Category Archives: Christmas

Christmas Card

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I once gave someone I loved a copy of Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost.

I am not sure she read it, but I know she did not appreciate it because she told me–

you sent me a book when you should have sent a card!

I am not a card gal. I wrote Fierce Angels as a Christmas card, Just Words was a wedding gift and Just was a PSA.

I used to tell friends I did not do Christmas cards because ours would be crazy weird. Really depressing.

But then I believe as humans our lives are all marred by grief and pain. It is this very reason we need the wee child in the manger.

He came to save us from ourselves.

Today I got a Christmas card from a precious friend. We know each other only because both of us have lost daughters and grieve for them.

Her friendship is treasure to me. The gift of Magi.

Hi, I am the Narrator…

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Hi, I am the narrator. Elea was annoyed with me for napping on the clock so she is giving me extra assignments. Typical.

She wants me to discuss nature versus nurture.. Claims the subject is too close to home for her. Says I am the professional and she is the amateur so, yeah, show her how it’s done…

Team Nature argues for the biological expediency of our genetic code. Nature says, basically we are all just a sequence of predetermined impulses and urges and we are what we are–Darwinian productions, all water and code.

Team Nurture says, no! Humans are more than a sum of our chemical parts. Love matters. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, all that…

Why the flippy intro?

Well, H and C have rather wantonly stirred their genetic material in the petri dish of human determinism and Elea says I have to give you–sparse and gentle readers, a crash course on the odds.

Or whatever…

The Narrator Naps

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Hey. Wake up. You know you came highly recommended and you need to do your job (bozo).

N (sleepily). Huh? Did you just call me Bozo?!

Yes. I did (albeit sotto voce). You have decent hearing.

N. Light sleeper.

Whatever, you are on the clock sista. Where did those two knuckleheads go?

Last I saw them, they were headed for Miss Havisham’s.

Miss Havisham’s? I did not write a character named Havisham. That was Dickens. You know, Great Expectations?

N. yeah, I know. That is my nickname for the extenuated older female relative that they are traveling to scam cash from.

Um, how exactly?

Well a basic combo–Honey Bunch will shop her impending delivery of a child, Cowboy will back her up with some well-played humility and yes ma’ams and both will suggest that if Miss H can’t spare the ducats they could sleep on the futon.

She has a futon?

Oh, yeah, it is buried under 20 years of laundry and a bag of high-end dog food.

How can you sleep through all of that trudging/scheming/prevaricating?

N shrugs. I am a professional. Seen it all.

Incidentally it is Christmas

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Honey is big with child and the child in question belongs to her baby daddy whom she calls “hubby” even though their common law arrangement would generally favor boyfriend over husband.

The narrator refers to him as “Cowboy” although he is more of a car or truck boy, no cows in sight.

It is winter which means that Hubby is wearing jeans with his wifebeater T-shirt and Honey is wearing a faux fur hunting cap, flaps pulled down.

They are traipsing through snow and the beagle puppy in Cowboy’s arms whimpers and squirms in the cold.

They have run out of gas and it is dusk. Cowboy is scanning the darker corners of a parking lot for an early model car with easy gas tank entry. They need to “borrow” a couple of gallons to get home.

The fading light, the young impoverished couple trudging toward shelter evoke the memories of a sacred crèche until one is able to discern the nature of their quest and the utter absence of either a donkey or a sacred city.

No. This is a different. One cannot see Joseph in a muscle T siphoning gas from a beat up chevy cavalier.

Petty larceny on the road to Bethlehem? Only if it is Pennsylvania.

Honey B

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I say all this about shoes and burgers because I wish she had a Clarence.

Don’t get me wrong. The girl ain’t no George Bailey. She is more of a pain in the badunkadunk, but that is the point.

Now, from a safe-ish distance I watch her chew people up and spit them out and I can’t help thinking of the pre-k teacher I never met in person who told me that Honey Bunch seemed to be focused mostly on the snacks, less on playing well with others and eye contact.

Sounds like Honey B.

Clarence, where are you for a girl like Honey? What would you tell her about the missed opportunities? Broken relationships? Bite marks on the hands that fed her?

George Bailey needed to see how important his life was to others. Honey needs to see that all the friends, family and kind strangers she has kicked to the curb were the angels.

Poor Clarence. If Honey’s favorite word for “mom” is b!+ch, what’s she gonna call you?

Today I saw her trash a kind woman who was the victim of abuse.

And I was ashamed. Ashamed, angry distraught.

I thought, honey, I know a piece of you is still that scared angry little girl, lost in your own skin.

But there ain’t no excuse whatsoever for that kinda cruel.

Put your big ol’ pants on
Woman up
And face the cold hard fact
Of you.

December 3

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Imaging a group of shepherds, young, poor, smelling a bit gamey.

They are discussing something in a rushed, exhilarated way

S1: so it was night and things were quiet and then there was a….

S2: no, no, no…it was night and things were quiet and then…then there was a

S3: an explosion!

S4, s1, s2: yeah!!! An explosion!

S5: freaky man!

S2: yeah…and then there was a…

S1: an angel!!!!

Tomorrow–the chick flick version:-)

December 2

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I am stealing this conversation from my daughter.

She was at a youth camp and she overheard a conversation among some boys about her age. It went something like this:

B1: so then the car hit the…and there was an explosion….

B2: no, no, no, no…then there was an…explosion!!!!!

Overlapping with the other 2 boys–

B3, B4, etc…
No!
No!
No!
Then there was an….
Explosion.

End of part one.

December 1

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Yesterday was the first day of advent and I am catching up.

When I was in China I remember the lights. Many little (delicious) restaurants adorned their awnings with Christmas lights. These lights, like the ones that adorned the outdoor dance floors or the western-style clubs were festive but unconnected to Christmas.

And there were tons of Christmas cards, hundreds of images of Santa Claus. The imagery of a de-Jesused December holiday coexisted benignly with a government anxious to attract foreign money and commerce.

Without our mad rush for slankets and computerized ear warmers, where would China be?

But that story? The strange one about the God-king’s infant son born in a barn?

Never heard of it.