Merry Christmas,Merry Shopping
I was Ok with 🎁 presents shopping , sort of list in hand. Until I entered Target.
Greeted by red versions of merry Christmas, lollies and rolls of Christmas paper, decorations , and reams of things to buy . Yes, and the requisite jingles to do my head in .
I’m bewildered. I’m looking for a Marvel? Lego set that doesn’t cost over $100 . My grandson needs at least a 15 yrs up set . First I have to find them in the collection of toys that takes half of the top floor, then I have to find the right one . In the meantime, on the way to the toys where there are other zombies wandering around squinting at shelves, I am distracted by the baby clothes. Neither of my grandchildren need clothes, but these little shirts and shorts are soooo cute.
I haven’t been inside here for ages . I must admit it’s quite refreshing to be looking around in a non op shop. It’s refreshing but also confusing and guilt making. Here am I attracted to goods I don’t need, while some people are scraping together coins for food ( or a smoke the cynical middle class , justifying me whispers )
I make it to the Lego holding just one thing : an electric jug for visiting family . A bright red cheap one that will work ; op shop ones sometimes do sometimes don’t. They are not red, and at current op shop prices not all that much cheaper ( see how I can rationalise )
After half an hour of wandering around squinting like everyone else, and there are more squinters now as it’s getting later, I leave minus the Lego . However I have $54 of coloring in books, crayola crayons, a hair band and a cute little matching shirt and shorts set;and the electric jug.
And back tomorrow ?I’ve done Target .Merry Christmas .
A Lesson from Figs on Gaudete Sunday. A Post For Christmas Eve.
On Guadete Sunday 2023 I looked again at last year’s post. Because I love the name Guadete, love the the readings on this last Sunday of Advent: John is again a witness speaking about the light to come, a light “to bind up hearts that are broken,” to free us from the things that blunt our joy. Guadete is a reaffirming of the power of light. For some of us, it places the story of Jesus and Christmas in a cosmological framework .
So this year the fig tree is not yet fruiting but is doing well. I’ve put compost and pea straw around it again ,and chopped off the branches that hit my head every time I tend to it
. So here’s the post, a bit late and the heralded Christmas is here.
I was out on the garden again fiddling with my suddenly huge fig 🌳. I’m surprised at how it has still managed to sprout new branches , despite vigorous pruning a few months ago. Moreover it has secretly been producing figs. Maybe it is hiding them from the cockies that eat them every year, but I only spied the nearly ripe ones when I reached under the canopy to remove weeds.
Today is Gaudete Sunday in the church calendar. The third Sunday in Advent . Rejoicing Sunday. Even for non believers it’s a lovely term, containing the joy in this lead up to a special birth. For once in the liturgy there are no threats or bribes or reminders of the horrors facing non believers.
Let the wilderness and the dry-lands exult
let the wasteland rejoice and bloom
let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil
let it rejoice and sing for joy,
( Isiah 35 v 1,10)
There are lots of biblical quotes about fig trees putting out branches. I realised today that all the water and pea straw and care I have spasmodically lavished on this tree might be irrelevant .
The tree has its own mind and I can chop and water and care or not care, but it spreads where it will and grows fruit regardless. The figs I picked before the birds are not ripe. So they’re on the window sill to ripen, hopefully.
Lesson from figs over .
,
Performances Around Our Fathers
The pre Christmas season is bringing up lots of memories for me, as I guess happens with a lot of people. Maybe it’s the 3 straight nights minus even the 2 or 2 wines , but words are just queuing up in my head . So cousins in UK, brother in Washington DC , cousin here in Freo, what do you think about gathering some of the songs we sung during our family get togethers? Particularly around the dining table. Very early on I think there was a piano : but uncle Michael , the remaining sibling – he would remember,
Remember . I know some of the songs are are published but not all together, and I suspect that many of those songs we sang as children and younger adults were embellished or re -drafted to suit. Sometimes there were short performances and skits. The Death of Nelson for example, my own fathers favourite when he had had a good few beers – the one where we all waited for mum to say “ ….shh Really . No , NO … “ And my father paused to incorporate her intervention into the performance . Then lying on the ground with one hand on his eye he gasped “ “Kiss me Hardy “
He quickly hoisted himself up again and uttered the final insalubrious line. Despite my mother.
The other favourite was Three Old Ladies Locked in The Lavatory( Sorry Aunty Flora and Aunt ? Long dead then , but the butt of my grandfathers annoyance) We laughed 50 years ago . Others were about babies disappearing down the plug hole. I said they were not socially acceptable , not now anyway . Then there were a few Salvation Army ones ( words changed to incorporate family members, or enemies) , and the rousing Rule Britannia* , commencing “Sons of the Sea, bumping up and down like this “. By this time adults were at risk of missing the chair as they leapt up and plonked down again. I just remembered too some of the songs came from Great Uncle Reg , a Boy Scout Leader and veteran of the First World War. He worked as a diplomat in WW2 , a lot of the time in Paris . Hence the innocent songs of that era , with the belief system of duty and responsibility , dibbing and dobbing.
Common camping,scout and some army songs were sung with enthusiasm and varying degrees of seriousness : well known Pack up your Troubles, It’s a Long Long Way
Look they were not all rude, my mothers term . There were a lot of old war songs like Blue Cliffs of Dover and the more rumbustious Siegfried Line * , suitably modified. Other war songs quite racist, sexist, anarchistic , whatever . Understandable if you’d fought in the war or if you’d lived through one and it’s aftermath .
My mother loved the lyrical songs and her party piece was Green Grow the Rushes Oh with movements.We all joined in , tripping over each other as we vied for attention .
There were many more and I have forgotten them . As my last uncle is over 90 it’d be good to get a few of the more obscure songs and acts together. Uncle M has written a lot on the family history and I’m sure he will remember some . How about it , all of us cousins and brother?
Postscript
*Songs of the Sea (1897) is a British WE1 Naval song . The parody ‘bobbing up and down like this ‘became popular at Boy Scout Camps , and has been adapted to football songs . Uncle Michael , served in Navy , would know more about the adaptation .
*were going to hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line “ ( 1939) Written by Jimmy Kennedy while he was Captain in early stages of W W 2 . BUT am sure the words were different ! My mother intervened a lot here.
My Christmas Tree
So I’ve missed the boat. It’s now the second day of the new year and I have carried around the ghosts of Christmases past in my head for over a week. Time to get them out.
I still drag out the manger every year , even though bits are gradually disappearing, The shepherds and kings have taken off , and Joseph’s head leans over at an angle as his head has been glued back on in a hurry. I love it because of its inadequacies , but mainly because in its chipped edges and basic premise of baby and parents v
There is a larger, shared Christmas tree in the hallway. However some of the old decorations I have held onto for years do not fit onto the tree.I left the manger underneath the hallway tree decorated by the four cousins, and put the remnants up on my own smaller version of a Christmas tree.
The manger was always the focus of my family Christmas growing up . It was made by a family friend and complete with the baby in his manger, the sheep, the wise men from the East and the shepherds . Plus a couple of angels keeping watch . Sadly only Mary and Joseph and the baby in the manger remain after 60 odd years, and the stable is falling apart. I have added to the onlookers with various farmyard animals from Target or Toy World as my own family grew , and various people and animals have been lost or broken .
The interest in the manger though has diminished over the years as children , then grandchildren , have got older and candy sticks and chocolate father Christmases have taken over .
The star on top of my tree is a replacement too . The old pop -stick one made by one of the children has fallen apart. But my fairy doll still hangs in , minus an arm. My mother is no longer here to dress her in a new outfit and fix her drooping wings.
She dates from my first Christmas so is antique I guess.
There are other memory triggering objects on my tree :The porcelain tree made by one of my daughters in primary school, the star signed Matilda ( my granddaughter, for her mother), Jimmy’s star in a basket, another porcelain star that looks like it was made in pre primary by one of my sons , and the dainty elf -like little man/ woman , from an old friend . S/he is the last of the four elves which once smiled at me from the tree.
All the other decorations – stars, angels, a small manger- have been picked up over the years from the Oxfam shop in Fremantle. Sadly missed .
As are the past, magic Christmases with midnight mass, coming back to see the large, REAL Christmas tree with REAL candles flickering and a piece of my mother’s Christmas cake waiting . Then to bed to dream of stockings at the end of our beds . As well as Father Christmas’s visit with our special presents .
Growing up is not all it was cracked up to be .
Sambasue21 