My childhood holiday memories include the usual delights: Our annual Christmas picture and letter, the cookie tree laden with treats, holly corsages for our teachers, special songs during worship, bubble lights on the tree. It was my mother-in-law Angie who helped me delve a bit deeper into the consideration of this scene. Every year I would watch her go into a type of production mode over the making of Scandinavian treats. It didn’t seem very joyful to me. One year I asked her about the making of lefse, a type of potato bread made on a large griddle. She confided in me that she had been drilled in the art of lefse making by her mother-in-law. She recalled that she would wake up tired on lefse-making days. Her teacher was a martinet and a perfectionist. It seemed like a cruel rite of initiation.
My mind flashed back to my “rosy” childhood memories. I saw my father developing his own film and printing the family Christmas cards. I saw my mother so tired by evening that she could scarcely hold her head up by suppertime. And deep inside, I knew that the quiet joy of Christmas could be stolen by the production of Christmas.
A friend once told me that to prepare for God to be born at Christmas, one should become as a manger: Empty, still and ready. Empty, still and ready for God to call us out of the long winter nights and the darkness of our own thoughts to remember once again who we are and why we are here. Nelson Mandela said it well, “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”
I’m planning to use those charming invitations this year. I am going to invite a few friends over for soup and bread and conversation. The bubble lights on my tree this year will be the dear friends who have opened their hearts to me and who have listened to my stories. Our mother Earth may be blanketed in snow, but our kinship knows no season.
Thank you, Angie. You were a blessing.
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