Christmas Carol of the Month - February

Of all the Christmas carols, my favorites are the story carols. The carols with verses and choruses are sung most often, and the choruses are easy to remember, but I like to follow the story all the way through. If you omit a verse or two with the other carols, it's usually OK unless it's someone's favorite verse, but if you omit a verse in a story carol, you've just left out part of the story. See if that's not true in
We Three Kings (5 verses)
The First Noel (6 verses)

The carol I picked for February is While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night.
It tells the part of the Christmas story that focuses on the angelic announcement of Christ's birth to the shepherds. "We Three Kings" tells the Christmas story from the kings' point of view. "The First Noel" spends one verse on the shepherds, the next four verses on the Wise Men (kings), and the last verse imploring a response from us.

The words to While Shepherds Watched their Flock by Night were written by Nahum Tate who was Poet Laureate in the reign of Queen Ann. He was one of the first to paraphrase scripture into verse to be used in the church. Before that, only scripture was used. His poem was set to a tune by George Friedrich Handel. The first four verses tell the story. The last verse is the praise of the angelic chorus surrounding the announcing angel, but, in my mind, seems appropriate for the shepherds as well upon seeing the infant Savior, Christ the Lord, for themselves.

While shephers watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around.

"Fear not!" said he, for mighty dread had seized their troubled mind;
"Glad tidings of great joy I bring to you and all mankind.

"To you in David's town this day is born, of David's line,
The Savior, who is Christ the Lord, and this will be the sign:

"The heavenly Babe you there shall find to human view displayed,
All meanly wrapt in swathing-bands and in a manger laid.

"All glory be to God on high, and to the earth be peace:
Good will henceforth from heaven to men begin and never cease!"

May God's peace be true in your life, too, because of His gift to all mankind.
Paulita

Christmas Made Me Sick

Every Christmas season for about 7 years (we counted them one time) I was sick. My birthday falls four days before Christmas, so I was either sick on my birthday or Christmas. I'm not sure why this happened year after year, but here are some possibilities:

1. Maybe I was allergic to the indoor Christmas tree. We have an artificial tree now and I'm rarely ill during the Christmas season. But allergy and sickness are different. As I remember I ran a fever and had to stay in bed in my bedroom. Isolation of germs was the theory then.

2. Maybe I was allergic to mold spores from the rain, or smoke from the fireplace. (Both are true today.)

3. Maybe there was too much excitement from the anticipation of my birthday, Christmas, and two weeks' vacation from school.

4. Maybe I caught stuff from other kids who were sick. This is probably the reason because as Pasteur proved, germs don't just appear. There was a lot of hand holding in games at school and I don't remember too many admonitions to wash hands except when you used the restroom, and I don't remember EVER using a school restroom! (another story)

I got my bicycle for Christmas when I was 9 years old. Daddy parked it between my sister's and my twin beds. (My sister had moved to another room for the duration of my sicknes.) Every time I got up during the day to go to the bathroom, I was allowed to sit on the bicycle seat for a few minutes. I think it was an incentive to get well faster.

P.S. I still had the same Christmas-season problem when I was in college. My major was Vocal Music. Consequently, I had a high level of anxiety regarding Christmas programs. I was always afraid I'd have laryngitis and wouldn't be able to sing, and I loved the soprano solos in the Messiah.

SO I'm reconsidering my choice above, and I vote for #3.
Paulita

Christmas Dinner at Grandma's

Christmas dinner at Grandma's was always the same. The table was set with Mother's best China and long-stemmed glasses. Three leaves were added to stretch the table, but even at that, we often had a "kid's table" in the adjacent closed-in porch.

The menu, which never varied, included a huge turkey with Italian spinach dressing. There were mounds of mashed potatoes and a silver gravy boat with thick turkey gravy. Of course we had cranberry sauce (the jellied kind) and also frozen green peas to complete the Christmas colors. The only salad we ate was jello salad, usually lime jello with crushed pinapple and cottage cheese. But the dish that set our dinner apart from any others was raviolas. To this day I still make raviolas from scratch for Christmas. Daddy served a sweet, dark, red wine in stemmed wine glasses to the adults.

After the dinner dishes were cleared off the table Mother brought in dessert: pumpkin pies, a mincemeat pie, and persimmon pudding with lemon sauce. Daddy brought out a box of Italian almond candies wrapped in little individual boxes. It was a once a year treat which he kept hidden until after dinner.

Most of us waited until later for pie because we had already sampled Mother's chocolate fudge, divinity, meringues, and peanut brittle which were on the coffee table in the living room and the buffet in the dining room.

How we ate all that food I'll never know, but it was our traditional family feast and we were celebrating Christmas day.

Born in a Manger to be Your Valentine

This is Valentine's week, the time when everyone is scrambling to find the best Valentine to send or give to their beloveds. God is in the Valentine business, too. He offers the same one to each of us.
"God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son that whoever believes in Him, might not perish but have everlasting life."
Remember that baby in the Christmas manger? He was and is God's best Valentine to you this year. Will you receive what God has for you? Jesus, the Savior, born in a manger so long ago is alive and wants to be part of your life. He wants to be your Valentine.
Paulita

Gift of the Month

Last week in the Pickles comic strip, one lady said to another, "Whew! That's a relief!" The other asked, "How's that?" The first one said, "I finally got all my Christmas shopping done." The other reminded her that Christmas was over a month ago, to which the first said, "No, it's for next Christmas!"

Well, that's what I plan to do, kind of. I'm going to buy one Christmas present each month. With homeowners insurance, property taxes, and seven birthdays occurring in November, December, and January, I need to do something like this. So today I went Christmas shopping. I loved shopping for one gift at a relaxed pace and I'm pleased with my purchase of...a Rubic's Cube. I'm quite sure the child who gets it will have fun playing with it. I could tell you who it is intended for but I might have relatives reading this. so now they can only say, "Oh boy, I hope that's for me!" or "I have one. I hope that's not for me." My secret.

The next step, of course, is to wrap one present each month and tag it. My third step, which should have been the first, will be to construct a list and keep it in two different places. You with memories that don't extend for a year know why.

I will be curious to see how I feel about this plan in November when all the sales start, but for now, it's my plan and I'm sticking to it.
Merry Christmas,
Paulita

Christmas Cards

A month to the day after Christmas, and the Christmas cards are all down from where they were displayed on the back of my kitchen cupboards. Wouldn't you agree that the back of the cupboards that face the family room is a good place to decorate with something?

I've looked at my cards again. Two were hand-drawn and colored by two children overseas who we support. Those are very special like the ones our kids used to make in school. Another special card was handmade by a friend from Holland and had a three dimentional element to it. Still another was from a friend who is a very recent widow. It showed a snowflake on the front, and inside simply said, "Christmas is a time to remember." I can imagine the feelings behind that card.

One very pretty card had a handwritten note that expressed many people's response to the season: "What a frantic time of the year - Look forward to Dec. 31st and the start of 2008." Still another card had the Bible verse "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God." The outside picture was of Middle Eastern children.

Most cards were of a religious nature, but several this year showed what used to be the standard in Christmas cards - Currier and Ives snow scenes. Perhaps the sentiment I liked best was the card that said, "When you get right down to it, the only thing that really matters is..." Inside was a pop-up manger with Mary and Joseph holding baby Jesus.

"Now this is eternal life; that they may know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." John 17:3 NIV

Christmas Pictures

Today I took down all the pictures we received for Christmas. What a treasure! Idivided them into piles to look at them again.

Relatives: the kids grow up, families expand with new marriages and babies, older folks get older, empty-nesters show pictures of themselves in exotic places or with new expensive hobbies/toys. It's our family.

Friends for years: folks we rarely see, some not for 30 years, but it's gratifying that the families are still in tact. We really appreciate the labels that identify who's who in the picture and give us a one sentence summary (many commas included) of each person.

New friends: Everyone needs new friends. Some of these have come through my writing, or my tutoring, or my need of hair color.

I like seeing faces. Now that being said, I'll be sure to include ours in this year's Christmas greeting.