Festivities and madness

I was just thinking about holidays and parties.  When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to grow up and host parties.  My aunt was the perfect hostess.  It seemed like she knew how to do everything-make the perfect cocktails, exotic dishes, her decorations were charming and elegant.  She made Martha Stewart look like an eastern bloc haus frau.  My mom's specialty was Christmas.  I remember she hosted my youth group's Christmas party one year.  It was way cool, still tops the charts in my books.

So here I am, knocking ever so gently on 40's door, with my own 9 year old about to be 10 year old and Christmas less than a month away.  Last year, I did the big birthday party at my house with all the people.  I was pooped.  It didn't seem like it was really up to my aunt's standards, I don't know, I was too stressed to really enjoy it for myself.  Javy was happy, that's all that counts.  This year, I'm thinking simple, dinner at Wrangler's while Javy gets lavished with attention.  

So that got me to thinking, duh, my aunt was probably freaking out on the inside, too.  My mom obviously has been scarred by her past successes, because she's perfectly content to be a hermit and never socialize, again.  So I should never give up on my pursuit of making others have the time of their lives.  I'm still going simple for Javy's birthday, though.

But Christmas....  I just can't control that urge to go all out, no matter how much it hurts.  And just like Clark Griswald Sr, I'm gonna need a lot of help from Jack Daniels.  

Ding Dong, Christmas is over!

For my family Christmas means many different things..... And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with religion, most of the time. And I do say Happy Holidays, but I've always said Happy Holidays, long before this war of words came into play about Christmas time... To me Holidays are about fun, doing things that you don't always get to do. I mean, Europeans call their vacations holidays. It's just a fun word, there's no implied meaning to it.

Getting back to the religion thing, though. Religion is personal. I'm reading a book right now about the Hawaiians. They wouldn't even speak their one true God's name becauseit was so sacred and they couldn't bear to have anyone disrespect it. That is such a different concept from the Protestant churches I grew up in. There's that whole Great Commission aspect of going out into all the world and preaching the Gospel. But I don't think the Hawaiians were altogether wrong, because sometimes the spoken word is meaningless. We can all say whatever we like, but if our actions and how we live, do not match with what we are saying, no one is goingto listen to us, anyways.

And who says that you need to speak or say anything to be a blessing to people. Javy has a very limited vocabulary and only those who are really close to him, actually no how he communicates. But do you know, I've had complete strangers come up to me and tell me what a blessing he was. I had one lady come up to me crying, because there was something in Javy's eyes that reminded her of her recently departed son. I even had a close friend tell me that Javy inspired him to be happy in every situation. Wow! That is truly a blessing....

So getting back to Christmas. I try to make our Christmases special and magical, just like our mom made them for us. This Christmas, we spent time with our friends. We watched whales and the sun sink into the ocean. We played, a lot. And we ate. I invoked the memories of both of my Grandmas. I made biscuits and gravy, just my Grandma Pentecost. And then I made the Strawberry stuff that my Grandma Williams fixed us every Christmas. My Grandma Williams didn't cook much, in fact, my Dad always complained that she starved them when they were kids. But what she did cook was the best. It was a great Christmas and judging from Javy's laughter and smiles, it was magical for him, too.