This Christmas was the Christmas of the Meat Cleaver. No, the cleaver was not a gift. Rather, Karate Kid, my seventeen year old son, used a Meat Cleaver to cut the tape and ribbons on his presents. His sisters punctuated the gift-opening session with exclamations of “Be careful!” and “Where is the meat cleaver?” and “Don’t step on the meat cleaver!” I wish I had a recording.

© 2010 David, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

The gifts most in use two days after Christmas: GoogleChrome, a device which allows us to “cast” a spell on our television and tell it to play movies from the computer or smartphone, and Rosetta Stone Polish, a computer program that is teaching three of my daughters to speak Polish. They can now say things like “napady dziewczyna samochodaw” and “kocham cia, mamo”. ???? I have no idea.

It’s been a Crafty Christmas for a couple of the daughters as they giggled and glued their way to several Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers of beauty and utility.

The songs of this Christmas: All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth, Joy to the World by Charles Wesley and Angels Strain to See by David Jackson.

© 2004 tracy ducasse, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

The books we asked for and received for Christmas were many and varied:
For Engineer Husband, The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger and The Astronomical Companion by Guy Ottewell.
Computer Guru Son wanted and received a “nice copy” of Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and Dear Elizabeth: A Play in Letters from Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell and Back Again by Sarah Ruhl for Drama Daughter.
A Greek New Testament for Brown Bear Daughter who’s studying Greek in college.
For Dancer Daughter, Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science by John C. Lennox, and a slew of Agatha Christie paperbacks so that she can start her own collection.
Homesick Texan Cookbook for Eldest Daughter, who loves to cook and follows recipes carefully. And a French dictionary.
For Betsy Bee who is a Shannon Hale fan, River Secrets and Book of a Thousand Days.
Z-baby received and is reading This Star Won’t Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl, a book about the girl who inspired John Green’s Hazel character in The Fault in our Stars.
And for me, a plethora of treasures including The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 by William Manchester, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More by Karen Swallow Prior, Pied Piper by Nevil Shute, The Dean’s Watch by Elizabeth Goudge, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good by Jan Karon, and more.
No books were damaged or even opened by Karate Kid with the Meat Cleaver.

We’re back in our own home this Christmas, and all eight children are here for Christmas and for New Year’s Day. But we missed having my mom here since she’s gone on an extended visit to my sister’s home in Tennessee.

It’s been a Christmas to remember and savor. My children are growing up, not really children any more, and I treasure quiet times when we are all sitting around reading our books or watching White Christmas once more together or louder times of discussing our collective memories of Adventures in Odyssey or Sesame Street.

It was the Christmas of “carpe diem” (seize the day), but even more of “Carpe Deum” (Seize God), my prayer for all of us as we walk, dance, march, and run into 2015, meat cleaver safely put way for next Christmas.

Poet Samuel Coleridge wrote:

“There is a Christmas custom here which pleased and interested me. The children make little presents to their parents, and to each other; and the parents to the children. For three or four months before Christmas the girls are all busy, and the boys save up their pocket-money, to make or purchase these presents. What the present is to be is cautiously kept secret, and the girls have a world of contrivances to conceal it—such as working when they are out on visits, and the others are not with them; getting up in the morning before day-light, and the like. Then, on the evening before Christmas Day, one of the parlours is lighted up by the children, into which the parents must not go. A great yew bough is fastened on the table at a little distance from the wall, a multitude of tapers are fastened in the bough, but so as not to catch it till they are nearly burnt out, and coloured paper hangs and flutters from the twigs. Under this bough the children lay out in great order the presents they mean for their parents, still concealing in their pockets what they intend for each other. Then the parents are introduced, and each presents his little gift, and then bring out the rest one by one from their pockets, and resent them with kisses and embraces. When I witnessed this scene there were eight or nine children, and the eldest daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped all his children so tight to his breast, it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within him. I was very much affected.”

Today’s Gifts:
A song: On December 8, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired on CBS.

A booklist: Top 10 Poetry Books for Christmas (books about writing and reading poetry) at Seedlings in Stone

A birthday: John Milton, poet, b.1608.
Joel Chandler Harris, folklorist, b.1848

A poem: Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity by John Milton.