Merry Christmas! ("In Which I Am Imogene Herdman")

Merry Christmas Eve!

Rerunning a piece today in which I am Imogene Herdman (and if you've never read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, promise yourself this will be your year. You won't regret it.)

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I remember when I first met Him – that Child who was born in Bethlehem. I didn’t bump into Him in my childhood (though I now know He was there all along.) No, our first encounter -- the one in which I was really a participant -- came when I was older. I was a twenty-something atheist, and a Catholic friend recommended C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to me. “Pay special attention,” he suggested, “to the character of Aslan.”

My friend had a way of recommending things that dramatically changed my life, so I read the book. As urged, I “paid special attention” to Aslan, and I fell in love with him. And I fell in love with Him, though I still didn’t fully understand Who it was that I loved. But I knew I wanted to hold Aslan forever, in my arms and in my heart. Like Susan and Lucy, I wanted to bury my face in His mane, inhale His sweetness, and never let go.

A few years later, the same friend gave me Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, in which “awful old” Imogene Herdman (while playing Mary in the Christmas pageant) is walloped with the story of Jesus for the first time in her short, rough life. She can hardly bear the weight of the irony and the beauty. And as I read about little Imogene bawling her eyes out, I began to sob. I loved Imogene fiercely, and realized that I loved her because I was Imogene: I was that sad little girl who’d never known Jesus, but who one day collided headlong with the reality and power of Him. The God of the universe had bowled Imogene over and she would never be the same. Neither would I.

What changed the Herdmans, the Pevensies, and me? That child born in Bethlehem two millennia ago.

That child. It’s hard to fathom, isn’t it? A child, born in a stable, in poverty, to a virgin. A child raised by a foster-father in relative obscurity. A child who for many years was nothing more than a carpenter’s son. A child.

The Christ Child set a Herdman sobbing, made perfectly sensible little British girls follow a lion for the rest of their lives, and He crumbled my unbelief.

Such is the power of our precious Jesus, and of the books written about Him. Although I wasn’t raised on beautiful tales of our Lord, I know the compelling power of books. I want to share with my own children everything I can about Him. I want to give them the gifts of picture books, chapter books, the Bible. I want to give them storytelling, fine art and great music. I hope to introduce them, through these things, to the Source of all that is good, and true and beautiful. I pray my daughters will remember countless, sublime meetings with Him, and will yearn to inhale His sweetness, the sweetness of that baby in a manger.

That baby was born for us. He lived and died for us.

He loves us so much.

Let’s pay special attention.

Things to Do for Santa Lucia Day

St. Lucy's day holds some of my favorite Advent memories with my girls.

Bake the bread. 

You won't regret it. 

Here's the recipe, which came from my friend, Holly, via Family Fun:

Braided St. Lucia Bread

Dough:
1 1/2 cups milk
2 (1/4 oz.) pkgs. active dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar, plus 1 T. sugar
6 T. butter, cut in pieces
2 large eggs
1/4 cup orange juice
1 T. finely grated orange rind
1 t. salt
5 1/2 - 6 1/2 cups flour

Glaze and garnish:
2 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
2-4 T. orange juice
1/3 cup dried cranberries

Warm the milk in a small saucepan, then pour 1/2 cup of it into a large bowl. Add the yeast and 1 T. of the sugar and let it sit for 5 min.

Melt the butter in the remaining milk. Add butter/milk mixture to the yeast mixture. Whisk in the eggs, juice, 1/4 cup sugar, orange rind, and salt. Stir in the flour, 1 cup at a time, until the dough can be gathered into a ball. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 10 min., adding more flour until the dough is smooth and elastic and doesn't stick to your hands. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, turning it once to coat it. Loosely cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours. Punch down the dough and divide it into 3 equal parts. Roll each part into a 30-inch rope and braid the ropes together. Transfer the braid to a greased baking sheet, pinch together the ends to form a circle and let it rise until doubled in size, about 45 min. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 min., or until golden brown, then let cool on a wire rack about 30 min.

For the glaze, stir together the confectioner's sugar and orange juice until smooth. Drizzle over the bread, then garnish with cranberries. Add candles for "wreath."

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Go watch Melissa Wiley reads her sweet story, Hanna's Christmas. 

I'm So Predictable

I wrote this in 2005, my first year of blogging, and have rerun it a number of times since then. My girls were then ages 12, 9, and 3.

I'm posting it again, because that's part of what makes me so predictable. 

It's all still true, except it's been a long time since we needed a babysitter, ages since Ramona squirmed through Mass, and over the years our Christmas traditions have grown up along with our children. 

But the ending?

Predictable.

********

I'm So Predictable 

My husband and I have a holiday tradition. Every year, close to Christmas, we get a babysitter, go out for Chinese food, and buy all the last-minute stocking stuffers. In the process, we generally fall in love all over again -- with each other, with our children, and with the magic of Christmas. We talk about our days, about holiday travel plans, and about how we'll keep the youngest child happy and calm during the long Christmas Eve Mass. And we talk about how we can't believe how drastically our Christmases have changed over the years.

You see, when we married, we didn't want children. Children were nice enough for other people, but not for us. We didn't want the mess, the commitment, the responsibility. We were happy to be "child free" as opposed to "childless."

Then something happened. I became a Christian.

Oops. Short-circuit in the selfishness department. I began to long for a child. Soon, Atticus's heart caught up with mine in the procreation debate, and we set forth to create a family. After some heartbreaking miscarriages, we had Anne. But only one child, Atticus said. One child is enough.

Then I became a Catholic.

Oops. Short-circuit in the "openness to life" department. We had Betsy. Then several more heartbreaking miscarriages later, God awarded us with Ramona, and here we are. Falling in love again at Christmas time, and crazy, head-over-heels in love with our children.

And all because of of a Child born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

Had Mary said, "No, thank you," to that child, I would be childless. There would have been no short-circuit, no conversion, and most certainly, no child-fueled joy. How do I thank God for that?

I always seem to do it in the same old, tired way.

I cry.

May you, too, shed some tears of ineffable gratitude this Christmas.

The Stressy Tree? Why You Shouldn't Stress About Your Jesse Tree

What is it with us Catholic moms and Jesse Trees? We are Paul in this scenario and the Jesse Tree is the everpresent thorn in our sides. Does canon law address this issue? Is there a commandment?

Thou shalt not neglect a Jesse Tree in thy house during Advent lest thy descendants die in utter ignorance of Scripture while clutching only a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. 

Loads of us think we should do a Jesse Tree.
Loads of us hate doing the Jesse Tree.
Voila! Loads of Catholic Mom Guilt.

We've done a Jesse Tree for a long time now, but -- listen to me very carefully -- it was a process. Here's the thing: Don't do what I did. Don't think the Jesse Tree has to be perfect (or perfectly executed each and every Advent) for it to do what it was meant to do.

The Jesse Tree readings/activities have a cumulative effect. Do enough imperfect Jesse Trees over the years, and eventually your children will absorb some perfectly wonderful Scripture and knowledge of salvation history. (Or don't do one at all. There are lots of ways to learn things. But this post is for the mom who wants to do a Jesse Tree and simultaneously stresses about said tree.)

Here's our current Jesse Tree. My girls and I made the ornaments (many moons ago) out of salt dough. I use a small, artificial Christmas tree and I arrange Christmas books beneath the tree.

But this whole Pinterest-y approach didn't come together overnight.

When my girls were little, our Jesse Tree was generally a hit-and-run mess. But it's when they're little that you start stressing, right? ("They're little! I have to do it now! They'll never learn if I don't start when they're three!") Wrong. You can mess up a Jesse Tree for years, and they will still eventually learn stuff.

One year our Jesse Tree looked like this:

I was pregnant with Ramona that year, and I was old and tired and I gave myself extra points merely for breaking out the glitter. 

Another year it looked like this. (I think Ramona was a toddler? I was old, I was tired.) That is the worst-looking construction paper tree I've ever made or seen. We didn't even finish the Jesse tree that year: 

Another year our Jesse Tree looked like this:

Yup. That's right. Nothin'. I searched in vain for the perfect tree branch to place in a pot as I tried to follow a friend's example. I tried so hard to be perfect that year that I frustrated myself completely and abandoned the entire activity. Anne-with-an-e was 11 before I finally decided to use the little artificial tree.

Still not perfect. I'd never made salt dough before and made it wrong, so the first set of ornaments regularly indulged in cracking-and-breaking habits. Then there were the times we had to make more ornaments because — who knew? — dogs love to eat salt dough.

And, what readings did we use? That took time to figure out, too. I couldn't find an easy, workable, all-in-one version of the Jesse Tree anywhere. (I think your odds here have gotten better. There are loads of resources out there now. Sheesh, I'm feeling like a pioneer or something.) If one source had ornaments I liked, it didn't offer neatly corresponding readings. If I found a set of readings I liked, suddenly my ornaments didn't match.

So after a few years of trial and error, I finally started using The Jesse Tree by Geraldine McCaughrean. Atticus read stories in the evening, after dinner. Sometimes we missed a couple of days. Or a lot of days. Eventually, we'd catch up in the book, and add a few more ornaments to the tree.

The thing to remember about the Jesse Tree — the thing that will keep you from despising it — is that not only does it not have to be perfect, I don't think it should be perfect or perfectly executed. It should be like the human and divine history it's teaching: messy, full of skips, jumps, and mistakes, but with a gleaming, golden thread running through the whole thing, tying it together, proclaiming that God is there for us in the mess, always. Year in, year out.

So, don't do your Jesse Tree every day, on schedule, legalistically. Have a Magic School Bus/Miss Frizzle tree: take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!

The knowledge of Scripture that a Jesse Tree teaches is cumulative; it's supposed to be. It's like doing the same kinds of math problems every September. It's review.

Over years and seasons of Advent, you'll discover that it doesn't matter which tree you chose, which ornaments you made or bought (or slapped with glitter) or which set of readings you used. It won't matter that some years you couldn't even face the thought of a Jesse Tree and you skipped it. What will matter is the irreplaceable, imperfect time you spent with your family and God's word.

And while you're at it, read the Grinch, too.

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For more on all things Advent, go to the Monstrously Long Post. 

Advent Reading Recommendations from Nancy Piccione

Many thanks to the lovely Nancy Piccione* for her review in The Catholic Post and her recommendation of You Can Share the Faith for Advent reading.

I'm honored to be in such great company -- Nancy also recommends books from Emily Stimpson Chapman and Colleen Mitchell (and my Amazon list just grew.)

You can read Nancy's column here, at Reading Catholic.

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*I did an interview with Nancy a few years back about After Miscarriage. You can read that interview here.