Category: Advent/Christmas

Sneaking Christmas Cookies

 

I wouldn’t say that I’m quite fat, perhaps “rotund” would be a kinder word. I’m sure there are many disadvantages of being in such shape, but the most troublesome one is that I have a wife who sternly watches my ingestion of sweets. This is a particular serious problem at Christmas time.

Mind you, that this is a season when she bakes 12 dozen Christmas cookies, and I am exposed to the aromas of chocolate, vanilla, and spices throughout our home all day long. And I’m expected to exercise some self-control? Because of this, I have become somewhat an expert on sneaking Christmas cookies. I assure you it is purely out of desperation.

The first thing one has to do, and understand clearly, is that you have to act disinterested. While your wife is baking, do something constructive like reading the comics, checking out the latest sports scores, or moving things around in the garage like you’re actually doing some organizing. But whatever you do, act as though you don’t notice the tantalizing fragrance of her baked delicacies. This gives your wife the false confidence that her cookies are safe.

The second thing you need to know is the hardest part. This is where the real discipline of Christmas cookie sneaking comes in. You have to wait until your wife leaves the kitchen and goes to take her shower. Now, you can strike. If your wife hasn’t already hid them in the washing machine, beneath the sink, or in her car trunk, they can usually be found in a round cookie tin in the kitchen somewhere. This is why you have to strike fast, before she can hide the cookies after they’ve cooled.

Now comes the sneaky part. You have to make sure that she doesn’t notice that any cookies are missing. This involves taking a cookie out of the cookie tin, then rearranging the cookies evenly so that she doesn’t notice that a cookie is missing. Unfortunately, this only works for the first six or eight cookies you take.I have tried putting a stack of napkins underneath the cookies in the tin to make it look like there are the same number, but that doesn’t work very well unless the napkins are the same color as the cookies.

The final part involves hiding the evidence. You have to disguise the cookie crumbs. Only eat brown cookies over a wood floor, or white sugar cookies over a light thick carpet. That way the crumbs are harder to see. The cookies with sprinkles are the hardest to disguise, so sometimes I have to go outdoors to eat those. Whatever you do, don’t eat them over a tablecloth because she’ll notice the crumbs right away, and she’ll make you clean them up after she scolds you. Another way to hide your evidence is to eat the cookies over the kitchen sink. But you have to be sure to wash the crumbs down the disposal or she’ll notice those, too.

Nighttime cookie sneaking is a whole topic in itself. If your wife has excellent hearing, like mine does, she will inevitably hear you rummaging around in the kitchen in the middle of the night trying to open the cookie tin or opening the refrigerator door to get some milk. The solution is that you have to keep a cookie stash somewhere else in the house. This is probably best done in the bathroom where you can fake that you have to go to the bathroom, and instead have a couple of cookies that you’ve previously hidden. But don’t forget to wash the crumbs down the sink!

Altdorfer nativity painting reflection

My Reflections on Altdorfer nativity painting
2017 Christmas

John 8:12

Darkness and Destruction dominate the landscape. It is truly a time of “night-ness;” a projection of  human brokenness and fear, vulnerability and hopelessness. The night presses hard against the light, wanting to push the deep dark shadows of despair into this moment of promise.

At the side, a two-trunked tree stands like a column of black smoke arising from burning rubbish. Even the surrounding vegetation is muted and stunted, without bud or flower. Exposed roots hang like tentacles from the barren sod to find despair  written upon both these crumbling ruins and that of nature herself.

Of interest is that the dominant feature in the foreground is a collapsed wall of bricks. Made of “clay,” they reflect the temporal and finite nature shared within the baseness of human origins.  Relentless Time has broken and scattered them like so many dead leaves. Once proud markers of strength, the bricks speak their message of eventual brokenness, to become returned to the soil from which they came. Familiar in some strange way, to those  which now adorn our lives of grandeur,  chipped and tarnished, they whisper their warning of the “vanities of vanities.”

A precarious brick column leans in the foreground, teetering, upon near collapse. By all appearances, supported by only a single brick, this heavy column should have fallen long ago. Contrary to what one would imagine, it proudly stands defying all sense of earthly expectations, its balance strikingly challenging our familiar laws of nature. Furthermore, this same inversion of perception is also demonstrated in the wall, with its inner corner facing outwards, rather than inwards, as one would normally construct a building. It is the opposite of what we would design; and it forms another inversion of our conceptual expectations. It, too, seems to stand against our understanding of how reality should be commonly viewed and experienced.

What is Altdorfer trying to convey in this disruption to our sense of familiar structure and nature? Could it be to confront one with a reality outside our usual perceptions, something unexpected and unexplainable; something almost mysterious? Is there more to earthly insight than meets the eye? Could it be that this teasing with the unusual and unorthodox is as if to say, “This event, the Nativity, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ introduces a reality beyond earthly imaginings.” It represents an “inbreaking” of the infinite and eternal into a broken-down world. Divinity arrives in unexpected form to turn the world’s despair upside down, inside out, beyond all earthly conventions and convictions, even the laws of nature. The Mighty King arrives as vulnerable babe, throne sacrificed for a manger, serving to die in order to give life to slaves to sin.

The only structure still appearing intact are the stairs leading up to the second story door. They lead to what seems to be a neglected door, unused and forgotten. One wonders if it symbolizes a forgotten Way. At the moment the door is closed. Curiosity calls us to open this door. “Where does the door lead?” we want to know. But this is a door leading to an experience unknown to us; and we need someone to confidently open the door for us into the Way of our intended purpose. Is it too much to hope that this could be a door out of this scene of suffering and in to a realm of hope? A simple Door; but perhaps a life-giving Door at that.

An ox chews lazily on the hay, while a donkey stands next to Mary. Both simple beasts of burden; and they are here, too. Altdorfer reminds us that this is a scene of poverty and of great need. Even Joseph and Mary seem subdued in the shadows. There are no shepherds bringing their praises, nor wise men bearing gifts. There are none of influence or affluence. For the One to lift and bear our burdens has already arrived. It will be He, the Christ child, who will be known as our “Good Shepherd.” It will be He who will live amongst the poor and the needy, and compassionately care for them, and give them hope.

It is not hard to notice how the stark contrast between that of light and darkness dominates this painting. This contrast proclaims the ever-present conflict between good and evil, between Truth and delusion. The battle that was first engaged in a beautiful Garden (”for you shall not surely die”), now pivots in a humble, straw-filled manger. It is another inversion of sorts. Contrary to our expectations and understandings. For the power of sin was sired by the serpent; and defeated by a Savior, born as a babe.

A full moon reminds us of the “fullness of time” when divine hope will shine through the world’s dark despair. This “fullness of time” speaks of a formative moment in time and space…a unique, extraordinary time of fulfillment. For this is a time of both revelation and redemption. In this moment a gift of Hope is given to Humankind.

Two groups of angels are presented in this nativity painting. One heavenly framed group of three angels announce Christ’s arrival; while three other angels are earthbound, ministering to the new born babe.
Perhaps to emphasize Christ’s dual nature, the two groups of angels, whether heavenly or earthly presented, are adorned in the Father’s golden glory. For this is a royal event; the heralding of a King, who reigns over both heaven and earth.

Altdorfer presents the Christ child in a most interesting way. Not cradled in Mary’s arms, as frequently portrayed, but rather, surrounded by the glory of angels. Furthermore, Christ is painted in the similar golden tones as the attending angels – almost blending into their heavenly glory – tiny, unobtrusive, almost an afterthought in the painting, yet front and center and shrouded in Divine Glory; as if to highlight Christ’s Divinity in the midst of our earthly despair. As the angels gently lower the Christ Child upon the sheet of linen, it is as though He is yet to touch the barrenness of earth. And the linens that soon will be draped around His naked form to give him warmth and protection will soon become an unraveled shroud of mystery as He is released from His earthly redemptive death; and resumes His Divine heavenly form and position at the right hand of God the Father.
But Altdorfer doesn’t stop in surprising us here: he positions the Christ child in a very unusual manner; not lying horizontally, nor head up; but upside down, head first! We are not used to seeing the Christ child portrayed this way, and it causes us to pause a bit.
The Christ child’s unusual position, upside down, contrasts with our, and the world’s, vision of right-sidedness. Again, an inversion of sorts which speaks to something or someone that is unexpected or much different than our usual perceptions. Jesus Christ, the Holy Babe, intrudes “head first” into time and space. His incarnation, this Light, will break into the darkness of despair and bring hope into a world of brokenness. For He proclaims, “I am” the Light of the world.”

On the horizon, a tiny patch of blue sky heralds the breaking dawn of a new day.
The darkness will be rolled back for all time. Because forgiveness is offered. Compassion and healing is given; and redemption can be claimed through the arrival and the finished work of Jesus Christ.
Christ is born…and He has told us His message of hope: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

[lem]
12/22/17; revised 12/14/19

The Gift of the Magi

The Gift of the Magi

An old short story we always read at Christmas time as a family tradition is called “The Gift of the Magi” and was written by O’Henry on December 10, 1905. In the story, Christmas is rapidly approaching and Jim and Della both struggle with buying a gift for the other person, each with very little money. Jim deeply loves his wife, Della, and badly wants to purchase the lovely combs for Della’s long flowing hair that she has been admiring in a nearby storefront window. Della loves her Jim just as deeply and desires to buy the perfect gift of a gold chain for the gold pocket watch that he prizes so greatly. O’Henry concludes his story with these words,

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and set on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. When she heard his step on the stairway down on the first flight, she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things and now she whispered, “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only 22- and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that particular expression on his face.
Della wiggled off the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow again -you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice- what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve cut off your hair? asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”
Jim looked around the room curiously.
“You say you’re hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you- sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with the sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della…
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it up on the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.” White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick, feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay the Combs- the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims- just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone. But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say, “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seem to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
“Is it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under back of his head and smiled.
“Dell,” he said, let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while. They’re too nice to use just at this present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”
The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi.