Category Archives: holidays

Family, holidays, Kids, Stories, Uncategorized

Christmas Fun

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Today’s post comes from  Crystalbay.

I always look for inexpensive gifts for all my grand kids, then buy 12 of them. Last year, I found little attachments for iPhones to enhance the quality of pix. Only $10 each. This year, I found something called, “Flashing Disco Ball”. This amazed me on video tape. It’s a golf ball sized ball with LED lights inside it and has two sets of helicopter-like rotor blades. It senses any object within six inches, so just putting your hand or your foot within this distance, the ball rises over and over and over.

I thought I’d try using it to make sure that it even worked as advertised, then turned it on. Boy, did it ever work. The damn thing flew all over the room every time my palm approached it!! YEAH!! A great gift!! Then, things turned ugly as I decided to bring it in for a landing. I moved all over the room trying to retrieve it but each effort just sent it off in a different direction. It’d gone up and wouldn’t come down. I tried sneaking up on it with the intention of grabbing it. I did this with reservations, thinking either I’d break the rotors, or the rotors would slice my fingers. Again, it darted away.

By this time, I was desperate to bring it home, so I grabbed a broom to just whack it. It sensed the broom and made a beeline to the other corner of the room. Eventually, it just disappeared on the floor. I’ve yet to find it. It later occurred to me that if I’d just refrained from trying to catch it and it had no more resistance to something 6″ away from it, it would’ve come down on its own!

Now then, I plan to charge up all 12 (minus the one I can’t find) so that all of them can fill Steve’s living room at one time. Just try to imagine that!

What are some of your more memorable holiday gifts?

Family, History, holidays, Stories

A Simple Misunderstanding

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I have a dear friend at work who has the most delightfully quirky elderly relatives.  They are, by and large, aunts and uncles in their 80’s and 90’s, all who speak in thick, German-Hungarian accents with very local idioms.  My friend, I will call her Donna, can relate their conversations with great accuracy, even down to the accent. She recently had two priceless conversations.

The first was with an uncle who told her “Sweetie, I have to tell you, I’m not doing so good”.  He apparently had some sort of “spell” and totaled his car after running into three others after going into reverse when he meant to go forward.  He didn’t go to the doctor since he had just been there two weeks before.  He then told Donna “Don’t be surprised if you get a call one of these days to tell you that I woke up dead”.  ” Waking up dead” happens a lot out here.  It is a one of my favorite phrases.

The other conversation was equally serious. Donna sent out a short, humorous Christmas letter this year letting people know that her oldest son and his wife had another child. Donna put photos of the two grandchildren on the page, and ended her letter with “I never thought I would be sleeping with a grandpa!” referring, of course to her husband.

Donna got a phone call from a very elderly aunt and uncle, both in their 90’s, after she sent out the letter.

Her aunt told her “We got that Christmas letter, then. That was pretty dirty. You shouldn’t talk like that. We prayed for you.”

Donna realized that her aunt and uncle missed entirely the news that she and her husband were grandparents, and thought she was bragging about sexual exploits. She patiently told them about the new grandchildren and that she was referring to her husband in the last sentence.  She told them, “You know,  I’m not one of them runaround girls “,  another lovely local phrase.  Her uncle then said:

“That is pretty funny!  Oh!! You!!” accompanied by a quick, sharp, wave of the hand to emphasize the silliness and loving exasperation he felt.   As Donna always says, you can’t make this stuff up.

When have you been misunderstood?

 

 

 

holidays, Music, Songs, Uncategorized

Planning the Pageant

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I always look forward to the MPR airing of the Festival of Nine Lessons  Carols from Kings College in Cambridge, England.   I have been in the chapel at Kings on a couple of occasions and sat in the choir stalls next the choir during an Evensong service.  This Sunday, our church is having its second annual performance of  Lessons and Carols, and I am really excited because I get to plan it.

Our bell choir director asked me to finalize the program for the service again this year.  She is more interested in the music than the lessons, and you have to take both into consideration when you plan the service.  The hymns and musical numbers need to reflect the meaning of the lessons. For example, the first lesson is about the Adam and Eve story, and the music that follows needs to reflect the Fall.  Hence, the musical number is will be that of the choir singing Lost in the Night, a mournful and serious (but kind of hopeful) Finnish Christmas carol.  The Kings service always starts out with a lone boy soprano singing the first verse, acapella, of Once in Royal David’s City.  We don’t have any boy sopranos, but we have a female high school Junior who has a pure and high voice and who is willing to give it a try.  Local people from other denominations will read the lessons, and our bell choir and vocal choir will perform songs.

Our church was founded by German immigrants, and is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  I am of German ancestry, but most of my relatives were members of the  Missouri Synod Lutheran Church.  For reasons too complicated to go into now, I was raised in a Norwegian Lutheran Church.  I adore Scandinavian hymns, and planning our Lessons and Carols gave me complete control over the hymns that the congregation will sing at the service.  I made a point of finding as many appropriate Scandinavian hymns as I could. These people need to be educated.

We will sing Swedish,  Norwegian, and Danish Christmas carols, ones I  loved as a child, but none of which we sing regularly in our church. Some include:

Bright and Glorious is the Sky (In Danish, De Jlig Er Den Himmel Bla)

Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers (In Swedish Haf Trones Lamp Fardig)

Savior of the Nations, Come (A German hymn but popular in Norway)

I suppose this is sort of self-serving, but it is fun, and no one has complained yet.

What pageantry have you been a part of?  What are your  favorite carols?

 

 

Family, Food, holidays, Stories

Cookie Exchange

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My mother wasn’t a big cook and except for the holidays, she wasn’t much of a baker either. On the holidays however she pulled out all the stops. We made many kinds of cookies and then they were used as gifts for our teachers, the minister, the postman and relatives. This is a tradition that I’ve continued in my life. I do nice trays for my milkman, my hardware store and my library in addition to having cookies all through the season.  If you invite me over during December, I show up with a plate of assorted goodies.

About 10 years ago my boss asked me if I knew anything about cookie exchanges as she thought it would be a nice “morale booster” at the office. I didn’t know a thing but thanks to the magic of the internet I because knowledgeable over night! Despite having 15 kinds of cookies on my front porch (it’s cold out there) I now organize the office cookie exchange every year.

Then this year a good friend of mine decided to do a cookie exchange and asked if I were interested. I enjoy her parties and know a lot of the same people she knows so I said “Sure.”  So now I have two cookies exchanges on the calendar despite a porchful of holiday treats.

There were quite a few of us today. We drew numbers, went around the room and told the “story” of our cookies and then split into groups and took 2 dozen cookies in each of three rounds.  A little different protocol than the classical exchange but pretty good for the big number of folks who were there.   We also had beverages and other appetizers to keep us going.  The stories were hilarious and the company fabulous.

Guess I’m taking cookies to the office tomorrow.

What holiday cookie would you take to a cookie exchange?

Food, gardening, holidays, Nature, Uncategorized

Garden Surprises

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We didn’t grow butternut squash this year. I was delighted  when our neighbor offered us a butternut from her garden.  She thought she planted cucumbers, and was horrified and deeply disappointed when they turned out to be squash. Our neighbor is German-Russian, and the German-Russians here are mad for raw cucumbers in the summer.  The squash were truly a tragedy for her.   We certainly enjoyed the squash at Thanksgiving.

A Lutheran pastor friend of mine  operates a market garden with his family.  They planted what they thought was a very long row of onions, but what turned out to be leeks.  Lots of leeks. They were not familiar with leeks, and live in the only area of ND where there were sufficient rains this summer to insure a vigorous leek crop.  They were at a loss to know what to do with them. He asked me too late to take any off his hands.  They didn’t sell.  I love leeks, and was sad.

We haven’t had too many garden surprises or any other surprises for a while.  I hope I plant spinach this summer and don’t get gourds.  I hope I am surprised by mild weather and sufficient rain.

 

When have you been surprised?

 

 

Family, holidays, Stories, The Baboon Congress, work

Bah…..

44 Comments

This is hard to write, but I’m thinking my troop of baboon friends can help me out.

I am not a Christian, but I love Christmas. I can massage almost every Christmas tradition into something meaningful for my Yuletide/Solstice beliefs.  I love the feeling of hope and redemption that comes with the season.  I love having a tree filled with lights and ornaments, I love making gifts for my friends and loved ones.  I love baking holiday cookies, I love cookie exchanges.  I love getting cards and reading people’s newsletters.  I love holiday movies (although I will admit I like older stuff better than current films) and I love holiday music.

For decades I have listened to my holiday CDs at the office during December. For many years I played them using my computer but these days I have a little teeny radio/CD player.  I tend to the more traditional music; Mommy Kissing Santa Clause and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer aren’t in my collection.

This past week I began to bring in my CDs and (as always) I said to all the folks who sit around me that if the music bothered them to let me know. In fact, just this morning, two of the folks who sit on either side of me chimed in on what to play next.  So it was shocking to me when my boss emailed me in the early afternoon that someone had come to her and complained about the music.

I’m broken hearted. Not because I have to use headphones or ear buds to listen to my music.  I’m broken hearted because someone who sits nears me, someone who has worked besides me for YEARS (we haven’t changed seating arrangements in about 4 years) thought it was better to complain to our boss than to stop by my cube and say “Hey, I’m having a bunch of calls today, can you turn your Christmas stuff down?” or “I’m having a really stressful day and your music is distracting – do you have ear buds?”  It’s completely disheartening to think that anybody who knows me even remotely would be able to imagine me getting pissed off about something like that.

I feel like a balloon that’s been stuck with a sharp pin – deflated and completely spiritless. I know it’s just one person, but I’m having trouble shaking my doldrums.  Nonny is coming next week and I have a serious list but right now I don’t feel like doing anything but sitting here feeling sorry for myself. I’m not even in the mood to go downstairs and make hot chocolate.

How would you cheer up an unwilling Scrooge?

Business, holidays

Cyber Irony

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I think we’ve pretty much determined that most of us aren’t big shoppers, so I’m assuming that if we didn’t give Black Friday much due then we would have the same attitude about Cyber Monday. At least there were fewer commercials.

Imagine my surprise to come home from work on Cyber Monday to find my mailbox FILLED with glossy catalogs. Every couple of years I fill out the No Junk Mail registry but clearly this is a task that needs doing a little more often.  Of all these catalogs, I have only purchased from two of them and one of those was over two years ago.  I haven’t even HEARD of a couple of these companies.  It was particularly disturbing to get TWO catalogs from one company on the same day.

The irony of getting a box full of catalogs on the day we should all be shopping online isn’t lost on me and it’s a little frightening to think of all these catalogs filling up our landfills at this time of year.

The chances that I might glance through some of these before they hit the recycling? Maybe 50%.  Chances that I will order anything because I got these catalogs?  Zero.

What irony is striking you this week?

Art, Family, Fifty Words, Food, holidays, Kids

Cookie Central

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It’s Cookie Central at our house this week. We started with the fussy ones: Frosted Sugar and Shortbread Cookie Sticks – to get them out of the way.  They require frosting and sprinkles so take more time than others.  Twelve more kinds to go.  I even got YA onboard today!

When do you start your holiday baking (if you indulge)?

Baboon Blog Redux, Family, holidays, Nature, Stories

Black Friday / Tree Friday

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While America now knows the Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, for the last couple of decades at our house it’s been Tree Friday. For many years this was the day that Child and I headed out to chop down a tree for the holidays.  These days I head down to Bachmans (they have a 25% off fresh trees on Black Friday and they are really close by).

In fact, it was 7 years ago on Tree Friday that I got my nickname from Jacque. Dale had written that day a great bit about Black Friday and used some Shakespearean language to get us going.  My bit was:

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the north and Hansen Tree Farm is the sun.

Open up, fair Tree Farm and await the crowds
Who, already stuffed and sleepy from yesterday
Swing saws and other implements of destruction.

Deeds, Good and Otherwise

Jacque came up with Verily Sherrilee that day.

So what about you? Taking part in Black Friday shopping?  Online purchasing?  Just taking it easy?

Family, Food, holidays, The Baboon Congress

Grateful

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It seems to me that Thanksgiving has more expectations attached to it than any other day of the year. I like to read advice columns in the morning (makes me feel like I have a good handle on things); for a couple of weeks the columns have been filled with angst about Thanksgiving.

Grandma doesn’t want to host dinner and two of the daughters are throwing a fit because it will spoil the day. Uncle Joey always drinks too much and everyone is worried about whether he will spoil the day.  Cousin Mary has a new boyfriend who is a vegetarian and everyone is worried his dietary needs will spoil the day.  Grandpa won’t come because he has a new puppy that isn’t welcome and it will spoil the day.  For so many people Thanksgiving seems to be encased in amber; it must be exactly as it’s always been and it can’t be spoiled.

As a person who moved away from home at an early age, got divorced and then became a single parent, I have never had a chance to cement a list of requirements to make Thanksgiving Day overly static. There is however, one thing that I have been in charge of for many years – the thankful project. I’ve done a paper Mayflower w/ little scrolls that people wrote on, I’ve done a large cut out turkey whose feathers became lists of what we’ve thankful for, I’ve done a large tree with leaves for the thankful thoughts.  This year I’m doing a big poster board covered with square of different papers and have a handful of markers for everybody to write with.  I love doing the thankful project as it really brings it home to me where my focus should be, rather than on whether the potatoes are the way I like them.

One of the things that I’ve written down for the last couple of years on the thankful project is “baboons” (which I then have to explain).  I am beyond grateful that I’ve found a community of folks who are thoughtful, caring, sincere, well-read, funny… all these things and more.  I’m thankful for this past year with you all on the Trail and looking forward to the year coming up.

No question today – just heartfelt thanks for all of you!