How much longer can we do this?

    Ginny was halfway up the pull-down ladder to the attic, struggling with two large plastic bins I was handing up to her when I had a question for her: “How long are we going to be able to keep doing this?”
    By “doing this,” I meant hauling a dozen or so large plastic bins down from the attic and swapping out their contents for decorations throughout the house, an annual ritual that begins after Thanksgiving and ends after Epiphany each year. The movement of the bins from the attic to the living spaces and back again and then reversing the process eight weeks later takes a little time, some strength and good balance on those shaky steps with the narrow rungs. How long would we have the strength and balance to move several rooms full of decorations up and down those steps? How long could I lift a heavy plastic bin over my head and into the opening to the attic? How long could Ginny keep her balance going up and down those steps, pushing up or handing down those big, heavy bins?
    The question behind my question was this: How long can we continue to decorate for Christmas in the manner to which we’ve been accustomed? That to which we’ve become accustomed has been a total transformation of the house: pictures, pillows, photographs, linens, dinnerware, rugs and books are replaced by accessories with a Christmas theme. The transformation has continued through two homes, the early excitement of our children and now our grandchildren, through at least two dozen Christmas parties and well into our “senior” years.
    But my question, like the decorating itself, endures: How long can we keep doing this?
    An earlier holiday provides an answer. At a Thanksgiving gathering that included most of our children and grandchildren, plus others, everyone was asked what they were thankful for. My answer:
    I am thankful for more than 60 years of family gatherings as locations and characters changed over the years; for several hundred pounds of turkey, ham, dressing, veggies and pies and cakes consumed; for seeing me and my cousins in my children and grandchildren and their cousins; for the wisdom that comes with age and that youthful stupidity was not fatal. I am thankful that a woman I could never deserve chose to love me. I am thankful that my children grew to maturity, graduated, succeeded, married and are independent and loving parents themselves. I am thankful for life.
    On reflection, I would add one more bit of thankfulness: I am thankful for my wife’s parents who welcomed me, a near stranger, into their family, who never doubted my love for their daughter or questioned my ability to support her.
    For this Christmas season, we will haul the decorations from the attic and place them throughout the house, even though we can’t find the time for a Christmas party and cannot lure all the children and grandchildren to our home for a celebration, we can be thankful for lives so full of blessings and so defining of grace — unearned favor. With an attitude of gratitude, our Christmas will be full again this year and every year.

Thanksgiving over the years

On this Monday of Thanksgiving week, my thoughts are fixed on the week's worth of work that must be done in three days at the office. With a little extra effort and wise use of time, I should be able to handle that challenge.

Getting Thursday and Friday off, and enjoying the presence of my children and six grandchildren will make the early week rush worthwhile. Our younger daughter has agreed to host the gathering of extended family at her home in Greenville — a site farther east than any of the alternatives, but her home is spacious and can handle the cacophony whirling, laughing, running cousins, all under age 10.

Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday, despite a dearth of celebration when I was growing up. The textile mill where my mother worked did not close for Thanksgiving, which meant that she worked and we children fended for ourselves throughout the Thursday off from school. If the weather was clear and mild, I would head into the woods to explore and pretend, lost in nature and the refreshing, soothing impact of seasonal change, which I did not yet truly appreciate.

The first Thanksgiving after we married, my wife exposed me to her family Thanksgiving tradition, a welcoming of aunts, uncles and cousins into the modest house by the lake. Only five months earlier, her mother had died unexpectedly in that house, still in her forties, never to enjoy her grandchildren or see her children graduate college or (except for the one I stole away too early) marry.

It fell upon my bride, just 19, to preside over the small kitchen, to cook the turkey, to arrange the table, to serve as hostess for more than a dozen guests. My admiration of her capabilities and skills, already high, rose higher as the day progressed. She substituted marvelously for the woman whose absence was so much on her mind. She was determined to live up to her mother's example, and she did so brilliantly.

In 42 Thanksgivings since then, we have often hosted dinner for family — and occasionally, friends — and each time she has provided the welcome and the sustenance everyone needed. A photo album she pulled out over the weekend chronicles the holidays. The first photos are of that first Thanksgiving, in black-and-white. More recent color photos remind us of other Thanksgivings at the lake house or in homes we claimed for a few years or many, with a changing cast of relatives but usually including my parents or hers. One slightly forlorn year, our crowd was only four — our two children still at home and ourselves — but we dressed up and cooked as if for a crowd

This year, we will not be hosts, but we will preside, in a sense, as patriarch and matriarch of the gathering — a reminder that we are older, substantially so, than our parents were at that first Thanksgiving after our wedding. "All of life's a circle," and we are spinning rapidly toward the next phase of the cycle.

Of all the things I have to be thankful for, memories of a life together are among the best.

Holidays are a time to gather families

My apologies. I've become lax at maintaining this blog. But it's not as if people were e-mailing or calling to demand that I post something!

In the week since my last post, Thanksgiving has come and gone, Advent has begun and we are into December. At the family Thanksgiving gathering, in a house filled with 25 people, seven of them 4 or younger, I was struck not by the inevitably chaotic nature of these events but by their importance. All of those gathered share a genetic combination that links each of us to each of the others. For some the link is voluntary in the form of marriage. But even that voluntary link mixes our genes, our interests, our fortunes to each of the others gathered.

Family is what matters. That is why we will travel miles and disrupt schedules and eat unfamiliar foods, just to be with those whose genes we share. These holiday gatherings grow more important as we grow older and realize how few and how rare such gatherings truly are.

My wife and I have been blessed with six grandchildren who are scattered in three cities and who have different schedules, different expectations and different desires. But they share some common genes that manifest themselves in facial expressions, the shape of the chin or the stubborn impatience seen for generations. Seeing them all together fills our hearts in a way nothing else can, for we realize how quickly they will grow and how few precious days we will have to know them.

What is important this holiday season is not the decorations or the gifts or the parties. What matters is the opportunity to spend time with those who are most like you in all the world (whether you admit it or not).

Sunday after Thanksgiving marks beginning of Advent

The Christmas decorations came down from the attic Saturday, a rainy, dreary day that seemed prescribed for indoor tasks and needing the antidote of joyful, memory-filled decorations. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the long prelude to the 12-day Christmas season. Scripture readings will be all about anticipation and eagerness.

Retailers, worried about an economic downturn and a tightening of consumers' wallets, are far out ahead of these four Sundays before Christmas. Decorations and Christmas accessories have filled store aisles for weeks, some of the merchandise preceding even Halloween. This year's late Thanksgiving — Nov. 27 — made retailers' concerns more urgent than ever.

Advent gets lost in the annual rush from Oct. 31 to Dec. 25. There are decorations to be displayed, shopping to be done, cakes and cookies to be baked, plans to be made, and a whirlwind of activities that give us no time to slow down and reflect. An observance of Advent, through something as simple as an Advent calendar or lighting an Advent wreath at home, can help slow down the mad rush toward Christmas, even if just for a few moments.

The hymns of the season — "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," "Prepare the Royal Highway," "Hark the Glad Sound," "All Earth is Hopeful" and the rest — rein in the joyful celebrations found in Christmas carols and provide a spiritual reflection needed this time of year. When Christmas comes at last, its joyousness stands in contrast to the reflective meditation of Advent.

At my house, the decorations will go up gradually. Over three decades-plus, my wife and I (mostly she) have collected a range of Christmas paraphernalia that will be scattered throughout the house. A tree from the Optimist lot will be carefully placed and decorated with items collected along our journey through life. These include keepsakes from places we've lived, places we've visited and people we've known. Another tree will hold my wife's collection of angels. This recent addition to our Christmas decor evolved as her angel collection became too much for our single tree.

Unlike some people, who haul their tree to the curb by nightfall Dec. 25, we'll keep our house decorated through the 12 days of Christmas, removing decorations only on or after Epiphany, Jan. 6.

On this Sunday after Thanksgiving, Advent has begun, and Christmas lies ahead. Let us pause, reflect and meditate before it arrives.