My First Christmas

No, those are not the words on an infant's decoration or toy - those are to me!

For a multitude of reasons, my family has never celebrated Christmas much. The most we've done is attend the occasional Christmas Eve service or participate in my dad's family's gift exchange. I think those two events might have even happened on the same year! My reasons have never been particularly profound - mainly the typical "It's commercialized and nobody is paying attention to Christ's birth, so I'm not about to join in," sort of reasons.

One of the great things about being married is that there's another point of view and a different thought process that is with you every day - questioning and prodding one's own viewpoints.

If nobody is celebrating Christmas the "right" way, how should it be celebrated?
Why don't I celebrate it the "right" way regardless of others?
Are all the gift-giving, trees, and lights bad ideas, or is being distracted by them the problem?

After being bumped from my standard rut of being something of a Scrooge about Christmas, I've partly resettled. Not particularly far from where I was, but certainly far enough that I gladly enjoyed and joined with the in-law portion of my family for my first Christmas! We even had a very white Christmas!

StG was good enough to give us a ride out to the airport at 4:00 in the morning. I think that I, for the first time, saw Charlessa grumpy that morning! The poor alarm clock is supposed to be making a really annoying sound! :^)

But in spite of getting up at an ungodly hour, we had a great trip out to KS and arrived around noon. We were even in good spirits after we each grabbed naps on the flights!

Early morning basketball games, going out to feed the cattle, hauling hay bales, playing with Magnetix, spending lots of lazy days sipping "friendship tea", watching the snow pour and drift, shoveling LOTS of snow, building a snowman, playing with Magnetix, reading the Bible, visiting with family and extended in-family, going caroling, more basketball games, singing hymns and carols around the piano, discussing the Church and Bible, sharing presents with each other, playing with Magnetix, and teasing LG - it was a GOOD Christmas!

Certainly nothing very exciting, but very, VERY nice!

While I still haven't congealed my thoughts on Christmas celebration, this was a pretty good way to go about it! :^)

Our First Christmas

This is officially our first Christmas as a married couple. Last year, Christmas was only days before the wedding. For Christmas, my entire family had moved into “our” house--where Jesse was staying--so by default, he got included in all our celebrations.

Establishing Christmas traditions for us has been “easy” from my perspective, but I sometimes wonder what it feels like from Jesse’s perspective—he’s still too blinded by love to complain. :-)

My family’s Christmas traditions are numerous, as Christmas was probably our biggest family holiday (followed by Thanksgiving, Family Reunion, Easter, and any other excuse for a family dinner my grandmother could invent). To start off Christmas, my family piled into the truck (after Dad’s birthday on the 15th) to head out to the catalpa grove (our own land) to traipse through the rows of deciduous trees in order to compare the attributes of several dozen wild evergreens spread over a few acres with the goal of finding the “perfect” tree. Of course, for every tree we found, someone thought the tree was too short, too tall, too brown, too prickly, not symmetrical, or some other fault. Eventually, cold hands, sore feet, or boredom would win and we’d pick one. And that’s just the start! Then there was trimming the tree, decorating the house, shopping, wrapping gifts, church plays and parties, caroling, and so much more.

Jesse’s family Christmas traditions are practically non-existent--they don’t decorate the house, they don’t exchange gifts, and they aren’t attending a lot of Christmas parties.

There are moments of laughter when the differences are highlighted.
J: Mom is going to get a LOT of comments about one of her kids sending out a Christmas letter.
C: What do you mean you are not getting your family any gifts?

But for the most part, it’s easy, anytime there is room for a Christmas tradition, for me to say, “here’s what my family did--let’s do it my way,” and Jesse generally doesn’t have an alternative to suggest. But I don’t want Jesse to feel like it is a Gates Christmas that he has been tolerantly invited to join or dragged into—I want it to be OUR Christmas.

In two days, we leave for Christmas in Kansas where it will definitely be a Gates Christmas. It may be too late this year to change anything to make it more OUR Christmas, but hopefully we can write down any ideas for next year in a place where we’ll remember to review them and use them!

One of the things we are doing for the second year in a row is our tree. Not a live tree, not even a realistic looking fake tree--it's what is most often described as a Charlie Brown tree. I have some "better" pictures of the tree on my other computer, but you can see our tree in this picture.

A Very Belated Post on Thanksgiving

Though we haven't said anything on our blogs, we did indeed celebrate Thanksgiving. Jesse picked up Jer from school around noon on Wednesday, picked me up from work, and by 3:30, we were headed out of of the area for PA. Along the way, we stopped for some Taco Bell supper and later an ice cream treat. As we got with-in a couple of hours of our destination, it began to rain. The trip went smoothly and we made it to Jesse parents' home around 9:00. We were greeted by his parents, David, and Margaret.

We'd barely gotten our bags in the door when David and Jesse were ready to compare martial arts moves from David's aikido class. In the living room, periodic "face-offs" continued through out the weekend as David showed Jesse the throws and rolls he has been learning and they practiced them on each other.

Jer was in heaven each night as his grandpa and his dad would each tell him a story before bedtime. Jesse's stories were recorded, so now we have a cassette tape of stories Jesse has told to Jer. Even David got in on the fun and told a story or two of his own.

Thanksgiving dinner was around 5:30 on Thursday evening. Jesse and I had been asked to contribute to the dessert. I'd found a recipe that was called pumpkin pudding. (When I described it to my sister, she called it pumpkin pie cake.) It did look a lot more like a cake. The canned pumpkin was mixed up with condensed milk, sugar, and spices (much like pie filling), then poured into a 9 X 13" dish. On top of the pumpkin mix, we sprinkled dry cake mix and drizzled that with melted butter. Bake. I forgot to watch the time, so the cake came out a bit burnt around the edges, but there was still plenty of it that was very edible and good. Jesse also mixed up some mashed potatoes with a variety of herbs in them. He'd tried the recipe for a work party the week before. Delicious.

Katie, Ryan, and Christina came over after they had Thanksgiving with Ryan's family. They brought a smaller turkey with them, as Katie's turkey the previous year had a been a big success and Katie wanted to make it again. Jesse's aunt, uncle, and cousins also came over bringing turkey and stuffing. We had a great meal and conversation and catch-up.

It drizzled most of the day. In the early afternoon, there started to occasionally see some snow mixed in with the rain. Throughout the next day, there continued to be very light flurries off and on. By the time we left, there had been enough snow to accumulate about .25" on the raised porch. Everywhere else it was little more than a dusting.

Friday morning, Butler had its Christmas parade. As Little Miss Smile, Christina had her own car in the parade. We all made it out to see Christina in the parade--very cute and smiley! :) Afterwards, we had lunch at Pizza Hut, Ryan had to head off for a rodeo (I think), some of the remaining family headed out to get pictures of Thanksgiving and the parade developed, the rest of us headed home to relax and work on some computer problems. Jer spent some time playing outside driving around his green truck.

Saturday morning, Katie and Christina headed home at the same time David headed for the airport to fly back to Florida.

Saturday morning, Jer and I went out to play in the snow again. He really wanted me to teach him how to make snowballs and make snow angels with him. But the snow was a little dry for making snowballs and it was hard to gather enough up to even really try. I was afraid that we'd end up with more dirt than snow on our clothes if we tried to make snow angels. We ended up playing a version of fox and goose (but he was pretending to chase the bad guy--me) in the tracks he'd made in the snow with his truck the previous afternoon.

Sunday morning, Jesse made pancakes for breakfast. Saturday evening, we had decided to try to leave around 11:00AM to head back to Virginia. When we were sitting down to a pancake breakfast after 10:00 and hadn't gotten serious about packing, there wasn't any way we were going to be leaving at 11:00. I felt like we actually did pretty well when we were on the road before 12:15. The trip back had 2-4 serious slowdowns at various points, but we made it back without any real problems. After dropping off Jer, we stopped by Jesse's aunt and uncle's home to wish her a happy birthday. We were very sorry to find that she was sick.

During the weekend, the family had played a game of "Imagine if..." one evening and had a lot of fun. Jesse's parents tied and it took several rounds for them to break the tie--they knew everyone so well! We also watched a couple of episodes from the sitcom Reba and another video or two. Of course, there were lots of conversations, naps, reading, and computer time.

Looking forward to being back in Pennsylvania for the new year!