Jiaozi

Christmas in review

Tackling the year in review is too big a task, so I'm going to settle for looking back over the past three weeks.

Here is this year's Christmas tree. It's new, and it's artificial. Our old artificial tree finally bit the dust last year. I love artificial trees. I don't care what anyone says. You take it out of the box, put three or four pieces of trunk together, plug it in, and you're ready to decorate. No struggle to get it straight, no winding endless strings of lights, no sweeping up dead needles.

This tree happens to rotate when you hit a switch. That's not a feature I was looking for, but it came with the tree I liked. It turned out to be rather charming. Also, I could wrap the garlands around the tree by just standing there while the tree rotated and did all the work.

I do bring in evergreen boughs so we still get the aroma of fresh-cut greens. I arrange them around the nativity set with a string of white lights. This year after I unpacked all the boxes of decorations, the nativity set was unaccounted for. Big A was sure he'd brought in all the boxes, but I knew that couldn't be true. This gave me an excuse to run around all day saying things like "Have you found Jesus yet?" This probably amused no one but me, but I enjoyed the joke immensely. Jesus did turn up, by the way.

You know what else I love? Those battery-powered candles. They're made of wax now and even flicker. How can you not be charmed by that? No smoke, just warm glow.

We went to church on Christmas Eve -- my first Christmas Eve service in more than 20 years, and the kids' first ever. (I finally found a nice Lutheran church with a social conscience and a policy of welcoming all sorts of people.) And one of the hymns was "In the Bleak Midwinter," which has been my favorite song this holiday season, so that was a nice surprise.

Tomorrow the tree and decorations will be packed up again, and we will slowly get back into the routine of school and work. 2011 has not been a bad year for us, but it has been terrible for many people I care about, so I am hoping 2012 brings better fortunes for all. Happy New Year!

Making it (or not)

Yeah, I'm still trying to make things for Christmas. So far I've gotten...two presents done. It's not looking good.

There's never enough time to do the things I really want to do for Christmas.

On the "win" side, I have gotten to a couple of Christmas shows and went on a Christmas-y outing into the city, I bought a new artificial tree (shut up, I like them) and got it all decorated, and I have most of the big gifts purchased.

On the "fail" side, I haven't made all the stuff I'd envisioned, haven't planned an outing for the kids, and haven't baked anything. I'm glad the older two girls are in high school, because I've got bupkus for teacher gifts. (Can I use Yiddish in a discussion about Christmas gifts? I think Jesus would be okay with it.)

I wish I had a week to just sit at the sewing machine or ply my crochet hook. After a while, a person just has to make something of substance, you know? I spend most of my time processing words and ideas, which is such an abstract occupation. If I'm not writing and editing for work, I'm helping kids with their report on Thomas Aquinas or Macbeth. I want to be able to point at something and say that I made it, that something now exists that did not exist before, and it's because of me. (Cooking doesn't count for me, because (1) I don't really enjoy it and (2) food doesn't stick around for long.)

Um, anyway. That's enough white whine for now.