Preparing for Christmas

This weekend, we begin the season of Advent, four weeks of preparing for Christmas. One of my past parish ministries was writing a reflection for our weekly church bulletin. Advent reflections could be my most challenging because the Pastor encouraged us to focus on preparing for Christmas, instead of celebrating Christmas throughout December. “Advent is a season,” he would say.

This was a reflection I wrote at the beginning of Advent one year that resonates with me this year:

“As we begin this time of preparation for the birth of Jesus our savior, I am so very aware of the suffering throughout the world, in our cities and neighborhoods, and in our homes. Peace seems elusive; despair seems pervasive.

“The Advent readings, though, remind us that we are a people of hope from a tradition of hope. The light of Jesus overcomes the darkness of despair.

“Advent is highlighted in the Church year as a time of waiting which is something that many of us are not particularly good at doing. We have become a people of instant communication, instant replay and instant gratification. We have fast food, EZ pass and express lanes. We tend to want what we want when we want it. For many, this is most true during the month of December.

“This Advent, I invite you to try something different. I invite you to deliberately try to slow down and experience the season of Advent. I invite you to put off celebrating Christmas until the end of Advent and to use this time as an opportunity to become stronger in our faith, more rooted in our traditions.

“Here are some suggestions for the weeks ahead:

• Spend a few minutes every day with the Sunday or daily scripture readings.
• Save and don’t open the Christmas cards you receive during Advent. Open a few on Christmas Eve and then a few more during each evening during the Christmas season.
• If you decorate the outside of your house, do not turn the lights on until Christmas Eve.
• Create an Advent wreath for your home—three purple candles and one pink.
• If you put up your Nativity set during Advent, wait until Christmas Eve to place the baby Jesus figure in the scene.
• Simplify your gift-giving practice. Give more handmade and symbolic gifts.”

I remember writing this piece while I was drinking my morning coffee from my Christmas mug, so very aware that I am one of those people who feels uncomfortable with the not-yet, who likes to jump ahead. I am reminded of the words of Teilhard de Chardin.

I was supposed to be in Europe right now, but I decided against going because of covid. So, the thirteen days I had planned to be away are now free. I will use this time for baking, knitting gifts and writing Christmas cards. I will try to be more patient. I will set up my Advent wreath and ponder light and hope.

How will you celebrate the season of Advent?

Don’t judge

“Don’t judge, Aunt Madeline,” my teenaged niece said to me. Although I don’t remember what her mother and I had been talking about or my exact response to her, I can imagine I claimed—perhaps somewhat defensively—that I was not judging. I do recall that my niece rolled her eyes in that knowing ways teens can have.

I admit that I can be judgmental, and even as I defended myself with my niece, I knew she was probably right.

This encounter was at least ten years ago, and her admonition has stayed with me and helped me to be more aware of when I am being judgmental.

Recently, I have found my niece’s phrase, Don’t judge, coming to my mind on a regular basis.

I am trying to honor my mother’s wishes about how she wants to live and die, and I feel judged by those who think I am not doing right by my mom. Don’t judge, I want to say to these well-intentioned people.

“Everyone has an opinion,” I said to a friend after hearing from yet another person offering suggestions about my mother’s situation.

The truth is that I agree that my mother’s situation is precarious, but she is ninety-four years old and she is not a threat to anyone. She wants to live and die in her own home—something I think most people can understand. Who wants to live in a nursing home? or to die in a hospital?

But sending elderly people to congregate settings has become such an accepted practice in our country that the idea of someone staying at home or living with family is considered unusual or even abnormal.

Yesterday, a home health worker told me I need to put my foot down and make my mother leave her home. “Stop harassing my daughter,” my mother said. “I am fine.” She knows what she wants.

I know how difficult it can be to take care of someone at home—I cared for my friend Jim at home when he had brain cancer. Everyday was a lesson in accepting the reality of our situation and letting go of expectations.

I felt judged then, too, by people who had lots of ideas of where I should take Jim for treatment and what kind of food I should be preparing for him and on and on.

I believe that people die the way they have lived. My mother has always been fiercely independent, and she has also always been suspicious of doctors, medicine and congregate settings. My dad, too, avoided doctors and when he had a major stroke, my mother did not call 911. Rather, we called hospice and kept my dad comfortable at home until he died three months later.

I have known several other people who died at home, including my friend Ted, and my neighbors Domenic, Margaret and Mary. A hundred years ago, most people died at home.

I am doing the best I can, so please don’t judge me.

Christmas memory

I am thinking of writing a memoir and bought Natalie Goldberg’s Old Friend from Far Away to help me with the process. One of the writing prompts was the history of nuts in your life, which brought back this memory:

The Christmas season officially began in our house the day my dad came home with bags of nuts and candy.

Every year, my dad went to buy nuts and candy at Eastern Market—a wholesale market area near downtown Detroit with large, semi-open sheds surrounded by small shops. My dad took me to the Market once—to buy meat from the butcher—and I remember it as being a noisy, gritty place.

My dad favored the Germack Pistachio Company, where he would buy pistachios and an assortment of other nuts and candies.

Seeing him walk through the door with his arms full of large, brown paper bags signaled Christmas was near. Each large bag was filled with smaller paper bags, each containing a different treat.  

The nonpareils and chocolate chunks were my favorite (and probably started my lifelong love affair with chocolate).

My mom brought out a large, wooden tray that was only used for Christmas nuts. It had small bins for the different kinds of nuts and a spot in the middle to hold the nutcracker and picks needed to dig out the nut meats. All the nuts my dad brought home needed to be shelled.

Our nutcrackers were not the fancy kind pictured in the story book of the Nutcracker; ours were unadorned v-shaped metal tools.

Some of the shells cracked easily and the nuts practically fell out; walnuts and peanuts were in this category. Others, though, were more difficult to crack, and I avoided those.

We each had our own way of cracking and eating nuts—cracking several nuts at a time and making a pile of the nutmeats or cracking and eating the nuts as we went along; I cracked and ate as I went along.

My brother used his front teeth to open his pistachios, which led to red fingers that would remain stained for days. I would open one pistachio with my teeth and then use the shell from that one to open the next.

My brothers and I mostly ate the pistachios, peanuts and walnuts, while my dad and the other adults who visited our home during the holidays ate the more exotic nuts (Brazils and filberts).

My dad walking in with the bags from Eastern Market was one of my favorite moments of the Christmas season, because it was a sign of how much my dad cared for us, of his thoughtfulness and generosity.

I moved back to Michigan almost seven years ago, and the first time I visited Eastern Market and saw the Germack Pistachio bags, I was transported back to this Christmas memory from my childhood. I gasped and said, “My dad used to buy our Christmas nuts and candy here!” And I smiled.

What is your history with nuts?

Giving thanks

For seven years, I was the director of an adult literacy program in suburban Philadelphia. Immigrants from many countries filled our English as a Second Language classes, but most of the students in our family literacy program were from South Korea.

As part of this program, we hosted an American Thanksgiving dinner each year. It was a way to introduce immigrants to this cultural holiday and teach them some of our customs, including the foods we traditionally eat on Thanksgiving. Our staff prepared most of the food, but students were given recipes for side dishes and invited to contribute if they wanted.

Invariably, a few of the students would bring dishes from their culture, and we would include the kimchi and rice in our Thanksgiving meal.

Our guests at the literacy council Thanksgiving dinners would gingerly try bites of turkey and cranberry sauce, and I loved watching them register the different tastes and textures. Food is an important part of any culture, and this dinner was a wonderful opportunity for people to try something new.

I wished my parents had attended such a class.

Growing up, we never had turkey for Thanksgiving; apparently turkeys were not available in Poland. We had ham or kielbasa or stuffed cabbage and a duck soup that I fear most Americans would not even try. Mashed potatoes were probably the only thing our Thanksgiving dinners had in common with the rest of America.

My mother did not care when I came home from school excited about traditional Thanksgiving dinners; she had never cooked a turkey and did not see the need for it.

Being thankful was what the holiday was about to her, and I could see her point. But I always felt a bit odd when kids talked about turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce—and I had nothing to contribute.

I have since come to understand that while we tend to think of one “traditional” American Thanksgiving dinner, the truth is that people in different regions of the country and from different ethnic backgrounds personalize Thanksgiving dinner. A simple Google search of “turkey stuffing” brings up hundreds of different recipes.

Merging cultures is part of the American tradition, and kimchi would have been as foreign to our Thanksgiving dinners growing up as the creamed onions I once had at a friend’s home in suburban Philadelphia or the Southern cornbread stuffing I was served in Virginia.

Recalling all those dinners this Thanksgiving made me think of the ways Americans can segregate ourselves into groups that reinforce our beliefs and allow us to stay in our comfort zones. We can tell ourselves that the Norman Rockwell portrait of a Thanksgiving dinner is the only true portrait, but that is just not true. Our country is made up of people from many different cultures and the blending of those cultures makes our country unique.

Honoring our heritage is important, but moving beyond our comfort zones makes life more interesting. Maybe it is time to try some kimchi.