I see that he has taken the liberty of blogging at my site in my absence.  Go figure.  He fed me a rationale during one of our now-quite-brief phone calls, since he signed up for a new cell plan that has no free off-peak minutes.  I didn’t get it.  I don’t think he realizes that he has more readers on ArmsMerchant than I have here.  They show up on the tracker as “guest”, and so he gets fewer comments than I do.  Ah, well….

I’m at the Willow Library, watching the clock so I can get back on the road in time to make my optometrist appointment.  I’m exhausted, had a grueling water run yesterday, was weakening from CFS before we had all the buckets filled.  I splashed water in my face, always more clumsy when fatigued.  In trying to clean it off my glasses before it froze there, I broke the soft plastic cushion on one nose-piece, brittle as it was from the cold.  My optical prescription had been getting increasingly more out-of-date and out of focus, so I took the broken nose piece as a sign it was time to get new glasses.

When we got home and Doug had unloaded all the water, I noticed the wet on the kitchen floor and put down newspaper (where did that mop go!?!) to soak it up, and soon the paper was more than soaked.  That didn’t seem right, if it had only been the usual overflow and tracked-in snow-melt, so I started trying to see where the water was coming from.

It took a while.  There was no water collected in the bottom of the cabinet, so I assumed that one of the buckets on the floor in front of it was leaking.  Nope.  Finally, I noticed that one bucket which was on top of another in the cabinet was leaking, and the water was dripping from the edge of the lower bucket’s lid, so that the drips fell outside the cabinet.  It was cracked about halfway across its bottom, and spewed water across the floor as it lifted it into a dishpan that was too small to contain all the water.  A second pan took care of that, and four old towels took care of the spill.

The clock says it’s time to go.  I may be able to reserve a computer for an hour this evening at the Wasilla Library, but will need to check my email… this time, I came straight here to blog, of course.  Gotta keep those priorities straight, don’t I?

Christmas Eve at Felony Flats

Greyfox again–SuSu’s comp is still in the shop.  The area where I live is cruelly known as Felony Flats by the local NIMBYs.  It consists of an unpaved and ungreened strip maybe a klick long, consisting  of storage units–some of which are inhabited–and cabins, some of which are quite large and luxurious, renting for $800 a month.  Thing is, the denizens tend to be an unsavory lot–many are dopers and meth freaks, ex-cons, and professional loonies (that is, folks subsisting on SSI Mental Disability).  The landlord–who is a genuinely nice guy, even-tempered, a devoted family man AND a former Iditarod musher (Greyfox removes fedora reverently)–has his hands tied by Alaska’s rental laws, which favor the tenants–even the worthless, doped-out deadbeat white trash.

Anyway, this Christmas Eve, I had just gotten off my bed where I had been reading, accompanied by three of my five cats, having decided to finally clean out the litter box.  I saw a young woman bearing a large fancy shopping bag heading towards my cabin.  She looked harmless, so I didn’t go for my gun.  (Note to fellow gun nuts–my gun du jour is a snub-nosed .38 special, an  off-brand model, which I keep loaded with Hydra-shoks–steel-cored jacketed hollow-points favored by military and law enforcement for their stopping power–getting hit with one of these babies is roughly like having a small car fall on you.  But I digress.)

Anyway, she held out the bag to me and said “This is for you.  Merry Christmas.”

Never at a loss for words, I cleverly replied, “Um, er–my goodness.  Thank you very much.”

There was a small votive candle and an unsigned card (it just said “In memory of the baby Jesus–Merry Christmas”), which included a pack of matches for lighting the candle, plus a number of wrapped packages, including a jigsaw puzzle (which Kathy will get), a bag of M&Ms (which Doug will get), cocoa mix (also for Doug), plus beef summer sausage, canned mandarin orange segments, fancy snack crackers and cheese dip–stuff like that. I was touched and moved.

Evidently, not all of the neighbors hate us poor folk who live at Felony Flats.

I’m not sleeping much.  I noticed when I was going through last
year’s entries for the Countdown to Christmas that I wasn’t sleeping
much then, either.  That’s the prime value of a journal, after
all:  to refresh the memory.  Otherwise, there’s precious
little use in writing down the little details of daily life.

 Then I remembered that as a child I tended to sleep little around this time of
year.  My mother always attributed it to the excitement of
“waiting for Santa.”  Never mind that I hadn’t believed in Santa
since I was a preschooler and there were few surprises in the packages
under the tree.  “Any explanation is better than none,” was my
mother’s style, unlike my father who would get out a dictionary or
encyclopedia or head for the library when confronted with inexplicable
facts.

 I recalled, too, that every summer
solstice Doug and I both do at least one all-nighter.  It makes
more sense then when there is no night, in the sense of a dark period
of time.  I habitually chalk it up to my being accustomed to going
down when the sun does, but that explanation makes no sense for
Doug.  He goes to sleep whenever the urge strikes him — whenever
and wherever.  It’s one of the little quirks about him that
probably wouldn’t be so endearing to anyone but his mother.

Doug’s sleep pattern is as disrupted  right now as my own is,
too.  In our mutually sleep-deprived state, we have been spending
an inordinate amount of time discussing who got up when, how long one
or the other has been up, etc.  “Was I up already when you got
up?”  “Have I been sleeping very long?”  “7:23??  Is
that AM or PM?”

I had been up about twenty-two hours when Greyfox called today to tell
me that he had cancelled his trip up the valley for a dental
appointment, due to icy roads.  An hour or two before that, I’d
gotten a little sleepy, but decided it would be less painful to stay
awake than to be awakened when he arrived.  Soon after talking to
him, I ate a snack, had a glass of goat milk, and went to bed.  I
think I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Half an hour later, the phone rang.  I stumbled across the room to
answer the one here by the computer, the cordless phone by my bed
having gone wonky recently.  Greyfox had a question about a
windshield chip, which I couldn’t answer as much because I was
half-asleep as for reasons of general ignorance.

Back in bed, I lay there wakeful for two hours before giving up and
getting up.  That was four hours or so ago.  I think I have
mentioned that I have an uncertain and rather loose relationship with time as this
culture understands it.  Greyfox, the enrolled member of the
Muscogee Nation of Florida, certified redskin and certifiable lunatic
shaman, kids me about running on Indian Time.

I am neither thrilled nor dismayed at the flexibility of time as I
perceive it, and my general aversion to tic-toc reality.  I am
pleased beyond my capacity to articulate it to have the liberty to
indulge it.  Simultaneously as I marvel at the chaotic nature of
Doug’s and my bodies’ responses to the change of seasons, I thank the
Universe and its controllers, including Greyfox, that no more often
than about once or twice a month do I have to make and keep an
appointment.
 
Here at 62 degrees north latitude, today was seven seconds longer than
yesterday.  That interval will grow incrementally longer each day
until June, when the daylength will increase by more than six minutes
daily.  Where you live, are the daylength and its rate of increase
a routine part of weather reports on radio and TV?  Here, they
are.  I don’t recall having heard such things in other places
where I have lived.  Alaskans, however, are intensely interested
in those little facts.  After the summer solstice, though, they
tend not to mention it.  Nobody really wants to know how much
daylight we’re losing during the long and too-quick slide into winter.

On this day last year I focused on the religio-spiritual meaning of the earthly incarnation of the Christos, addressing, among other things (including Vermont Royster’s famous Christmas column), the question:

The two paragraphs below, which I think make an adequate introduction to this topic, are from an earlier post of mine:

We have a generation of children now who are more empathic and
telepathic than their ancestors.  In case you are not already
familiar with the Indigos, I will post some informative links at the
end here.

I have a great deal in common with these younger Indigos.  One
does not have to be a member of that generation to have the
predominately indigo aura and the open Third Eye.  My
twenty-four-year-old son and I, who am sixty-one, came ahead of the
wave.  Sensitives who know both of us have said that he chose me to
be his mother because I had what he needed.

Apparently, what he needed was a lot of love and tolerance, a parent
who would work to protect and guide him, not control him. 
Together, he and I fumbled our way through his public school education,
never able to gain the sort of flexibility and enlightened
responsiveness from the system that he would have needed to gain the
maximum benefit from it.

Doug was quite young when I realized that he would willfully reject
commands when told to do things, but would eagerly apply himself to
tasks that I wanted him to do, if I only thought about them.  I
doubt if many mothers of my generation would pick up so quickly on
their child’s empathic/telepathic ability.  This is the sort of
accommodation that the mothers of the Indigo generation will need to
make if they are to rear sane, productive and fulfilled men and women.

There is a great deal of violence being acted out by Indigos. 
Many of them turn their violence upon themselves, cutting their flesh,
bleeding because they know not what else to do.  This makes sense
when one understands their emotional vulnerability, their psychic
sensitivity, and their high level of spiritual evolution.  That
can be a horrible and volatile combination when it comes under the
influence of our authoritarian, violent, third-eye-blind culture.

I could do a book-length treatise on this subject.  Tonight, I
want to focus on what goes on in the mind of
an empath-telepath when continually subjected to hypocritical
behavior.  We are taught that our elders are our betters and that
they are to be obeyed and emulated.  We are taught that lying is
evil, sinful, wrong and punishable.  Yet we hear lies all the time
from our elders and “betters,” recognize them as lies, know what the
thought is behind the lie, and see the liars honored for their
dishonesty.

A career of three decades as a psychic counselor has revealed to me
that many members of this culture are not as third-eye-blind as they
pretend to be.  They not only recognize the falsity of many if not
all of the “polite fictions” I am going to list here, they knowingly
perpetrate them, being too lazy or cowardly or stupid to stray from the
herd.  I will return to that thought later, to present what I see
as the potential peril inherent in that behavior, but now, the
abbreviated list:

“Excuse me…”

Coming after a little belch or a noisy fart (nobody is going to use
this phrase to acknowledge being the source of a silent but deadly
fart), this one is mostly meaningless and probably only harmful in that
it can convey the impression that such universal and ubiquitous bodily
functions are somehow wrong. 

Coming after someone blows tobacco smoke in one’s face or coughs
without an attempt to cover the cough, it conveys a complete disregard
for the health and safety of the one who is expected to “excuse” the
inexcusable lapse of considerate behavior.

Perhaps the most egregious abuse of that “polite” phrase is the loud
declamation of it as some boorish creep comes shoving through a crowd,
knocking people aside and stepping on toes.   I would prefer
a straightforward, “Coming through!” accompanied by as much fancy
footwork as possible to avoid injuring others.  Even,
“ooooOOGaaah…” would be better in that situation than, “excuse me,”
but when I’m getting my toes trod upon, I’d rather not have my ears
assaulted at the same time.  How about a pleasant little, “beep…
beep,” like the garbage truck does when it’s in reverse?

This may just be my peculiar Indigo disinclination toward taking
orders, or my Virgoan persnicketitiousness over sloppy communication. 
When the accompanying behavior and underlying attitude bespeak an
assumption of privilege and taking of liberties, a few empty
supplicating words are not going to make that any more pleasant to
endure or easy to accept.

“Excuse me,” is also often used with the same gestures and covert meaning as the first sense of, “I’m sorry,” below.

“I’m sorry.”

Said with a tilt of the head to expose an ear, or even a hand lifted
and cupped behind an ear, this one can mean, “Say again!”  It
almost never comes along with a facial expression indicating the
listener feels himself to be at fault for not hearing.  The vibes
usually convey annoyance and the face is scowling when that gesture is
made with those empty words.

At all levels of discourse in this culture, “I’m sorry,” is expected to
let the speaker off the hook for something he has done.  Sorry
don’t cut no ice.  Sorry doesn’t fix anything.  Saying it
insults the person who has been injured or wronged. 

More egregiously unjust than the simple fact of its being a meaningless
copout, is that there are people who self-righteously take offense if
someone refuses to accept such an inadequate and hypocritical
“apology.”  Plaintively, they say, “but I said I was sorry,” as if it means something.  A true apology in the old sense was supposed to explain or justify something. 

The most horrid abuse of “I’m sorry,” the empty pseudo-apology, is the
official sort in which governments and institutions admit that they or
their predecessors did grievous harm, but that they intend to make no
material reparations for it.  “Here,” they say, “take these two
words and go away.”

“Why?”

Here, I am not referring to the plaintive questions that seek a deeper
meaning or higher purpose to some natural catastrophe or accidental
occurrence.  We all know that the people who ask why in such
situations are only seeking the consolation of an assurance that God
works in mysterious ways and there must be some deeper meaning or
higher purpose to it all.  That’s a subject for an entire other
rant.  I have given that issue my most patient and tolerant
treatment here.

I’m talking about what my mentor Dick Sutphen refers to as “unevolved
why questions.”  One type of them is usually aimed at people we
feel have somehow let us down.  “Why were you late?”  “Why
don’t you love me any more?”  “Why can’t you…?”  “Why
aren’t you…?”  Dick has a succinct all-purpose answer to
them:  “Because I am a terrible person, and I don’t deserve to
live.”  In our household, that one breaks the tension and breaks
us all up in laughter every time someone uses it.  It really
serves the morons right for asking such stupid questions.

Of course, nobody who asks why in those circumstances is looking for
the true reasons.  Often in those cases, there are no logical
reasons.  People who ask why just don’t want to come out and say
that they are aggrieved or offended, which leads to my next polite
fiction, which is often combined with “Why?” for a classic one-two
punch.

“Just curious…”

This one is a pusillanimous copout for when someone is being judgmental
but is too insecure to come right out and say they disapprove of
another’s behavior.  “I’m just curious why you’re beating your
wife.”  “Excuse me, but I was wondering… Why are you wearing my
good shirt to change the oil in your car? …just curious.”

This culture has many similar terms and phrases that are used only when they are not
true.  When true, such things go without saying.  The only
time someone thinks of saying these things is when they wish to invoke
them as excuses, to claim some unearned honor, or to deny some true
accusation.  These include statements such as, “I’m an honest
person,” or “I’m a spiritual person,” or “Women find me irresistible; I
get laid six times every day.”  The ones I’m most familiar with
are of the type, “I don’t have a drinking problem,” or “I’m not
addicted; I can quit whenever I want to.”

“With all due respect…”

Of course, even the most dimwitted, third-eye-blind moron on the planet
can read the subtext in this one.  The person saying this is
getting ready to say something offensive or insulting to or about
someone for whom they have no
respect.  Since in their minds no respect is due, but they know at
the same time that respect is expected, they let themselves off the
hook by invoking the word “respect” without feeling or showing any of
the real thing.  Clever, eh?

This doesn’t even address the major issue that in our culture when
someone says respect what they most often mean is deference, a polite
and often false show of respect.  That’s one of the little semantic floaters I have mentioned more than once here, I’m sure.

“…no offense.”

I could have put this one up there with “…just curious,” I
suppose.  Nobody says this unless they are being knowingly and
deliberately offensive.  This is just a face-saving way of saying,
“Yes, sucker, I’m pissing on your shoes, but you’d be out of line if
you punch me in the face for it.”  That’s the arrogant version of
it.  You know the scene, the sneer, the “I dare you to take
offense,” attitude.

The other way this one is used is the cowardly copout, the compensatory
cleanup phrase uttered after someone with a little too much to drink
has blurted out the unpleasant and offensive truth.  If your
memory is like mine, you can probably hear the phrase echoing in your
head, shlightly shlurred.

The dangerous, socially destructive impact of all this
institutionalized hypocrisy in our culture is, for a person with a
strong ego and healthy self-respect, an irretrievable loss of trust and
respect for elders and authority figures.  For those who
internalize the conflicts, it can lead to self-injury or suicide. 
For some, it leads to outbreaks of violence such as the wave of school
shootings that has in turn led to security guards and metal detectors
in schools.  When what we hear is at variance with what
we know, it can drive us insane.  In the best-case scenario, it
simply destroys our trust and respect for those who engage in the
practice.

In my practice, my psychic counseling practice, I can easily
distinguish an Indigo client when one comes along.  They
appreciate my blunt forthrightness.  They often expect the usual
ingratiating and patronizing bullshit and are pleasantly amazed to get
some frankness from someone of my generation.

Just in case some of the larger and deeper ramifications of this matter
have not occurred to all my readers, I’ll insult the intelligence of
the rest of you by stating the obvious.  We are evolving into a
telepathic species.  At this cusp, in this transitional time, it
behooves us to begin to behave as if everyone could read our minds
because there are enough of us out here who can sense the hypocrisy
behind the empty words already.

As you lie to us and to each other (and most unfortunately of all, to
yourselves), sure, you make things easier for yourselves, you think,
in the short run.  You make yourself seem better than you are, or
you weasel out of some selfish or ill-considered action, but in the
long run, in your helpless old age, you are not going to enjoy living
in a society where the majority of its members are the violent,
enraged, insane products of the cognitive dissonance you produced.

Excuse me.  With all due respect… I was just wondering. 
Why don’t you pull your collective head out of your metaphorical ass
so you can see what’s going on? 

No offense… just curious.

I’m sorry.

Stumble It!

indigochild.com

Parenting Indigo and Crystal Children

Empaths and Telepaths Network

The Pain of Being Indigo

On Children, Violence and Physical Dynamics:  An Indigo’s Perspective

My semantic quandary…

I have intended for some time now to post this recipe.  I am
perplexed over more than just what to call these things.  Every
time I start thinking about how to explain why I eat the things, I get
stuck.

Since sugar, cream cheese, and wheat flour are not on my diet…

Because I am not allowed to eat certain foods…

So, you see, there are some foods I don’t eat.  They include
wheat, unfermented cow’s milk (yogurt is okay for me), sugar, honey,
and lots of other things of no interest to anyone but me, since
everyone’s biochemistry is unique.  The wheat, dairy and sugar are
the biggies, and are things often not recommended for diabetics, people
with celiac or Krohn’s disease, people with chronic systemic candidiasis, people in my blood group (A), etc.

Making cheese blintzes without wheat, cream cheese, or sugar isn’t just
challenging.  It’s impossible.  A cheese blintz is a thin,
soft wheat crepe wrapped around a sweet cream cheese filling, or you might think of it as a sweet burrito. 
Thus:  not-cheese not-blintzes, my new favorite food.

I start with my homemade pancake mix, which includes several
gluten-free flours, usually garbanzo, fava bean and sorghum, but also
rice and/or buckwheat and others sometimes.  I throw them together
with a proportional amount of non-fat dry milk (for some unknown reason
the MRT says this is okay for me, even though other forms of cow’s milk
aren’t), a small amount of xanthan gum to replace the gluten as a
binding ingredient, just enough salt, baking soda, and baking powder,
and Splenda* instead of sugar for sweetness.  I whisk them all up
together in large batches and store the whole mess away in an airtight container in a
cool dry place until I want to make pancakes.

When I’m ready to make pancakes, I scoop out the right amount of mix,
add enough eggs, oil and water to make a semi-thin batter, and a splash
of bottled lemon juice to activate the baking soda for leavening. 
Then I stir the batter until it is ready to bake on the griddle. 
If you can’t cook that way, just find a suitable recipe and make
substitutions.

The filling is much simpler, just plain old fashioned full-fat yogurt
and vanilla extract,
sweetened to taste with Splenda* .  I use full-fat and not nonfat
or low-fat because the milk fat in there lowers the glycemic
index.  Low-fat and nonfat milk or yogurt are simply too glycemic
for me.  My favorite yogurt is Mountain High
Original Style, and I buy it by the half-gallon tub, not just because I
eat a lot of it, but because it gives me an easy way to approximate
“yogurt cheese.”  There is a way to turn plain yogurt into a
semi-reasonable approximation of cream cheese, by lining a strainer
with cheesecloth, filling it with yogurt and leaving it in the fridge
until the liquid drips out of the yogurt. 

What I do is scoop the
first servings out of the middle of the tub, leaving a “well” all the
way to the bottom, into which the sour liquid seeps, leaving the
cream-cheesy solids around the edges.  It goes on my baked
potatoes as a sub for sour cream and into my not-blintzes as
not-creamcheese.  I pour the liquid that accumulates in the well
off into my pancake batter (instead of lemon juice sometimes) or other
things where it is suitable.

That is really unnecessary if you don’t have time to let your yogurt
seep or you don’t want to buy it by the half-gallon.  The moist
yogurt just as it comes from the cup is okay, so long as it is PLAIN
yogurt, not the sugary stuff with fruit added.  If you’re going to
eat that stuff, you might as well make real cheese blintzes.

*Splenda update: 
When I started using Splenda as a sugar replacement, I reported that I
was addicted to it.  It was true at the time, but since then I
have learned that my body was just responding to the sweetness as if it
were sugar.  That’s probably a neurochemical mechanism similar to
the conditioned response known as “needle flash” or “needle rush” that
IV drug users or former IV drug users get when they have blood drawn
for lab work.

Both of those phenomena wear off after a while, when the inert stimuli
(non-caloric sweetener and empty hypodermic syringe) repeatedly fail to
pack the anticipated neurochemical punch.  I had started out using
1/3 of a little paper packet of Splenda (sucralose) to sweeten a cup of
tea, finding it cloying after a couple of years off sugar.  Very
quickly after that, I had escalated to using two or three packets to
sweeten the same tea.

Then, I started looking for things to sweeten, slicing fruit and
sprinkling sucralose over it and such, until at the last extremity I
was ripping the little envelopes open and sprinkling the stuff right on
my tongue.  Gradually my subconscious mind became used to the idea
that the stuff just tasted sweet and didn’t give me any sugar
rushes.  I don’t put it on fruit now, and have gone back to a
single packet where I had been using three.

Recently, when Greyfox mentioned Splenda in passing while ranting on
his blog about a local big box store’s sleazy practices and stupid
setup, the people who commented zeroed in on it with lots of warnings
about the toxicity of it.  I haven’t read those comments, but
Greyfox said they cited websites with info about the dangers. 
Before I started using sucralose, I checked it out.  So did
Greyfox, who checked sucralose out and started using it before I did.

Most of the sites that say negative things about it take their
information from Dr. Mercola.  Based on what I have read of his
writings, Joseph Mercola DO is possibly pathologically obsessed and
misguided, and probably opportunistic, preying on people’s fears for
his own profit.  He has been officially warned by the FDA to cease
his misleading statements, and he features prominently in the alerts
from Quackwatch.  Of course, in all fairness it must be said,
Quackwatch isn’t completely reputable and reliable, either.

I bought an ebook Mercola was selling and then got a refund when I
found it to be about half bullshit and the rest common knowledge. 
It reminded me of the literary reviewer who said that a certain work
was both good and original, but unfortunately the good part wasn’t
original and the original part wasn’t good.

Sucralose is made by replacing one hydroxyl group from a molecule of
sugar with two atoms of chlorine.  That is the sole fact upon
which Mercola bases his dire warnings about its toxicity.  
Chlorine is toxic.   It is also necessary for most life on
this planet.   NaCl, sodium chloride, common table salt, is
the primary electrolyte for our nervous systems.   I know of
no scientific study that has shown any significant danger from
sucralose consumption thus far.

It will be years before enough is known about long-term effects of
Splenda to make any definitive statements.  Since I already know
the deadly effects of sugar and the sadness of never having anything
sweet to eat, I’m willing to play guinea pig on this one.  It’s a
helluva lot safer than I was when I was working as the lab rat testing
new batches for the meth chemist.

There are eight more days until Christmas.
In last year’s countdown to Christmas,
on this day I took on
THE THREE WISE MEN.

I’ve had a difficult day today.  First, I fell in the kitchen, one
of those sudden onsets of stumbling and fumbling that are part of this
damned disease.  Then a little later on it hit me how severe this
current sudden flareup is, when I realized that due to the brain fog I
had forgotten to eat breakfast and tend the woodstove when I got
up.  My blood sugar and the heat in the house are both things I’d
prefer not to forget.

Later
in the day, Greyfox called to ask me to call Cellular One for him
because he had been unable to retrieve his voicemail messages or to use
the keypad to respond to automated menus at his bank and his knife
wholesalers.  After listening to him vent his anger and
frustration, then spending a lot of time on hold and in conversation
with a man at their customer care center (sounds a lot nicer than it
feels), and then waiting for Greyfox’s nightly 9 PM phone call to relay
to him what the man told me, even now his technical problems remain
unsolved.  He will need to take his cell phone and go to a pay
phone tomorrow and try again to get the problem fixed.

In the midst of that, I learned that someone who took exception to
something I had written here, who is blocked from commenting directly,
wasn’t content with blogging her (anonymous/pseudonynomous) heart out
about the situation.  She went around to people who read and
comment here, and in vulgar terms “invited” (commanded is more like it)
them to go read her blog. If you were one who caught the flak meant
for me, you have my sympathy, and you probably have a tiny clue to why
I blocked her.  Her issues are really with her brother and not
with me, but apparently she doesn’t realize that.  She seems to
believe that I have some mysterious power to compel him to do things
against his will.  If I’d had that power, I’d have used it to get
him to stop drinking or to go away and leave me alone, long ago.

**sighs as she puts that behind her**  However, right now I am
very glad and grateful that he didn’t listen to me when I tried to make
him go back to Pennsylvania, or to stay there on any of his visits
“back home.”  I don’t know if this will make sense to many or any
of my readers, but now that we’re not living under the same roof,
Greyfox and I have a great marriage.  He is not a demonstrative
person except in demonstrations of frustration and rage.  When it
comes to affection, though, he has ways sometimes of showing it. 
Occasionally, even, he will put it into words, which are all the more
precious for their scarcity.

I
am also grateful for the Christmas music that has been in the
background throughout this difficult day.  It has lightened my
mood immensely.  Yesterday as I worked on the Spirit of Christmas
blog, I decided to tune my radio to a different station. 
Ordinarily, I keep it on KSKA, the NPR affiliate in Anchorage, where it
is news and interviews all day, with high quality Alaska-based
“magazine” programs like Encounters from KCAW in Sitka and AK
from APRN, the Alaska Public Radio Network, as well as national
programs.   Most of their music programming is on weekends,
and is a mix of mostly folkish and world music that I generally enjoy.

Thinking about Christmas reminded me that the other radio station I
often listen to, the one I keep my car radio tuned to, would be playing
some Christmas tunes in with the smooth jazz programming.  I found
that station, KNIK “The Breeze,” during my first dark winter in
Anchorage 32 years ago.  As the tuner slid past its frequency, I
caught a Chrismas song and stopped there.  At the time, their
format was “adult contemporary.”  I like their jazzier new format
better, and I’m glad they didn’t choose to drop the mix of Christmas
music at this time of year.  Each year, on the day before
Christmas, they go to all Christmas music, and I’m usually tuned in.

I am fully aware of why I like Christmas music so much.  My
motives are complex.  On the one hand, some of the greatest
composers of all time have created many of my favorites.  On the
other hand, we’re talking devotional music here ( unless we’re talking Frosty the Snowman or Granny Got Run over by a Reindeer )
and it was created to uplift the spirit, by those whose spirits were
focused on the Great Spirit.  On the other hand (I have as many
rhetorical hands as I need, thank you very much) the tunes I like best
were the soundtrack to the best days and months of the best years of my
life:  the Christmases of  my early childhood.

It should come as no surprise, then, that most of my favorites are oldies.  One notable exception to that is The Little Drummer Boy. 
If you think of that one as an oldie, it just illustrates what an oldie
I am.  I was already married the first time I heard it. 

I know that tastes in music differ just as other sorts of taste
differ.  I have listened to criticism of that song from more than
one person, when what I was trying to listen to was the song. 
Being a penurious percussionist myself, I am predisposed to identify
with the little drummer who has nothing to give but his rhythm. 
That… and it’s a good rhythm, too.

I guess my second favorite version of The Little Drummer Boy is Johnny
Cash’s,
though I like the duet of Bing Crosby and David Bowie, too.  I’ll
reveal my true all-time favorite before I’m done here.  See if you
can guess… no peeking!  It’s Christmastime, “no peeking” is the
rule.

From among the true classics of Christmas, I have three
favorites:  O Holy Night, The First Noel, and O Come All Ye
Faithful.  The first two were on my school chorus’s Christmas
program when I was in sixth grade.  I missed the program because I
was ill, and when I came back to school my “friends” told me how
relieved they and the choral director had been.  I have a voice
that carries, but what it carries isn’t a tune. 

The best version I’ve ever heard of O Come All Ye Faithful, wasn’t
that.  It was Adeste Fideles, the Latin version, sung by some
choir, maybe the Vienna Boys’ Choir or the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir.

Music that was popular during my early childhood can really bring back
fond and happy memories.  Those songs include Bing Crosby’s version of White Christmas, Doris Day singing Mel Torme’s The Christmas Song (written the year I was born), and the Glenn Miller Orchestra doing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

The memories conjured by some later tunes are not so sweet but possibly
more poignant.  The first time I heard Elvis sing Blue Christmas,
it didn’t sound quite right.  He did it a lot differently than
Ernest Tubb did.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 
Once I got used to the Elvis version, it became my favorite, though I cry almost every time I hear it.  I
love every Christmas song Elvis ever recorded.

There is no doubt in my mind that Willie Nelson’s version of Frosty the Snowman
is better than the original by Gene Autry, too.  It’s also better
than Jimmy Durante’s better-known version.  Willie and Elvis can
do no wrong, as far as I’m concerned.

I have to say, though, that despite my loving the oldies and having so
many fond memories associated with them, the Christmas music I most
enjoy listening to now are by nouveau flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert
and New Age musicians such as Mannheim Steamroller.  It is
Mannheim Steamroller’s Little Drummer Boy I like best of all.

What is your favorite Christmas music?

On this day last year, I posted The Legend of Santa Claus.

I see that I’m not the only one concerned about the Christmas Spirit:

I
first heard of Christmas spirit from my mother.  To her, it was
something she got into, or didn’t get into.  The same
Christmastime at which I concluded that there is no Santa Claus (that
story comes later in my 12 days), when I was about three years old, I
recall her saying of the amplified carrillon playing carols in the
streets of San Jose, and the decorations everywhere, that they really
got her into the Christmas spirit.

From what she said, the way she said it, and the ambience in which she
said it, I inferred that Christmas spirit was joyous excitement,
pleasure at standing in line waiting to sit on Santa’s lap, browsing in
the lingerie and cosmetics departments, trying on clothes, spritzing
odd assortments of sample perfumes behind our ears, sneezing, buying
fudge from the candy counter in the big department store and eating it
on the bus on the way home.

After my father died on the
first of December when I was seven years old, Mama would say every year
that she just couldn’t get into the Christmas spirit anymore.   I easily got into the Christmas spirit with Mama during those first few
years that I participated in her Christmas shopping.  I also fell
into the December blues along with her after Daddy died.  As years
passed, I gave up on Christmas spirit.  When it finally came back
to me in the 1970s, Spirit had a CAPITAL ESS.

I said it came back
to me.  Properly, I suppose, I came back to it.  Spirit was
always there, I just looked for it in the wrong places.  It has
nothing to do with fudge or allergies to perfume, and very little to do
with department store santas.

In my life, the main difference between the Spirit of Christmas and
my
everyday attitude is that Christmas is accompanied by dark days, cold
weather, special music, and bittersweet memories.  Christmas also brings extra challenges
as I see others indulge in sweets and treats forbidden to me, but that has nothing to do with the Spirit.

There is no more urge at this time of
year than at any other, to give.   I give whatever I have to
give, to whomever appears to need it, whenever I can.  Much of my
giving is done right here on Xanga, through these blogs and the readings I do at
KaiOaty’s site.  I am available 24/7 by phone to
counsel, console, disillusion or admonish any drunk, dope fiend or
other normal person in need.  If the rehab ranch ever decides to
reinstate the van to the Thursday night NA meetings, I’ll be back there
as a volunteer, driving it.  Given my state of physical health
and dearth of material resources, it’s the best I can do.

My regular readers know that my son Doug runs on a non-standard
daylength.  On the planet he comes from, their days are longer
than ours, so each day he wakes later and goes to sleep later still
than on the day before.  Nothing odd about that after twenty-odd
years, actually twenty-four decidedly odd years.  He has been like
that for as long as I’ve known him.

I, however, used to run on an ordinary 24-hour day, even though in my
twenties I tended to be more comfortable sleeping during the daylight
hours.  Alaskan winters cured me of that, and now I generally
prefer to get all the daylight I can.  I started staying up later
at night during our two-week cold snap after Thanksgiving, and got into
some crazy pattern similar to Doug’s, staying up later each successive
“night” – actually mornings for more than a week now.

After finally getting to sleep around 7 AM a few days ago, I had
started trying to reverse the pattern and get to bed earlier each
night.  That made sense while the weather was warmer, up around
the freezing point for a while.  Now it is back down near zero,
and I’m wondering if it’s not better for me to just stay on the shift
opposite to Doug’s to keep the fire hot and my houseplants alive.

---

I condone everything… or nothing.

Ren expressed righteous indignation at the thought that I was condoning
vandalism.  I assumed I knew the meaning of the word, pretty much
the opposite of “condemn”, but I looked it up anyway, just to be
sure.  I found it in several dictionaries.  By some
definitions, such as “forgive” and “accept,” I condone
everything.  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who
trespass against us,” is more than empty words to me.

In other senses, such as “pardon,” I condone nothing.  Pardoning
implies judgement and I don’t judge.  I neither condemn nor
condone in that sense.

I accepted the vandalism at my old place, Elvenhurst.  I made no
attempt to discover who committed it, nor had any desire to know. 
I accepted the responsibility for leaving the place unattended. 
When scroungers made off with some valued keepsakes of mine, and
Charley saw them in their home and brought them back to me, I didn’t
ask him who they were, and he didn’t volunteer the information.  I
don’t need to know who I’m forgiving, in order to forgive.

When I found my antique Christmas ornaments scattered in the yard by
scroungers and vandals, I picked them up and brought them here for
safekeeping, glad that the vandalism had been done in dry weather and
that I’d gotten there before things were ruined.

Going to my old home saddens me because of the library for which there
is no room here, the gardens now gone to weeds, and all the lost time
and work gone into that place, now gone to waste.  Finding that
people have been there taking things is less troubling to me than
finding things destroyed, but neither of those things is as troubling
as the simple fact of my inability to live in and care for two places
at once.

---

I have enjoyed reading the comments about different people’s styles of gift shopping and giving.  Zvanoizu‘s
practices sound a lot like mine:  frugality dictated by economics;
and the focus on the kids and immediate family, with special, personal
“gifts that keep on giving” all year.   Sandcastles‘s
husband gives the sort of idiosyncratic gifts I tend to appreciate
most, and which I also tend to give because such services are
affordable for me.  ZashiaQSharr
shops early and often, and enjoys seeing the pleasure her gifts bring,
as I do.  She prefers getting handcrafted gifts, and hates
toiletries, as I do, too.  Flaminredhead
says:  “I enjoy the crowds, the lines, the chaos…”  I enjoy
it, too, when I am people-watching and not trying to get something
done.  There are more of them worth sharing, especially the ones
from ItzaRoos, goddessfourwinds, and the long serious one about the true meaning of the holidays from flaminredhead, here.

During the years when Doug was growing up here in this spread-out but
socially warm and close neighborhood, we seldom had much money at all
and never any to spare.  I often did have surplus produce from my
gardens and greenhouses, seedlings in spring for setting out after
frost, and abundant tomatoes, zucchini, kale, chives, rhubarb, and
herbs in their season.  I gave my surplus to my neighbors, so that
it wouldn’t go to waste and because I like sharing.  From time to
time, even now, someone shows up with part of a moose, a chunk of
salmon or halibut, and reminds me of a giant zucchini I’d given them,
or a bundle of sweet marjoram and thyme.

That feeling that getting requires some giving in return troubles
me.  I don’t like the idea that those who receive my gifts feel as
if they need to reciprocate.  For that reason, I used to wait
until Christmas eve to deliver my holiday gifts to the neighbors. 
I would collect baskets throughout the year, from dumpsters at
eastertime, from yard sales and thrift shops, and fill them with
cookies, jars of homemade salsa or spaghetti sauce, etc., and bake pies
or cakes for the neighbors.  I made it a point to know who liked
what, and Doug and I would do the rounds just after dark the night
before Christmas, pulling his sled full of fresh-baked goodies, late
enough that nobody was going to rush out and buy me a gift in
“exchange” for my kitchen bounty.

The first Christmas that Greyfox was here, he was miserable.  I
have written about this previously and there are links to some of those
entries in the left module.  Greyfox was scared and he was
uncomfortable.  He had never lived this close to the edge. 
He had always had money and creature comforts and plenty of status
symbols and signs of conspicuous consumption to make him feel good
about himself.  He cried a lot those first few years here, and
that first winter he cried because we didn’t have enough money to buy
gifts for his mother and sisters.

I thoroughly misunderstood his motivations.  I thought he wanted
to give them gifts.  He just wanted to have enough money to buy
them some gifts.  He and the older of his two sisters had a
longstanding competition, trying to outdo each other in the costliness
of their gifts to their mother and each other. 

I made a total fool of myself.  I questioned Greyfox closely about
his family’s preferences, and I went through the house, searched
through all my treasures, and found gifts that I felt were suitable for
his mother, each sister, the niece, and both brothers-in-law.  One
of his sisters, he said, always wears the color lavender.  I had a
brand-new t-shirt in that color, commemorating the summer of cleanup of
the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which had been given to me for working in
the t-shirt booth at the Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival.  I gave
some of my much-valued Alaskan gold-nugget and garnet jewelry to the
other sister.  I don’t recall everything I came up with, but there
was something for everyone.

I wrapped each one specially, uniquely, beautifully, as only a
perfectionistic Virgo can do.  I used some antique gift wrap, some
handcrafted papers, silk wrappings for some, real satin ribbons, things
I’d salvaged and hoarded.  I packed them carefully into a big box
so that the bows wouldn’t be crushed, and mailed them in time to arrive
for Christmas.  We got the report from the elder of the
sisters.  She said everyone gasped when they opened the box and
started taking out the presents.  She said they were wrapped so
beautifully that the cheap little gifts inside were a big
disappointment.

For a few years following that fiasco, we got some cash gifts from them
each year, in diminishing amounts.  The year that Greyfox made his
last visit to Pennsylvania (2001, and he says it will be his LAST trip
out there forever), he took along some handmade rag dolls I’d gotten in
a trade for some jewelry I made, as gifts  for his sister’s little
twin daughters.  A year or two later, upon learning that the twins
were very into Barbie but couldn’t find any bedding for their Barbie
house, I cut up some old thrift shop blouses and hemmed them as silk
sheets, and made woolen blankets and terry cloth towels for two
Barbies’ beds and baths. 

Other than that, I don’t bother with gifts for his family any
more.  My family understands, I hope, that there may be
occasional, sporadic and spontaneous gifts from me when something
appropriate comes my way, but that when my household routinely goes
without things like dental care and new glasses, I don’t feel right
about using our scarce resources to shop for gifts.  The neighbors
don’t get the sled-load of goodies any longer, because few if any of
them would appreciate the sugar-free, gluten-free stuff I eat now, and
I don’t trust myself with a kitchen full of white flour, white sugar
and all that.

And that reminds me of this:

It’s
not a pretty pie, but Doug and I like these custard pies so much that
between us we can put one away in an hour or two.  Need I add that
they are nutritious?   They are quick and easy, too, since I
quit going for the flaky butter crust and switched to more healthful
and easier to make crust with vegetable oil.  The essential fatty
acids in the olive oil catalyze with the cholesterol in the eggs to
produce better nervous system function instead of arterial plaque.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Prepare the custard first:

Beat together:
2 cups milk (I use reconstituted non-fat dry milk if I don’t have enough goat milk for this.)
3 eggs
1/3 cup Splenda (or sugar, if you can handle its glycemic effect and the addictive qualities of it)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (ethyl vanillin is nasty, toxic stuff)
1/4 teaspoon salt

Set it aside while you make the crust.

In a 9-inch pie pan, preferably a deep one, stir together with a fork:
1/2 cup garbanzo and fava bean flour (The only source I’ve found for this is BobsRedMill.)
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum (to hold it together – it will still be grainy and crumbly anyhow)

When the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed, whisk together:
1/3 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons cold milk

Pour the liquid over the flours in the pie pan and mix lightly with a
fork until all flour is moistened.  Then press the crust evenly
over the sides and bottom of the pan.

Prick the crust with a fork to release steam that would deform it, and
bake at 450 degrees for “about ten minutes” (that’s what the old recipe
says – 8 minutes works for me).

Turn the oven heat down to 325 degrees F., and pull the rack out far
enough to pour the custard mixture into the half-baked crust, then bake
for another 35 minutes or so at 325.

---

Almost done now – just this one thing more:

Four kittens in a pile alongside my legs in Couch Potato Heaven, by the light of the PS2 monitor.

Then, along came fat old Muffin and settled down right in the middle of
the kitten pile.  I got Doug to turn on the overhead light for
this one.

This has belatedly become my prescient entry in the weekly_Photo_Challenge sponsored by CountryCleveland. 
I didn’t know when I posted this that “Christmas/Seasonal-close-up”
would be this week’s theme.  At least, I didn’t consciously know
it.

There
were some informative responses to yesterday’s two blogs.  I asked
people to tell me if they shop for and give Christmas gifts with joy, and several
people did.  What I noticed about the ones who enjoy it was that
they tend to do their Christmas shopping all year and avoid the frantic
crowds. 

I often wonder at the motivations of those who wait until December to
find gifts for the people in their lives.  Could it be that
they’re not too sure that the people they care for in January or July
will still be important to them by December?

How’s this for a way to shake up an ex-lover:  show up around
Christmas after the passion has cooled, with a gift you bought when the
fever was hot.  Just explain that even though he no longer has the
key to your heart, he still deserves his gift.  He’d probably be
startled, but after he got used to the idea that it wasn’t some sort of
ploy, he’d be likely to be pleased… if the gift was an appropriate
choice in the first place.

Doug and I had some enlightening conversation about yesterday’s blogs
and the comments to them.  He noticed that some people say they
“disagree” with me on issues where neither he nor I could see that I
had stated any opinion.

We kicked that one around a bit.  I said that I had noticed that
when I report facts flatly and straight, some people appear to think
that I hold an opinion contrary to theirs.  I often get comments
that boil down to, “well done,” or “interesting,” reporting, but almost
never does anyone infer an opinion from my reporting and say they agree
with it.  Lots of contras to my unstated and non-existent opinions, but virtually no pros.

I
stated the thought that maybe they were disagreeing with my facts, but
if so they never present any rebuttals or counter-arguments.  Doug
suggested that maybe they are just using me as a foil.  Then he
grinned that crooked smile that’s the image of his dad’s and
said,  “…but arguing with you is like chewing on that foil.”

Maybe he’s right, or maybe the ones who think they disagree with me assume that if I don’t take a stand for
the values and opinions they hold, I must hold contrary values or
opinions.  The values I do hold and state are central to who I
am.  These are concepts such as honesty and truthfulness, creative
expression, practicality and productivity.  I get few arguments
about them.  LuckyStars did argue in favor of lying to children during last year’s countdown to Xmas, but she’s exceptional in many ways.

I notice many people writing and saying that things “should” or
“shouldn’t” be one way or another.  I don’t think in those
terms.  What is, is.  I know that many people infer value
judgements relative to mental illnesses.  Some people even extend
their judgements to those with purely physical disfigurement or
impairment.  I recognize and even diagnose such impairments, but
think of them in terms of the limitations and challenges they present,
the adaptations they require, and how they may be healed.

In
the case of mental disorders, I’m often aware that something I say may
trigger someone’s insecurity, defensiveness, narcissistic rage or
ingratiating behavior, for example, but I endeavor not to let that
foreknowledge influence me to alter my message to accomodate their
quirks.  There is no therapeutic value in humoring someone’s
neurotic needs.  People with neurotic needs for each other’s
approval and validation tend to do plenty of that sort of accomodation
for each other.  I’m willing to be the odd one out in that
scenario.

I don’t judge the people I observe.  I don’t think of these things
in terms of right and wrong, of should and shouldn’t.  I do think
in terms of relative health, productivity or counterproductivity,
comfort and discomfort, danger and safety, all relative values. 
To me, right and wrong is an oversimplification that often obscures the
reality of what is being judged. 

Last year, I went back over my “Vandalism or Art Criticism” blog
several times trying to understand just what Ren meant when she said
she’d beg to differ and agree to disagree.  I stated only two
things there that could be thought of as opinions.  One, I
expressed the supposition that the guy’s neighbors must hate to see the
season come, knowing that his display will be there again, bigger,
noisier, flashier.  I base that not only on the fact of frequent
vandalism of his display, but on the reported words of some people who
lived nearby.  Maybe Ren would enjoy living across the street from
the amplified carols and flashing lights.  That doesn’t change the
fact that his neighbors say otherwise.  Some of them praised the
vandals.

I
also expressed some sadness at the thought that someone might end up in
jail and a young person might have a criminal record for life because
of a rash reaction to that man’s narcissistic and intrusive
display.  That wasn’t opinion, wasn’t open to agreement or
disagreement, unless you want to dispute my diagnosis of NPD.  I
was expressing my feelings.  If one has feelings that run contrary
to my emotions, it would be more appropriate to express them as
emotions such as, say, righteous indignation at the vandalism and
moralistic satisfaction at the thought of the person who scattered the
pieces of the display having to go to jail for it.  My sadness is
not a matter for agreement or disagreement.  When I’m sad and I
say I’m sad, you can take my word for it.

When I report as I am here on how my thoughts, feelings, and style of
communication differ from those of other people, I am not comparing
myself to them.  I am contrasting.  I am not saying that my
way is better.  I am as I choose to be; I operate in a way that
works for me.

These photos are my Christmas tree.  I won’t have a tree this
year.  I haven’t had a tree since 1989, the Christmas before
Greyfox and I got married.  For his first few years here, he
raised objections to the tree on the grounds of the mess and clutter in
our already crowded little trailer.  After he moved out into his
own trailer, Doug and I had already broken with the tradition, and we
could see the advantages in not having to rearrange furniture, risk
cat-induced catastrophe, etc.  Besides, we had no electric power
there to light a tree, and lights make a big difference.

After
we moved here into a larger space on the power grid, I became too ill
to do the necessary work to have a Christmas tree.  There were two
years that Doug and I briefly considered going out and cutting a tree
and decorating it, but we talked ourselves out of it.  It is easy,
with M.E. and chronic fatigue, to talk oneself out of unnecessary labor.

I took this series of photos before Doug was born, but the decorations
would be essentially the same, with only a few more recent
additions.  I took these shots after I returned home from my
reunion visit with my elder daughter and her first son, in 1979, about
eight years before she died.  She had given me the cookie-cutter
dough ornaments that are visible in some of the shots, and I wanted to
document them just in case they proved to have a brief shelf
life.  I keep them packed in a tight fruitcake tin, and last time
I looked they appear as fresh as ever.

As you can see, my decorations are an eclectic collection, everything
from handcrafted dolls and miniature toys to antique Austrian glass and
glittery mid-twentieth century plastic.  A decorated tree would be
a fine holiday enhancement, if it were not for the labor involved in
making it happen and the danger presented by a houseful of
kittens.  At a time in my life when I’m not keeping up with chores
such as vacuuming and laundry, putting my scarce and precious energy
into that would be foolish.  Anyway, I have enjoyed getting these
pictures out, scanning and posting them, and I will enjoy seeing them
as long as they stay on my front page here.

Zimbo says he is
“in trepidation” anticipating what kind of number I might be planning
to do on Xmas.  He seems to be offended by my repost of that old
newspaper story about the Anchorage family that uses Christmas as an
excuse to extoll the excellence of themselves, their material
possessions and their lifestyle.  I don’t even know if he read
what I quoted from the article and my comments on it, or looked at the
picture. 

I think HomerTheBrave
was paying attention.  But Zimbo seems to have missed some salient
features of that article… either that or the man’s yard reminds him
of his own.  Now, there’s a thought.  It could be way off
base, but would explain the defensive tone of his comment.  Zimbo
also made some debatable statements regarding our tawdry commercialized
year-end holiday season’s being the “celebration” of the birth of Jesus
the Christ, and he wondered if I celebrate Yule.

I can’t count how many times I have been mistaken for a Pagan just
because I criticize the present-day degenerate form of non-worship that
passes for Xianity in this culture.  For the record, one more time
for those who are new to my blog:  I am a Christian, a gnostic
Christian – not Gnostic with a capital G, not a member of even that
organized religion, just into the gnosis.

If I didn’t know that it is equally unevolved spiritually to willfully
take offense as it is to deliberately give it, I might be tempted to
take offense at the gross misuse of language in calling this time of
the year a “celebration,” or in saying that most people “celebrate”
Christ’s birth with these colorful displays and the frenzy of shopping
and debt accumulation.

For some people, there is joy this time of year.  For those same
people, there is joy all year long.  It takes some transcendent
spiritual evolution to remain joyous amid the moods expressed and the
vibes projected by the masses this time of year.  Workers in
retail establishments hate this time of year not only for the long
hours and dense crowds grabbing things from the shelves so fast they
can’t keep them stocked.  They are oppressed by the moods and
attitudes of the shopping throngs.

The vast majority of Christmas shoppers go at it with dread and
desperation.  Knowing that they are spending more than they can
afford, often increasing an already oppressive load of debt, they can
justifiably assume that many if not most of the gifts they choose will
be returned, discarded or, if kept, disliked, ridiculed, and/or
regifted.  One needs only to walk through the crowds and pay
attention, to understand how harried, discouraged, and miserable both
the shoppers and the workers are.

The dictionary says “celebrate” means to have a celebration.

Quick definitions (celebration)

noun:   any joyous diversion noun:   the public performance of a sacrament or solemn ceremony with all appropriate ritual noun:   a joyful occasion for special festivities to mark some happy event

Only the middle one of those three definitions can even
remotely be stretched to cover the ritual of the Christmas shopping
frenzy.  It is certainly public, and many of those engaged in it
are glum, indeed, but hardly “solemn” in the sense of a sacramental
performance.  Certainly the decor in the stores is “festive,” but
it has been up there since around Thanksgiving and is getting dusty,
tarnished and stale.  Many businesses play “festive” music this
time of year, and many shoppers grind their teeth over it and can’t
wait to get out of there.

Most of the people who routinely keep gift lists and shop for gifts do
so not because it is a joy to give, but because it is expected of
them.  Gift buying and giving becomes for many, especially the more
affluent who can afford such sport, a competitive game.  Siblings, in
particular, often compete with gifts for their parents and afterward
often argue over which gifts the parents liked best.

I read complaints on many Xanga blogs about the “necessity” of shopping
for Christmas gifts.  That anyone would consider gift-giving a
necessity truly saddens me, because it indicates how insecure and
dependent on external validation those people are.   Either
that, or
they are just shallow and acquisitive, and hope by giving gifts they
will obligate others to give gifts to them.  The best-case
scenario
there is that they are simply following a tradition they do not
particularly approve of but don’t feel free to ignore.  Most of
what I hear in town and read on Xanga about the sacred part of
the season is hypocritical crap, empty words used because to use them
is what is expected of one.  Sad, I say.

I challenge anyone to demonstrate and document the falseness of my claim that MOST
people, the majority of shoppers this time of year, are not
CELEBRATING.  Nor are most of the people who decorate their yards and
homes celebrating.  They are “observing” the holiday.  Some do it
routinely and ritualistically, but are more likely to be in a mood of
nostalgia for their childhoods as they take out their ornaments, than
in joyous celebration of Christ.

Some, of course, like the Loranger family in Anchorage, are decorating
competitively and narcissistically.  To many home-lighting
enthusiasts,
having the brightest, loudest, busiest yard on the street or in the
town is the goal.  That’s a sport, a game, a self-aggrandizing
activity, not a celebration, because it is ordinarily done with grim
intent, focused on the desire to triumph over the neighbors.  This
winter, it is also being done in spite of pleas from the government to
conserve fuel.  If your electric utility uses hydroelectric or
nuclear generators, you’re okay.  Anchorage’s utility burns coal,
the most-heavily polluting fuel and one that is becoming too expensive
for many small remote villages to afford to heat their public buildings
or run their generators.

If you do
your holiday decorating and shopping with joy, (Handcrafted gifts don’t
count.  There is certainly joy in creative work and in giving it
away.) be sure and comment here
and tell me, but tell me true.  Remember, you’d better not
lie.  Santa
Claus is watching.