Kes has been suffering (wish I could say 'cheerfully') through it for almost a week now, I finally came down with it fully yesterday, Emmet started coughing yesterday evening and had a fever in the night, and even baby Karissa sounds congested (but is her usual cheerful self). Heather assures me that she has joined the rest of us, but from the way she flits blithely about the house doing her duties, no one could ever tell. How blessed a thing it is to have a good wife!
I'm still trying to work, but am doing it from home (yes, even though it's only 50 yards' between them, there is a world of difference between working from the office and from the home). So you can add prayers for diligence (or for the wisdom to give up altogether and rest?) to your prayers for our wellness.
Also, there is the issue of how much holiday celebrating we want to do. We decided definitely for stockings.
Most "Christmas" celebrating has its origin in nature-worship religions' celebration of winter solstice--adapted by the church over the centuries into a celebration of advent/incarnation, and finally brought into its current form through American mass marketing, especially Coca Cola.
The church, of course, only has one holiday, that comes every 7 days. As a family, since what we celebrate does not bind the conscience of others to do the same, I don't mind celebrating seasons, or even winter solstice. In our house we are clear that we are worshiping the Creator not the creation.
So for us this year, it's more of a practical matter: if we may be moving soon, does it really make sense to spend two days setting up the big tree and decking the house out festively?
Ordinarily, I think this is a very good idea. The waning of the sun during these short days has a significant, negative psychological effect upon our house. Countering it with festive decorating and celebration makes us more cheerful and generally more useful.
There is also the significant issue of our children's evident dissatisfaction with the 18 inch tree that we put up as a substitute. Emmet's memory continues to amaze me (he can remember specific diaper changes from two years ago and was fairly certain that the large guy in the red suit with the white beard is Pastor Burke), and the latest installment of his feats of recollection is his describing to us various, specific ornaments from the big tree.
For me, it's not the two days' setting up that is the issue so much as the two days' taking down. So for now, we have stockings, the 18" tree, and seasonal kitchen towels and stove element covers. Is that enough?
Oh... why stockings? Well, because very soon we may be honorarily Dutch, and the stocking tradition is Dutch! Did you know that? Consider the following from historian George Grant (yes, that means that today is Christmas--Merry Christmas!):
The popular cultural representation of St. Nicholas as Father Christmas or Santa Claus, though drawing on a number of such legends, was based primarily on the Dutch custom of giving children presents--slipping fruits, nuts, and little toys into shoes or stockings drying along the warm hearthside--on his feast day, December 6. Throughout the rest of Europe during the middle ages, that day was marked by festively decorating homes and by a sumptuous feast that interrupted the general fasting of Advent. And in Scandanavia it was celebrated as a day of visitation, when the elders of all the remote country churches would bundle themselves in their thick furs and drive their sleighs laden with gift pastries through the snowy landscape to every home within the parish.
