been made clear to me (as if I didn’t already know it), just how important family and friends are. Not just for celebrations like today’s, but for the dreary mornings and frantic evenings of life. So on a day for giving thanks, my heart is full of love for the people who make life worth living for me. Not just today but every day.

Sweet Start

Sweet Start

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There was dancing last night to ring in the new year, and so many desserts that I was forced to take a bite of each one. Woke up this morning to a bright new year and a temperature of six (6)!

Weather like this requires a roaring fire, a bit of the bubbly … and dancing, all of which were in ample supply at last night’s gathering.

Add some sparkle and glitz … and it’s not a bad way to enter the new year.