Scattered scraps of Christmas wrap, curling ribbons and partially-burned candles, mark this morning, as I send greetings out for a continued good Christmas season (it is Christmas until Twelfth Night January 6th), a Blessed Chanukah season a Happy Boxing Day, and a joyous Kwanzaa festival. All of those make up today. Also, our granddaughters and family are here for a few days, and life is good.  After a leisurely, get-it-yourself breakfast, I’m sitting at the computer, looking out at a wintery landscape, about to happily connect with you all. We got enough snow last Friday to make plowing the driveway necessary, but it is receding now.

Yesterday was lovely, as it generally is when our family gathers; there’s laughter, appreciation and sharing of stories.  And because we are in basic agreement about much of life in general the atmosphere is very relaxed.  However, even if our whole extended family members gathered and there are some with whom we disagree in specific areas of life,  we all have love enough, and manners enough, to listen to each other, and speak with consideration. Loving does not depend on thinking alike or agreeing about lifestyles.  We love people for who they are to us --- quirks and all.  That is what good families do, and what courteous people do, and definitely what Christians are supposed to do. Courtesy and caring should be our basic attitude toward each other anywhere.  If we regard each other with love and respect, we can be honest, but listen and allow differing points of view to be spoken. If we look on each other as persons who both care and wish to learn, life would be better everywhere (infinitely better in Congress, where manners are few and adolescent behavior is rampant)!

Manners seem to be slipping into rudeness and scorn, in a lot of places. My father, having himself been brought up by a stern mother, was adamant about proper behavior. There were to be no sloppy table manners; no interruptions of other’s conversations, or, Heaven forbid, no throwing a tantrum, or behaving in a rude manner in the presence of anyone at all, anywhere! We were to respect a person for who he/she was, and if we couldn’t, we were to keep quiet about it.  While I don’t agree with my father’s way of teaching this, I do agree that children should be taught to be courteous people.  This must have impressed my siblings as well as me for I never heard any of their children behaving in a way that created havoc when we were all together. The house could be filled with a dozen children of varying ages, and there was only laughter and conversation. There might be a scream or two if someone fell down the laundry chute or rolled out of the hay mow, but those were understandable reactions.  I have to wonder about parents who let their kiddies mouth off, loudly demand attention or scream in displeasure.  It is no favor for children to allow them to be rude or uncaring of others or to think that their little selves are the center of the universe. Teaching children to get along with others will be a benefit to them for all their lives.  I’m not advocating “children should be seen and not heard”!  Nor am I failing to recognize that there are emotional disturbances that surely need understanding help. That is quite a different thing from being obnoxious to get one’s own way.  I am just saying, manners are a boon and a blessing to all concerned.

But  back to Christmas. Kerm and I can, from our vantage point, look back on a lot of family Christmas celebrations. Very few were ideal or without problems. When I was seven or eight, I had the mumps during Christmas holidays, and I remember being able to eat only mashed potatoes for dinner.  And there was the Christmas my father built large doll houses for my niece, Jan, and for me (but whose would be finished first??).  After Kerm and I were married, there were the years when traveling to visit family triggered colds and/or tonsillitis for our little ones.  We spent a lot of nights in a rocking chair with coughing, wakeful children.  Then there was the year our three-year-old decided to open gifts at 2 AM and he is still alive to talk about it.  The year we moved to the Catskills, Christmas Eve brought a blizzard through those lovely mountains and most of central NYS.  When we tried traveling on the next day (Christmas) --- we ended up in a ditch outside of Trumansburg.  A super-kind family rescued us that night --- with our two children and an English cocker. They warmed us, fed us and gave us sleeping bags and blankets, and allowed our dog to point their cockateel all night.  There were really good Christmases when we put tables through my mother’s dining room and living room; when our whole clan of 35 or so gathered.  There was the Christmas when Grandma knitted every kid a pair of wooly slippers, and the Christmas when our small son’s 15-year-old uncle, gave him a drum!!  There was the stellar Christmas when Kerm built a barn for the boys; a barn they could crawl into, with hand-painted-by-me wooden cows, pigs and chickens.   We remember Kerm’s Grandma’ B.’s “Christmas cake,” opening gifts after the morning milking was done, and learning from Kerm’s Grandma Storm how to play triple-deck pinochle. We have a rich store of Christmas memories to warm us when we are feeling adrift and old. Looking back, seems to erase about 30 years from our ages. Christmases do not have to be perfect in every way; they were always exciting regardless, or maybe because of,  mumps, weather, financial resources, sniffles or coughs, and even a drum.

Every twelve-month cycle brings both good times and not-so-good to really terrible ones.  I’m sure this has been true as long as there have been years. We are nearing the end of 2024, which seems quite impossible, and leaves me wondering how a yar can fly by so fast. Last January we began the new year by sharing a meal with friends. That is an excellent way to begin any year and we hope to do this again.  Of course, by tradition, many people begin making resolutions for a better “next year.”.  I recently read a blog by someone called The Urban Monk, whose writing I like.  And he suggested that perhaps trying to make changes in our habits in January, with the snow flying, isn’t such a smart thing to do.   He suggested that winter is a time to snuggle in,  to simply enjoy a time of semi-hibernation.  He feels winter can better be used as a time of restoration rather than resolution.  Save the new energies and habits for spring.  And that sounds good to me. I plan to use wintery days to put together at least two or three more scrapbooks; getting my piles of photos and memorabilia in some kind of order and tossing the rest.  And, of course, there also will be the plant and seed catalogs just waiting for my enthusiastic scanning!  (Repeat after me: “No new gardens!  Downsizing!”) 😊

It isn’t my habit to make resolutions anyway. There are certainly things I hope to do, but basically, I hope to survive well, to find the most joy possible in each day, and to find peace amid the conflict and chaos around me. I would like to be less judgmental and less inclined to go off like a lit sparkler when I’m upset.  But I know that kind of behavior adjustment, is a work in progress. I would also like to make sure I do not fall on my face (or any other part of my body)  either literally or metaphorically.  Falls are potentially lethal for people in their 80s, and I’d rather not go there.  Age is maybe supposed to equal wisdom, but there are times when my wisdom is on par with a toddler.  A small part of my brain tells me that I’ll be fine on a step stool, or skidding around in the snow, but another part of my brain --- thankfully --- usually flashes a warning signal that saves me from disaster.  I’d like a tad more wisdom in those questionable areas of activity. And I’d like to have clear direction, on occasion, whether to speak firmly, or to keep my mouth shut.  The learning process will likely be a hardship, but one that needs to be endured.

As you look to the last days of December and peer into the new year beginning in January, I hope that you envision good times with friends, many moments of peace, and a continued growth of who you are.  I saw a seminar being offered, the title of which was “A Year of Courageous Loving.”  And the subtitle was “A Yearlong Journey of Compassion, Connection, and Courageous Love.”  I thought that this is probably the ideal way to look ahead in a year that must be difficult.  There is so little peace, so much suffering, so little compassion, so much selfishness and a plethora of twisted values.  If we meet these challenges with anger, despair, or bitterness, we only contribute to the universal mess.  Learning to love with agape love, in the midst of all that we see as bad, inappropriate, and even evil,  that is a weapon that will, eventually, make a difference for good.

Meanwhile, in these last December days, I find this advice by Richard Street to be good:

 “Enjoy these short days. Curl up with a book, a candle, and a glass of something you like.  Revel in the dark depths of December, so beautiful, black, and utterly without expectation. Longer days will be coming soon enough.”

Carol writes from her home in Spencer.