A New Use for Holiday Cards

A New Use for Holiday Cards

Let me ask you: What did you do with all of the Christmas, holiday, or New Year’s cards you received back in December and January?

If you’re like me, you held onto them for weeks, believing that one cold winter day you would sit down with a big mug of tea and re-read them, save the extra-special ones, and maybe even call or write those super-human individuals who had taken extra time to pen novellas of their lives in the past year. (Those people always impress me; I can barely get my cards mailed by Dec. 22nd, much less tell everyone what we did in the previous 12 months!)

Or maybe you even had grandiose plans of crafting with the cards you received – making a collage or ornaments out of them. Yes – one ambitious year perhaps you even admired all those sweet faces of your friends’ kids and planned to photograph each card, saving them to your hard drive or the cloud! (I actually did this. Precisely ONE time.)

But in all likelihood – you did none of that. You eventually let out a big sigh of co-mingled regret and relief, and recycled the colorful stash, secretly hoping that no one would ever ask you to recall the cards’ contents.

By now, the cards my family received would usually have been appreciated and tossed. But not this year.

This year, we are trying something new: we are making the cards a part of Lent.

In our home, we “say grace” before meals. It’s a good habit – one that’s meant to remind us from Whom we receive our nourishment.

Typically, we say the traditional Catholic blessing:

“Bless us, O Lord,
and these Thy gifts,
which we are about to receive,
from Thy bounty,
through Christ Our Lord,
Amen.”

It covers all the most important points and when said with genuine heartfelt devotion, offers the gratitude that’s due.

There is danger in repetition, however. After awhile, it can be tempting to ignore the words – to just go through the motions of saying them without concentrating on their meaning.

One way to recharge a mealtime prayer with its intended significance is to change it up a bit – not by re-wording it necessarily, but by adding to it.

So at every meal this Lent, we are taking a couple Christmas cards from our stack and praying for the families that sent them. Our prayers are not fancy or flowery, just straightforward expressions from the heart that the One who sees and knows all will grant our friends the virtues and strengths they need most.

If you wonder what that looks like, here’s what I said last night after the basic blessing:

“Heavenly Father, we thank you for our dear friends Pete and Amy and their children Brendan, Zach, and Ellie. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen them but we know they are in Your loving hands. Please watch over them and bring them closer to one another in 2018. We pray too for Uncle Bill and Clara. May you bless their new marriage and new home in California. Amen.”

Sharing these cards every night has given my husband and I opportunities tell our kids a bit more about old friends – people with whom we ‘swap’ Christmas cards but rarely see – people we knew long before the kids came along. It’s a side benefit I wouldn’t have considered before starting this Lenten effort.

Remembering people and holding them up….

We can start anytime.

Flip through your phone’s address book, glance over your Facebook friends, make a list of names.

Fold your hands and lift up a friend. Today.

Folly and Sparks! Have a Joyful 4th!

Folly and Sparks! Have a Joyful 4th!
Photo by Kristopher Roller, StockSnap.io

As I understand it, my great-grandparents’ marriage started off with sparks. Of the good sort.

Just 17 years old, Bessie Lowe was bound and determined to marry James Smith – the young man of her dreams. It’s not clear whether Bessie’s groom-to-be was afraid to approach Bessie’s father about the marriage, but in any case, Bessie was the one who told her dad about the engagement. According to a quote in an old family photo album, Bessie’s dad told her he and her mother had seen the folly of marrying too young. She came back at him. “Well,” she said, “We would like to see the folly of it too.”

Bessie and Jimmie were married on the 4th of July, 1916, in Grants Pass, Oregon. After the ceremony they held a family picnic where everyone – and I mean everyone – played baseball. Firecracker that she was, my great-grandmother ran the bases in her wedding dress.

Times were simple and lean and about to get leaner. In 1932, Jimmie lost his job as a truck driver for a lumberyard, so he took my grandpa (and later, grandpa’s sister) to live on the family’s farm while Bessie worked as a washerwoman in a Seattle laundry. The family was separated for two years, seeing one another only on holidays. Decades later, my grandpa choked up every time he spoke of this, remembering it as a great injustice that his beloved mother should ever have had to work that hard under such awful conditions. And yet Bessie did – for the love of her family and to help provide for them. Further, she kept her chin up, never losing the laughing spirit that sparked that running of the bases on her wedding day.

I knew Bessie only when I was a young child, and what I recall best are her eyes. People tell me she had one brown and one blue, but in my mind I see the way those eyes crinkle at me in delight. She sits on a piano bench in her living room, studying me with her whole face, body, heart, and spirit. She radiates joy. She throws her head back and laughs, letting ripples of happiness shake her whole frame.

The lesson in all of this is that the same woman who told her dad of her plans to marry the man she loved, played America’s game right after saying her vows, and toiled at an awful job to care for a family she adored who – to the very last among us – remembers her as laughing, made one critical choice above all others: she consistently chose joy.

Do you choose joy every day? Do you have the kind of faith that trusts that Life is Good, and you – even you – are cared for regardless of your current situation?

I believe that my great-grandmother must have. She trusted in the Presence that pushed up the flowers in her yard year after year, and brought her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren back to her when she’d gone full seasons without seeing them.

Right to the end, hers was an all-embracing, loving, grateful smile that no one could dismiss.

My great-grandmother Bessie Smith, always smiling.

On this holiday of family picnics and fireworks, may we press fully into that kind of joy.

 

Why Ugly Decorations Are Good

Why Ugly Decorations Are Good

Two unofficial members of our household made their seasonal debuts at our home yesterday, so I thought I’d take a moment to introduce them to you on this, day four of my Month of Good News 2016.
This is Lucy, Guardian of the Front Porch.

lucy

She’s been with us for about a decade. I think I got her at Michael’s craft store for about $6, back when I was trying to make sure our oldest son gained an awareness of the changing seasons. He and this little scarecrow were about the same size, but she didn’t acquire a name until my daughter came along and dubbed her ‘Lucy.’ The name stuck, and now our youngest son has an oddly strong attachment to her.

And this is Cheese.

cheese

I don’t know who named him. But he is a remnant of my brother-in-law’s surprise Halloween-themed 40th birthday party, which was held in 2001. My husband insisted that we keep this lovely trinket as a souvenir. Once, I suggested we get rid of it – an idea for which I was nearly tarred and feathered.

Little did I know that Cheese would become our children’s all-time favorite Halloween decoration. It moves around the house throughout October as the kids desperately try to recreate the famous “Great Shriek” scene of a few years back, when Cheese was placed in my bed. I encountered it unwittingly and responded accordingly.

As you can see, I have a love/hate relationship with Lucy and Cheese. We have other knickknacks that are better looking, and they are displayed as well. But when the kids begin to feel festive in October, these are the two decorations they are most excited to see. From now until January 6, there will be many kinds of holiday embellishments in our home. Thus, Lucy and Cheese ring in the holiday season – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year.

Today I was looking for a quote about holidays and found this one from Philip Andrew Adams, an Australian humanist, social commentator, broadcaster, and filmmaker:

“To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance.”

I don’t know Adams, so I can’t say whether we’d agree on other topics, but I do think holidays are a time of reassurance, especially for the young and young at heart.

The traditions we keep – like putting out certain decorations – remind our spirits that there is a continuity that cannot be shaken. This speaks Truth to our souls, in a time when we need solidity and comfort. 

For this, I am grateful. Because even if they are ugly, decorations show we have reason to celebrate and give thanks. Good news, for sure.