"Because of our traditions, we've kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything... how to eat, how to sleep, even, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl... This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I'll tell you - I don't know. But it's a tradition... Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do."
Two days after Thanksgiving, in between basketball practices, the tree crew arrived. Matt and Ryan were hard at work out of doors where November took a deep breath before winter and permitted farmers time to finish harvest, or apply fertilizer, or rebuild terraces and cut brush, and encouraged those with Christmas spirit to hang greens and lights before the calendar turned. Those of a more prosaic and tidy nature postponed these more ethereal tasks for the mundane physicality of leaf raking and winterizing.
No matter. On all counts, the pursuit of these enterprises aligns neatly with at least one definition of 'tradition', be it "convention", or "custom", "upbringing" or "practice". As Tevye proclaims with great solemnity, "Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do."
The year 2017 has been an echo chamber with terms like "unprecedented" and phrases like "this has never happened before" ringing off the walls of the public sphere.Whether or not there truly is a first time for everything, it is comforting to come to the Advent season and march the well trod path of Scripture toward the Holy Child in the manger.
"The stockings were hung by the chimney with care..."
Is there a more well worn, but never old, tradition than hanging out stockings? I bought Blake his stocking before our first Christmas: a standard issue model of synthetic red and white fuzz, it is man-sized, the relevant characteristic as far as Blake is concerned. Mine, stitched with glass beads and sequins, was created long long ago by some friend of my grandmother's; three tiny red white and blue bells hang from the sole, possibly designed to warn Santa if one were to sneak a peek before Christmas Eve. As it turns out, my mom also gave her granddaughters cute embroidered stockings when they were little. This allowed me to retire the felt sock I'd made when Lee was a baby...but just for a little while as I pulled out the L and last E of the name and recycled it with a new B and N for Ben a few Christmases later.
It wouldn't be Christmas without someone mentioning Kenzie's BIG stocking and Ben's tiny one...
I love the stockings....they bring back happy memories of Christmas Eves past...the nights we would visit Grandma Nelson's house where the kids would bounce on the mountain of winter wear on Grandma's bed and the aunts and uncles and cousins would eat cheese and crackers and cookies and candy in the kitchen. There would be pop for the kids and an open bottle of Maneschewitz wine on the counter....something I hadn't seen since I washed communion glasses as my duty during confirmation class in Orland Park....Grandma's house was overheated from all the family inside; a plume of steam escaped each time someone went in or out her front door. On those Christmas Eves, we would ride back home through the starry night to the sound of Iowa high school Christmas choirs on KMA...the Westboro version of the heavenly host.
By then, the hour was late, but there was still one task to do after the kids were in bed: while Blake managed to eat just one more Christmas cookie and drink a glass of milk (Santa's ), I'd lay out each stocking atop the bags of goodies Santa had picked out for each family member. The house was as quiet as Silent Night and putting out the little presents was a labor of love, the dark a fitting prelude for the joy that would come in the morning....
Tradition! Means cookies! In anticipation, we throw the kitchen drawers open wide in search of the cookie cutters and stretch the definition of Christmas to the nth degree in order to include our favorite shapes. Of course there are Santas to dress in red and white and angels in gold and leaping brown reindeer to munch when one or more legs break off in the frosting. There are bells in every hue and stars in every size and Christmas trees to trim with chocolate chips and an avalanche of sprinkles. The old tin cutters from my mom and granny include the ever popular Christmas moon...the "poinsettia" that looks more like a sunflower...and a great big leaf I have dubbed the holly while placing three red hots for the berries. I am fairly certain we have expanded the repertoire of Christmas cookies with the Christmas dinosaur...and why not? There is, after all, a big pink thunder lizard on our tree.....
We decorate. We bake.
We celebrate....
....and we worship...
Tradition brings us to the Christ Child's manger bed as shepherds, as part of the angelic host, as wise men from the east and the innkeeper with no room.
Sometimes Mary and Joseph have worn long underwear with chickens roosting overhead and sheep crunching hay.
And sometimes Mary and Joseph are shepherds themselves over a very lively live Nativity.
Being a part of the Christmas story indoors or out; hearing the words of Luke echo through the church as the piano plays and bells chime is part of our Christmas tradition. Grandma Millie created many of the costumes from drapes and sheets, scarves and scraps. Now her great grand children carry the shepherds' staffs and sing in the children's programs during Advent.
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
The January sun is still on weekend time, yawning its way over the eastern horizon this Saturday morning; its wake up call is worth a picture from the pasture on 3rd street. I'm enroute to the HyVee for chicken broth, onions, and frozen green beans. It's an early tip time for the 4th grade girls in Fairfax, but the recipe for Meatball Soup tells me to "combine all ingredients in slow cooker," so there's just enough time to fill the crockpot, give it a quick stir, grab coffee and head south.
Like the old Army saw goes, weekend basketball tournaments involve a lot of "hurry up and wait." With one kid playing in the morning and the other kid playing in the afternoon, Lee and Ryan, Gabe and Abbie are in the Fairfax gym for the long haul. Frito pies and hot dogs, Gatorade and M&Ms take care of the physical needs, but Abbie has only brought one book. Midway through her brother's games, she finishes it..shuts the cover.....and starts over again. Blake and I dine upon hot dogs and Frito pies, so the Meatball Soup is still simmering, untouched, and filling our house with a comforting and inviting aroma. Just in time for the back door to open upon a new, yet old, crowd of visitors: some strangers, but others making a kind of homecoming, a pilgrimage of sorts, coming back to a place with memories, familiar, yet changed. It is the kind of visit I understand in my heart and bones, a need to pass the stories on, to knit the generations together, to hold on to the past with laughter and cell phone pictures and the universal love of little kids for rocking chairs.
Sooner, not later, our family will take that same kind of walk. Through rooms echoing with the noise of holidays, birthdays, games, and music that only we can hear, full of familiar objects rooted in time, not just space. We will commit those places to our hearts, into the realm of used to be, of photographs, of happy memory.
Christmas is back...like Groundhog Day....at our church this Sunday. The Bethlehem backdrop, the manger and stable, and the little kids stacked three rows deep in the front pews, costumed as stars and shepherds....all gathered this last week of January because we don't want to let a perfectly good Christmas program go to waste because it was icy one Advent Sunday. A full house at church too, with extended families present to laugh and clap for their children and grandchildren..maybe there's something to be said for midwinter Christmas programs as a change of pace and a reminder that Jesus' season is year 'round.
What better illustration, what better way to send the congregation off with celebration in their hearts, than to witness the baptism of one these kids. What a blessing to see our Lizzie smiling at the pastor who has known her from birth, joking with him in the baptistry, professing her faith before us all. "I baptize you, my sister", says Glenn and Lizzie smiles even bigger and the church fills with gladsome applause before we pray and disperse to eat and celebrate. It is such a week: of private joy and tears, of public emotion and celebration, of the endings and beginnings that are the very kernel of the human condition.
Smell that?
Oh no, well, I guess you can't....you're reading a blog post and not listening for the buzzer to go off because the combined aromas of cinnamon and oven are drifting into the living room. .....
....and sure enough! There it is!
I have never attempted to tally the number of loaves of apple bread I have baked, the number of apples I have peeled to make those loaves, nor the number of said loaves I have taken to carry in dinners at our church.
Sometimes I think my fruit of the Spirit is peeling.....
But there are four more, ready to be bread...or dessert....or something to pop in the kids' mouths because they simply cannot wait their turn in line.....
As I stood at the counter this evening, counting the apples out six by six, (because a half dozen nice apples, peeled and cut in chunks, is almost always close enough to the four cups required by the recipe), I thought of our Saviour breaking bread, giving thanks, and passing the pieces to his disciples. I ponder the marvel of a loaf of bread....something that is ONE, but made to be shared with MANY, else why would there be not one, but two miracles performed by Jesus involving a multitude and a multiplying of bread.
Apple bread crumbles like crazy... So made to be morsels for many.
So much companionship over the table...so many of my very favorite recipes have been shared by this church family!
"Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house; When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Isaiah 58:7
Tomorrow we will gather together to eat again...
To feed all who come to our open door.
We will break bread with Communion and fellowship with a meal.
There will be plenty and no one will leave empty.
I end this with a little piece my uncle wrote many years ago for a family cookbook. It strikes me as so right in expressing the open table and generous hearts and hands I see around me....
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