Noche de paz, noche de amor
Todo duerme en derredor
Entre los astros que esparcen su luz
Bella anunciando al niño Jesús
Brilla la estrella de paz
Oh, brilla la estrella de paz

“Midnight” mass begins at 10:30 PM at the local Episcopalian church, but the fact that it ends and midnight rather than starting at midnight doesn’t make it any less magical, though it was probably a degree or two warmer.

Somehow, Christmas Eve is more special when it’s cold out, when you can see your breath hovering in the starlit sky just before you enter the church. Then, the cold night air is replaced by the warmer air inside, laced with pine and holly, melted wax, wisps of smoke, and a trace of incense leftover from the earlier, family-friendly service.

The church wasn’t packed tonight, but it was nicely full, and while most people were dressed up, a few were not. Any other time, I’d not have cared, to be honest, but dressing up helps the night feel more special, enhances that sense of being out of time, and in time, all at once.

The thing about Christmas Eve mass is this: the music and the incense and the lit trees on the altar, and the pine and holly in the church mix together to form this unburstable bubble of delight and love in my heart – for this one hour (well, ninety minutes, really), I can put all my skepticism aside, and just get lost in the sound of 100 strangers singing “Silent Night,” a capella, in the dim light of wax candles.

For the three verses of that song, we were not anglo or hispanic or black, we were not men or women, we were not agnostic or Christian, or anything else, except just people.

And for me, that is the magic of the season.

If you celebrate it, I wish you a Merry Christmas. If you don’t, I hope your December holidays are or were as lovely as mine. And no matter what, I wish everyone a happy and successful, and peaceful, 2005.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace.

I hate the game UpWords. I hate it with a passion. I hate it the way I’ve never hated anything before. I hate it as much as I love Scrabble – and I reaaaaaaly love Scrabble.

It’s a completely irrational hatred.

On the surface, the two games are similar, you have tiles with letters, and you make words, but Scrabble is all about using your vocabulary to create obscure words with the seven tiles given. There are blanks. There are double and triple word scores. There is some TALENT involved. UpWords is Scrabble’s white trash cousin. Instead of expanding the board by making new words, you stack tiles to manipulate existing ones. There are no blank tiles. And you can ONLY use Q in combination with U.

My husband, the one who can’t spell, loves UpWords.

My parents, who are actually decent Scrabble players, love UpWords.

So, I guess I’m just a snob. A snob with enough of a Scrabble-induced guilt complex that I cannot stack letters because it feels like cheating.

Also, the average word is only four letters long, which is NOT terribly interesting. In fact, four letter words almost never appear in our Scrabble games, unless they’re words like “qaid” and “vole,” words that aren’t likely to be seen in an UpWords game. (In fact, it’s impossible to include “quaid” in an UpWords game, because of the Qu tile instead of just a Q tile. Hmph!)

My family thinks I dislike UpWords because I don’t always win it. This is not true. I recognize that not all of game playing is about winning. Indeed, I enjoy Phase 10 – and Scrabble – whether I win at them or not – but no matter what the score, I detest UpWords.

Click thumbnail for larger image.

Sleighbells ring.
Are you listening
In the lane
Snow is glistening.
A beautiful sight!
We’re happy tonight
Walking in a winter wonderland

The picture above was snapped earlier tonight, by Fuzzy, at my request. We had a day of snow today, and I wanted a picture of the Christmas lights, with the lawn still sporting it’s light frosting of whitestuff.

If I thought our street was cute before, and our neighborhood cozy, I think so even MORE today, when it was cold, grey, and wet. The pavement is rain-dark now, and somewhat icy, and the lawns are sporting the faintest dusting of snow, and with all the Christmas lights, it’s all very magical. I wanted to walk through the park, but Fuzzy said it’s too cold tonight.
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Vists from my parents mean long evenings of the four of us playing board games around the kitchen table. This is fun for me, but torture for my husband, because my parents and I are all in love with words; we play with language, we have huge vocabularies. Fuzzy is smart, of course, but he’s not word-smart, he’s tech-smart, spatial relations-smart. His vocabulary isn’t as extensive as ours (not that I generally USE the words I know – I tend to limit myself far too much), but there is something worse.

He cannot spell.

Now most of the time, this is not a problem. Last night, for example, our game of choice was Phase 10 (I’d lobbied for poker, but…), a card game best described as “gin rummy meets uno.” He did fine with that, especially since the publisher has changed the colors of the cards. (Our set has red, blue, green, and yellow cards; other sets have had red, blue, orange, and yellow cards, and the last two colors were always difficult for my color blind husband to differentiate.)

Tonight, however, we played Scrabble, which is one of my favorite games, but Fuzzy’s least favorite, for obvious reasons. Fuzzy’s a good sport – he mocks himself – but, I know it’s not fun for him, because he can’t spell. And I hate it when he places tiles down, and has to be corrected. I feel bad. And it’s stupid because it’s a game, and it’s supposed to be fun.

Needless to say, I was proud of him, when he came in third tonight, in a very close game (the point spread between the winner and the loser was only 10), and even prouder when he came up with some words that, when challenged, turned out to be allowable. Who knew that obscure knowledge about swords and martial arts could be useful in Scrabble???

I’ve decided that Fuzzy deserves a break, though, and so tomorrow, we’re not playing Scrabble. We’re playing a word game he’s actually good at. We’re playing Upwords. (I hate it, because you can’t use Q without U, but I can live without using such words for one night, I guess.)

But I’d really prefer poker.

I’m tired, and crabby, and I’m tired of being tired and crabby, and my mother and I had a fight today, and god, I sound like a teenager. When I said I wasn’t going to be twelve this year, I guess I was being too literal. Instead I’ve turned from a thirty-four-year-old into a whiny fourteen-year-old. As if I didn’t spend enough time as an angsty teenager. Ah, well, at least this slip into immaturity includes a glass of merlot…care to share?

* * * * *

I have presents – nothing hugely expensive, but I think they’re cool nevertheless – for a bunch of friends, but they’re probably not going out til after the holiday, because I’m so disorganized, unmotivated, stressed. Mostly disorganized and stressed.

* * * * *

My dogs have taken it upon themselves to be as comforting as possible. As a result, I am followed everwhere, even to the bathroom. Ah, you think this is normal? It is, but right now it’s MORE clinginess, not them being a little attached. It’s difficult to explain.

Right now, though, they’re both sprawled on the bed, where I’m sitting as I type this. Cleo looks so soft and cuddly in sleop, like a teddy bear in white and black, and Zorro sleeps with his tongue out, so that he can taste the air, or something. It’s very cute.

* * * * *

The weather people are predicting a chance of SNOW flurries on Friday. Yay for any kind of snow on Christmas Eve.

And yay for sleep.
G’night.

This is a sort of placeholder for a future entry, but it’s late, and I’m tired (and a little buzzed), and I don’t have the right words for what I want to say….

The gist is this: We went to a lovely lessons and carols service at St. Andrews tonight, and it was my first experience with carols being tweaked to include gender-blind language. An example is from the song, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” The old, familiar, version of the hymn includes the line, “Born to raise the sons of earth,” and the new version (per the 1982 Episcopal Hymal) has this amended to read, “Born to raise us from the earth.” While this jarred me while I was singing, after we left I was able to digest it, and find that I like the change.

When I got home, still giddy from singing, and dessert, and driving around looking at Christmas lights, I surfed the net, looking for commentary on the lyric changes, and was disappointed to find so much negativity, in much the same way that I’m disappointed when someone I like comes out against feminism, because they have some odd notion that feminism means hating men (it doesn’t).

And while I have valid points, I don’t have an essay about what I’m feeling just now, nor am I entirely certain I want to post them, but I will, once I’ve slept and figured out my real point.

So, yeah, this is a placeholder.

We were up til six last night, except that it’s not last night any more, it’s the night before last, and now today has become tomorrow, and I’m posting my Saturday entry in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and, and, and, …let me try this again.

Friday night, I was flitting from cleaning project to cleaning project, and getting too distracted by decorating projects, while Fuzzy bounced between work and helping me. This was in preparation for my parents arrival. We finally turned out the light around six am.

Saturday, which in my universe it still is, because I haven’t yet been to bed, we were up by ten, and did more cleaning – heavy cleaning – like, rug doctor type cleaning – and small decorating bits – and grocery shopping, and by the time we finally stopped it was eight at night, and we hadn’t eaten all day.

My parents plane was half an hour late, but that wasn’t a problem, even though we left early for the airport, because DFW is all funky on Saturday nights – it becomes Road Construction Central – and you have to head north to go south, and make other confusing navigational maneuvers.

Finally, though, we collected my parents, and their luggage, and made it home. They seem to like the house. They seem to be comfortable. They seem to be exhausted, and I KNOW we are both exhausted, which is why this entry is entitled *Yawn* – I’m really not coherent enough for anything better.

My mother is arriving tomorrow night, to spend Christmas week with Fuzzy and me, and I’ve resolved that this year, I will not be twelve from the moment she enters my front door, to the moment she leaves.

I will not react like a small child when she criticizes my housekeeping skills, my taste in decor (or books), the television shows I watch, or the foods I keep in my refrigerator and pantry.

I will not snark at her when she pokes her nose into those aspects of my life where she is least welcome, and asks when we’re planning to have children, or why we spent thousands of dollars replacing the living room carpet with wood, instead of a few hundred on bookshelves for the library, where books are still in boxes.

I will not take it personally when she makes derisive comments about the traffic, the quality of service at the local restaurants, the overtly religious culture, or the weather, because none of those things are under my control, and she is not, after all, criticizing ME, in those instances.

I will remember that she travelled 2500 miles in a flying tin can, in December, to leave her warm beachfront house and spend Christmas with her only daughter, in yet another new home, in yet another new town, nowhere near the beach, where it is cold enough that her feet will have to be wrapped in socks and shoes. I will further remember that she left her dog behind, with strangers, two days after the poor thing had teeth pulled.

I will remember all the times when I was growing up, that she worked extra hours so that I could have dance lessons, a bike, a dog, piano lessons, music camp, Shakespeare camp, and college tuition, even if it meant that she didn’t get home until after seven at night on Christmas Eve, or had to work on my birthday.

I will remember the countless hours she spent making clothes for me, and my dolls, the cookies she always made on time for school parties I forgot to tell her about (despite being a single mother who worked full time), and the amazing homemade Halloween costumes I had, every year, until I turned eighteen.

I will remember that after Fuzzy and I eloped, even though she was bitterly disappointed, she welcomed him into our family unwaveringly, and made an effort to get to know him, and that she later threw us a reception and feast.

I will remember that any time I’ve ever needed money, she’s come through with a loan.

I will remember that her criticism, though often unwelcome, and sometimes badly expressed, comes from a place of love and concern, and that now, just as always, she wants me to be happy and healthy and safe and loved.

I will counter-act my urge to be snarky and sarcastic by brewing tea, and singing songs, and bringing up happy memories.

Or at least, I will try.

But if nothing else, this year, I will NOT be twelve.
Not even for a moment.

1. What is a fond holiday tradition from your childhood?

As a child, I always had an advent calendar, and sometimes an advent candle, as well. I loved this manner of counting down the days. I still have a calendar, even now.

2. If you could start a new holiday tradition, what would it be?

A literary Christmas gathering, where everyone brings, and reads aloud, their favorite Christmas story, while toasting near a fire, and sipping mulled wine or spiced cider.

3. What is your favorite Christmas song and who sings it?

This changes, but right this moment John Denver singing Silent Night comes to mind.

4. Is there a certain event, food, television program, etc. that makes your Christmastime complete?

Christmas isn’t Christmas without pfefferneusse. And brie. (Not together, but, you know…both foods.) Oh, and The Nutcracker is also an essential part of the holiday season.

5. Does it traditionally snow where you live at Christmastime? If not, do you wish that it did?

As far as I know, it doesn’t snow here, except on rare occaisions. And in my fantasy world it snows everywhere from the moment people get to where they need to be on Christmas Eve, to the moment they have to leave that place after Christmas, just enough to make the world look pristine, and make the lights reflect and twinkle.

I’ve answered questions like this before, recently, but I felt the need for a warm-up writing exercise today.

My muse of the moment, Clay, let me do some textual whining about not knowing what to write about, and then sent me to StoryCorps. It’s an oral history project based in New York, that involves people going to their story booths, and capturing personal stories, life stories. (The site also offers story kits for rent, but it’s not terribly cost effective.)

I don’t live anywhere near Manhattan, but I’m intrigued by the concept, and I’ve had a love of oral history as long as I can remember. I think it started with my grandmother talking about how much she loved the Red Cross, and about how she was in Panama with my grandfather during one of the world wars, and had to be sent home (with other military wives) on a commandeered cruise ship travelling a zig-zag course to avoid German submarines. As a child, I thought she was making it up, because the details would change from time to time, but the general structure never did.

I remember her talking about the blackout curtains in the housing in Panama, and how she used to keep the closet light on, when she was alone, waiting for my grandfather, and was terrified by someone walking by and telling her (through the window) “Turn out the light,” because a single beam in an otherwise darkened enclave can be seen miles out to sea.

After my grandmother died, I found the menu card from that zig zag trip – some kind of beef, and “jacket” potatoes, and it clicked that this wasn’t just some tale she made up to amuse small children, it had really happened.

My mother, ever the maverick, chose to flee her Italian Catholic upbringing, after I was born, and as a result, most of the cousins and aunts and uncles and various other loose relations are mere names to me – if they’re even that – and the stories my mother heard, I’ve never dreamed of. I’ve always felt kind of gypped about that. There’s a part of me deep inside that really wants a big family and late night conversations in the kitchen, stoked by strong coffee and canolli, or Stella D’oro anisette cookies. There’s a part of me that feels like my identity is lacking because I don’t know the family stories, and don’t have anyone to ask.

Two nights ago, while re-arranging the remnants of my grandmother’s knitting bags (re-discovered when we packed to move from California to Texas), I came across a folded scrap of paper, labelled “Xmas Struffle.” (At least, I think that’s what it says – my grandmother’s handwriting was cryptic at best.) Inside, it was titled “Pop Natale’s Recipe (also good for basic macaroni)” and there was a fairly basic pasta dough recipe scrawled there.

I googled for the term “struffle” – and you know something is obscure if Google comes up with nothing – and am left with a mystery. Was this a funky attempt at spelling an Italian word, by my grandmother whose language was ripped from her when her father insisted that his children speak only English and be American? Is it a family nickname for a beloved treat? Or did she hate the recipe because it reminded her of long hours in the family restaurant, which she despised being tied to?

I want to be a child again, and sit on the old brown and floral couch, the cushions covered with a soft cotton sheet, because it’s more comfortable that way, in the dim den, with my grandfather snoring in his ugly yellow recliner, and I want to plead, “Tell me a story.”

But there’s no one left to ask.