Category Archives: 7 Keep Christmas

My FAVORITE of all holidays (and holy days), rich with symbolism and meaning. It is not only deeply spiritual, but full of meaning I get to publicly share during the season, my best witnessing days each year!

Only 16 Days to Go and I am Soooooo Behind!

2 Mi Familia, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

Oh, yikes…there is shopping and baking and out-of-town company coming and parties and the grandbebe photo-shoot for cards that will be sent at the last possible minute and-and-and….{deep sigh}, it will all come together, right?  I do love Christmas, my happiest holiday (holy day): singing it,  lighting it, adoring Him, celebrating Him and keeping it.  Keep Christmas!  I have spent 3 years now telling you why… 

~

The TWELVE embarrassing pictures of Christmas~past!

Aw~the ones that made the cut.  From Ross the boss, Mrs. Moss and all the little Landers.  1968

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The ones that didn’t make it.  For obvious reasons.

Nativity.

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Left:  I was an angel (both as a child and for this photo shoot) but my mom cut my wings out of the shot!  What the heck?  I see I must have been making THE pronouncement over Baby Jesus (aka little brother, Danny), as I seem to have everyone’s rapt attention.  The set was created using bathrobes and towels, a bassinet and my aunt’s old prom dress. 

Right:  Why on earth would my own mother cut me, the angel, out?!?  Joe is not playing air guitar, but rather looking “Josephly,”…I think.  Or perhaps, “shepherdly?”

Just 5 sweet children getting ready for bed the night before Christmas.

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Left: Well, the boys are taking a break, I see.  These were done on a Saturday night after our baths to prepare for Sunday morning.  Everyone was in good spirits, feeling fresh.  How much does Danny look like the little brother on “The Christmas Story??”

Right: We got the pooch in on this one, which, I guess, is why I got placed in the background.  Hmph.

We were Christmas Carolers.

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Scenario:  My mom used crayons to draw an outdoor backdrop on a white sheet.  She dragged an old storm window frame in from the garage and attached some drapes to it.  Then she used the red towel to cover a dresser and set a Biblical vingette as though some one was looking outside (from inside their cozy, warm and very spiritual home) at these little children sing.  This is WHY Photoshop was invented: to help creative photographers like my sweet mama.

BTW~these were AFTER church on a Sunday night, which followed church on Sunday morning, that had followed Sunday School before that.  I recall being veeeeeeery tired, at half past 10 p.m., it was sooooo flipping hot in our coats and hats inside the house and my mom just would not quit.

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Left: Though nearly ruined by water damage in some humid state or another, I feel this was “the one!”  I mean, I am obviously truly singing, Tami is smiling cute!  Tim is singing his head off, even though he had the little Carol book turned inside out, you can practically read the Bible (turned appropriately, I am certain, to Luke’s Gospel. chapter 2).  It was a good one.

Right:  Danny is crying and Tim is thinking about it.  Tammy and Joe can’t keep their eyes open, and I am in a preacher’s kid-after-Sunday daze.  Let us go to bed, already, mom!

And then there is this atrocity:

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Me, at 16, playing an 80-year old grandma in my mother’s church production, “The Littlest Package.”   Baby powder in my hair, a crocheted shawl about my shoulders.  Can’t understand at all why this didn’t make the family Christmas card?!?  (Is the girl in the left picture flipping me off?  Because she was my best friend at the time!)

I love you anyway, mamala!

17 Days until Christmas and the Magic Kingdom is Dressed in White

1 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

Winter has come to the Magic Kingdom.

Oh I miss the garden of spring, bright green and fairly juicy with surging life, growth visible almost hourly. 

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The garden of summer, strong, tall, spreading and proud established its rightful territory hosting parties for butterflies and bumblebees while birds swooped and circled overhead for entertainment. 

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Comes fall and the autumn colors dazzle and your head spins with the abundance and fruitfulness: ripe maturity and the reward of the work of your hands.  You  gather and enjoy as quickly as you can, more than you’d hoped or dreamed for, more than enough.  What will you do with the excess?  The garden, only months earlier bare soil, became a hypnotic haven overgrown with delicious joy and frolic, intoxicating verdancy, flourishing symbiosis and riotous vitality.

Winter.

Winter.  The winds have blown away the brown crispiness from branches no longer green in a purifying poof.  And just like that – bare, faded, stark and desolate woody shrubs etch their way across the landscape looking for all the world like death in this blustery cold.  I am forced inside where I stand at the window wondering why.  What has happened in the Magic Kingdom?

The snow covers it all.  The snow keeps falling and floating across the Magic garden Kingdom, and has settled decidedly upon each branch and every surface, carefully tucking itself around all shrubs and trees, blanketing the the 4′ x 4′ squares where vegetables once grew abundantly.  There is quiescent hush there now where once the sound of the spade dug deep into earth, the fountains bubbled exuberantly and night fires blazed; children laughed and ran around while little weeds were uprooted and branches were pruned and sugar snap peas were hungrily crunched upon right then and there in the verdant Kingdom.

Covering.

But the snow covers all now and despite my sadness at the loss of earlier, greener days,  the snow serves its true purpose hiding the ground, preventing the heat generated by the earth from escaping.  This blanket of crystal white inhibits the radiant life energy from abandoning the roots of the trees and bushes and plants and they are graced with warmth and protection (often 40-degrees warmer) in the dark, deep soil of winter, regardless of what happens in the visible.  Did you know roots have a life-pulse that continues through even the most frigid conditions?  When the branches above have been frozen in their tracks by sub-zero temperatures, the roots are active and ready to spring into action at any moment, growing and spreading further and deeper even during the resting phase of winter.  The snow covering is grace.  The snow is mercy.  The snow is a safeguard, a secure shelter for the deepest, most important, most delicate and valuable resources and treasures.

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The snow covers it all.  It unifies the the browns and grays and wheat-golds of the deciduous stand-bys.  For this season, this cold and sometimes hope-dwindling time of year, the snow creates a formal gown of beauty for ashes, of gladness for mourning and becomes a garment of praise instead of despair (Is. 61.3).  Sandy-the-Dog runs into the white, kicking up the flakes like dust and hundreds of birds fill the air in shock from where they’d been feasting on berries, but soon realize how harmless she  is and go back to stake their claim.  I laugh at the sight.  Life goes on.  In winter white.

He gives beauty for ashes
Strength for fear
Gladness for mourning
Peace for despair

When sorrow seems to surround you
When suffering hangs heavy over your head
Know that tomorrow brings
Wholeness and healing
God knows your need
Just believe what He said

He gives beauty for ashes
Strength for fear
Gladness for mourning
Peace for despair

Crystal Lewis, Beauty for Ashes

Hidden under a canopy of mercy on a melancholy winter’s day…Jeanie

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NOTE TO SELF:  Spring will come again.  My roots will be more established, stronger.  Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy…

pictured: The Magic Kingdom (aka my backyard) in September; and now.

18 Days until Christmas, but only 8 Days to VOTE for Altar in this Round!

7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

ALL DAVE WANTS FOR CHRISTMAS IS TO WIN THIS CONTEST!

From the publisher, www.wherethemapends.com:

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Greetings, fellow Anomalien.

The Phase 3 polls are open and taking votes now.I’ve decided to leave the polls open for 8 days this time. Hopefully that will give time for folks to get the forum figured out. In previous phases, people sometimes felt they didn’t have enough time and maybe weren’t able to cast their votes. Not this time!

The polls will remain open until midnight Eastern time on December 15. Tell your people! And be sure to get there yourself.

Eight entries remain in the main contest. One of them will be the next Marcher Lord Press book.   Come tell me which 3 should advance to the final round.

Last time, only one vote separated the final book that advanced and the first book that didn’t. Your vote counts!

Thank you for your participation in Marcher Lord Select!

Jeff

Today?  Is a day to wrap gifts and make menus and drink hot chocolate and read books.  You saw it here: eight remain and from this vote will come the final three. 

You may follow directions at www.daverhoades.com to become a registered voter (if you have voted before, you are already registered) and to find your way to download the final entries.  Then? 

VOTE!! 

Pretty please?  And Merry Christmas!

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VOTING:  Today through December 15, midnight ET

Christmas is only 19 Days Away!

1 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

“From my living room window as I write, I can look out across the broad front lawns of our farm like a lovely picture post card of wintry New England.  In my fireplace the good cedar logs are burning and crackling.  I just stopped to go into my gleaming kitchen to test the crumbly brown goodness of the toasted veal cutlets a la {?} in my oven.  Cook these slowly…”  Elizabeth Lane (as played by the versatile and provocative Barbara Stanwyck) sitting in her New York apartment (pretending to be on a farm in Connecticut) typing her column  for the American Housekeeping Magazine in the movie, “Christmas in Connecticut”

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No toasted veal cutlets warming in my oven here (I just had a slice of cold pizza for breakfast), but along with a rich cup of steaming-hot coffee I am enjoying a delicious, slow Sunday morning in the Colorado air where a light, dusty snow is falling softly like grace, covering the winter-scarred landscape with a sparkling beauty in  a gentle silence.  In a pallette of white alone, God manages to cause the somewhat lifeless winter look to awaken in splendor and reveal His mercy-covering nature to a fallen world.

Snow falls like grace and suddenly all things are new again. 

“God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding.  He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’  So that all men He has made may know His work, He stops every man from his labor.”  Job 37.5-7 NIV

image found on google: Rocky Mountain Reflections Photography, Inc.  by Andy Cook

21 Days ’til Christmas ~ Holidays are Joyful!

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

“The lights on my tree, I wish you could see, I wish it everyday.”

I grew up with very traditional Christmas music.  The 1960’s were when you could purchase an LP for $1.98 at the supermarket full of all the classic songs like “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” and “A Few of My Favorite Things”  by various artists including Johnny Mathis or The Ray Conniff Singers.  Occasionally you’d buy an album by a stand-out like Bing Crosby.  I still treasure the 2 Christmas records I have by him.

“Merry Christmas, Darling,” by the Carpenters was my first sort of non-traditional Christmas pop-song.  I’d hold my dad’s little transistor radio (which I’d snuck from his second dresser drawer) to my ear, and, at barely 11, sing along with Karen, trying with all my heart to understand her longing.

Through the years more and more Christmas music has been added to the songs I love.  Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers have produced some great stuff.  Lee Greenwood sings a couple that always pierce my heart.  The Partridge Family album still makes me laugh and I even enjoy a Motown Christmas.  Harry Connick Jr. is great for seasonal cheery tunes as well as some sacred and I do love the 90’s Mariah Carey album.  And let’s not forget that Amy Grant, is a Christmas-music genius.

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Looking Back

But this year, I am feeling very traditional again.  I am reaching back to music I grew up with, the songs my mom played on the Hi-Fi during my early days.  I am less about the pop side of Christmas and anything that has been produced since 1970 and on, and sort of loving melodies that have been recorded so many times no one even remembers who did them first (like “Winter Wonderland”) and some that have been recorded a lot but the first recording is all that matters (like “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby).

The cool thing now is, of course, that “Merry Christmas, Darling” is a classic.  It IS one of the old tried and true songs of the season.  And now I understand the deep sentimentality.  For I wish, if I might “have the wish that I wish for tonight,” to gather everyone I love from near and far together during these long, dark winter nights to laugh and remember, to sing and make merry, to be close and bask in the 6-7000 lights on my tree.  And we could play Karen and sing…

That I wish you a Merry Christmas

Happy New Year, too

I’ve just one wish on this Christmas Eve

I wish I were with you, I wish I were with you. 

Bed space is limited here.  So if you are going to come and see me and make my wishes come true, please call in advance.

pictured: The Moslander family Christmas card, 1968.  Jeanie, Joey, Timmy, Tammy and Danny (Love love love to my siblings!  Please note: I was reading from The Children’s Book of Knowledge – which is why you are all so successful and smart.  You may thank me with a very nice Christmas gift.)

22 Days and Counting & the True Meaning of Christmas

1 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , ,

Has anyone ever really said it better?

Did you see the full moon last night, first all huge and orangy just emerging over the horizon and then bright in the blue, white-puffy-cloud sky?  Oh it was gorgeous (from my seat in the car in the church parking lot where it took a full half hour to warm up!).  The stars were twinkling and the dry snow shimmered in its moonlit bath while I listened to a rather decent selection of Christmas music on Cozy-101.*   And it was frigid, frightfully lung-freezing cold at 19-degrees, but there is something so pure, so quiet in that.

This is the only time this year I plan to romanticize winter.  It happened.  It was beautiful.  Now let’s get back to a regular Colorado winter.  For crying out loud. 

*I want Delilah’s job (weekdays 7pm – midnight on Cozy!).  And that cannot be her real name?  Come on.

23 Day Countdown and Ho Ho Ho with Hunter

2 Mi Familia, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

Hunter’s parents are out of town

He walked in Monday, dropped his bags, adjusted his red super-hero cape and asked me, “So Nonna, are you really happy to see me here for 2 days?”  Naturally!  I am.

I took Hunter to pre-school Tuesday afternoon.  It is in an older home in a slightly rural setting and all the mommies gather to visit on the front porch before the teacher unlocks the door.  

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On Santa Claus.

I am visiting with the young mommies and rather flattered that I was mistaken for one of them briefly, though as I expressed to them quite candidly, “If I had a 5 year old at my age, I’d shoot myself,” (though the morning cuddling is divine).  When suddenly I become aware that the very black-and-white-no-gray-area, pragmatic grandson, Hunter, is causing terror in the heart of a darling little long-haired girl with this announcement: “There is no Santa Claus.  He is not real, he is a fake.  My mommy and daddy told me the truth.” 

“He is real.  There is a Santa Claus – he comes to my house,” she countered, then to her mommy, “He is saying Santa Claus isn’t real.”

I tried to get him to stop…several times.  Several. Times.  But he just would not.  He terrorized the little girl and any other child who would listen with his no-Santa declaration.

When I tried explaining to him later that it is not up to him to tell other children what he knows about Santa, but that he should allow their own parents  to explain that, he countered incredulously with, “Well, her mom was the one who told her there is a real Santa Claus.” 

My own kids were also the dashers of Santa dreams during their public school years, with Stormie being the greatest offender.  You know the joy many families get from perpetuating the Santa Claus story during Christmas?  Well, apparently our family finds that joy through shooting it down.  YIKES!  Mea culpa…I really did feel bad.  Touchy subject.

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Other Hunterisms:

He and I were watching cute internet animal videos and I was oohing and aahing over the mini-pigs that are only the size of newborn babies full-grown.  When it showed a woman cuddling with one while she was watching TV I asked him, “Don’t you want a little mini-pig, Hunter?  You could cuddle with it.  How cute?”  He gave me the what-is-wrong-with-your-logic look, took a deep breath and informed me, “Nonna.  My house is not a farm.”

Hunter, after seeing Stormie’s jar of pennies:  “Why do you have all this money? You need to be giving it and not keeping it all to yourself.”

On the way to the airport the other day, DP and Tara in the front seat, Hunter and Tredessa in the back, they were singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” joyfully anticipating the Christmas season ahead and Hunter got pretty agitated when his dad sang silly or changed the words or tune.  He wanted a straight-up version apparently.  Because on the next run-through, when Dessa started shouting out those little phrases that many people like to add: “Like a lightbulb,” and “Like Monopoly” to fill in the Rudolph story, Hunter stopped them cold.  “We have to sing this right!  Tredessa back here is being all funny.”  But Hunter was not amused.  Hunter does not want humor added to something as serious as Christmas!

Hunter loves to wrestle and engaged his Auntie Stormie in a battle.
Hunter: In the name of Jesus! (runs over and karate chops the Aunt.  The Aunt grabs his wrists, immobilizing him)
Hunter: I said ‘IN THE NAME OF JESUS!’
(Stormie giggling, still holding his wrists, Hunter gets quiet)
Hunter: (whispering VERY quietly): God, help me.
(Stormie begins laughing so hard she lets go of his wrists)
Hunter: See? God told you to let go!

Stormie and Hunter were looking at pictures from his birthday party.                                                                                 Stormie: Do you remember you were sick at your party?   (Hunter nods)  That was pretty stinky huh?  {30 second pause}
Hunter: You could smell my illness?

You might imagine that an an actual argument about the proper use of the word “stink” ensued.  He is literal.  That keeps us laughing.  Ho!  Ho!  Ho!

images: Hunter around the time he turned 5 in October…does anyone doubt that he was actually piloting that plane?  I don’t!

25 Days Until You-Know-What!

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

Christmas in Connecticut

I watched the old, crisp-black-and-white, 1945 “Christmas in Connecticut” last night, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan.  It is official.  I am into Christmas.  And I LOVE this movie (I have for almost 30 years, now).

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Elizabeth Lane

Barbara Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, a writer for a homemaking magazine, and just seeing it again last night made me laugh at myself, for I think I truly have emulated her food-writing style.  It obviously has impacted my romanticism in regards to writing about the “homely arts.”   She is gorgeous and tough, she is smart and sassy.  She is self-sufficient and alluring.  She absolutely sparkles in this sweet and silly old movie. 

And the fur coat?  I have it!  I actually bought the exact same style of coat (made in the 40s) at an antique shop in Sioux City, Iowa in 1987.  I want to be Elizabeth Lane!

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I’m wishin’ that I may

I’m wishin’ that I might

Have the wish that I wish for tonight

Spoiler Alert…may give away some things (hopefully just makes you want to see it)

In the movie she is a city-girl journalist who can’t even boil water, but is forced to play farm wife and mother for her boss who doesn’t know her writing isn’t actually from a farm in Connecticut.  Barbara Stanwyck is elegantly charming and totally lovable enlisting help from the men her life to pull this off: the horribly pretentious, prissy bore of an architect she is engaged to marry and Uncle Felix, the restaurant owner from whom she gets all her recipe copy.  They set out to create the “Elizabeth Lane” persona for her boss, who has invited a war-hero sailor to spend Christmas with them at the farm.

When the hunky sailor shows up, the usually-cool Elizabeth knows she has met her match.

 I adore the script-

Nora:  I’ve never flipped in me life and I’m not gonna start flippin’ now for no man.

Felix:  Nobody needs a mink coat but the mink!

Elizabeth Lane(about her boss):  Every time I opened my mouth, he talked.  I felt like Charlie McCarthy.

And watch for the “Christmas-card” scene.  You know, like in “Holiday Inn,” and “White Christmas?”  There is a moment when they take you to the Connecticut farm and it is snowy and there are sleigh bells and suddenly your heart is just pulled in to the story: this is what every Christmas should be, you feel, as the music rises majestically and you are magically transported to the fire-y hearth and can practically smell the good old Irish stew simmering from the kitchen…

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It’s lighthearted, totally silly, borrowed babies, fake marriages, a nosy and overpowering magazine publisher, a little farcical and one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies.  The really talented cast manages to create some well-defined and lovable characters.  I am telling you, suspend some disbelief and just enjoy a “Christmas in Connecticut.”  It’ll make you smile.  And then we can talk more about it when I won’t be ruining it for you!

The 1945 Trailer

See?  I mean, come on!

P.S.  Believe me when I tell you that the early 90’s remake (Arnold Schwartzeneggar’s directorial debut, I think) was not nearly as wonderful, but it does have the beautiful Dyan Cannon – so that is something, I guess.