Category Archives: Christmas

The good giant lifts the world.

Christmas, poetry, , , ,

Malcolm Guite included this passage from “The Ballad of the White Horse” in his anthology of Advent and Christmas poems, Waiting on the Word. King Alfred the Great narrates:

And well may God with the serving-folk
Cast in His dreadful lot;
Is not He too a servant,
And is not He forgot?
For was not God my gardener
And silent like a slave;
That opened oaks on the uplands
Or thicket in graveyard gave?
And was not God my armourer,
All patient and unpaid,
That sealed my skull as a helmet,
And ribs for hauberk made?
Did not a great grey servant
Of all my sires and me,
Build this pavilion of the pines,
And herd the fowls and fill the vines,
And labour and pass and leave no signs
Save mercy and mystery?
For God is a great servant,
And rose before the day,
From some primordial slumber torn;
But all we living later born
Sleep on, and rise after the morn,
And the Lord has gone away.
On things half sprung from sleeping,
All sleeping suns have shone,
They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,
The beasts blink upon hands and knees,
Man is awake and does and sees-
But Heaven has done and gone.
For who shall guess the good riddle
Or speak of the Holiest,
Save in faint figures and failing words,
Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,
Labours, and is at rest?
But some see God like Guthrum,
Crowned, with a great beard curled,
But I see God like a good giant,
That, laboring, lifts the world.

-G.K. Chesterton, excerpt from “The Ballad of the White Horse.”

I like to listen to Fr. Guite read poems on his site. You can read and listen here, too: “The Good Riddle.”

Caspar David Friedrich, Cross in the Forest

Greetings from their house to… my house?

Christmas

About twenty years ago I sort of inherited these Christmas cards, typical of the 1950’s style that my in-laws and their close friends would send and receive back then. I think I’ve already purged most of what they’d saved in this category, but kept this sampling, most recently in my own basket of cards received in the current year. They weren’t sent to me, but they go on sending greetings! Just now I decided to take their picture, and I will “let them go” after this Christmas. I’m not in touch with the people who are pictured here; many of them are likely still sending their own cards, which I’m sure are nothing like these.

Back then, my parents never went to the trouble of getting anything like this printed,
but I wouldn’t be surprised if the style is familiar to some of you. As of yesterday I was sure that this year I wouldn’t have time to send any Christmas cards, but today I wrote out a few, and that made me happy.

German Advent Calendar

December lights and colors.

Christmas, my garden, winter, ,

We still haven’t had a frosty night here, and there are none in the forecast, so many of my plants are still blooming. Indoors, it seems the Thanksgiving cactus flowers are on the wane, and the Christmas ones haven’t opened. Though when I got my hair cut the other day, my hairdresser’s two Thanksgiving cactuses were blooming away, in a western window.

I found mealybugs on my orchids, I suppose because they lived out on the patio all summer, where anything could invade. But overall they are healthier for their summer outdoors, because it was easier to water and feed them. Also an inchworm chewed up a patch of leaf before I saw what was happening. I got some neem oil therapy, and new orchid bark in which to repot all the orchids, but don’t think I’ll manage to do that whole job until January, some sunny day.

Other things are more hardy and less insect-prone out of doors:

Last week at the full moon, we had nearly clear skies, so I took another moon picture from my driveway. The moon was noticeably more northerly from its summertime position, when I have more often been out there looking. I liked getting some of the Christmas lights of the neighborhood in the picture.

I ordered a lighted star to put in my upstairs window that faces the street, something like what I used to have 8-10 years ago, but now they cost three times or more as much. And this week a friend is helping me to get a cut tree in town, which I will keep in water in the garage temporarily. With the help of my grandchildren when they arrive, we should be well decorated by Christmas Eve.

2014

 

I begin the year with Christmas Day.

Christmas, food and cooking, grandchildren, , , ,

Before January is half over, I will share the last of my Christmasy activities and images. I don’t want to wait until next year to tell of the occasion shown above, when my grandsons Raj and Rigo were quick to lend a hand moving decorations into the church, the Sunday before Christmas.

I went back to having a freshly cut tree this year; it only required getting help from a friend and a son. But I had no time to trim it before family started arriving, so Raj and Rigo helped me with that, too, almost as soon as they walked in the door.

One toy I bought in advance of figuring out whom I would give it to, was these Magnet Men. They turned out to be the perfect toy to give to the whole bunch of (nine) kids to play with together, and in my house they provided hours of fun. For most people, I think, the refrigerator might be the only object they could interface with, though I heard of children using a set of dumbells for a Magnet Men playground.

They are very acrobatic, and hold on to each other, as you can see, but my entry and stair railings made the perfect equipment to show off their gymnastics. I sent all the cute toys home with the grandchildren, but maybe I should have kept some here, where they are the most fun.

I had a friend over for tea one day and used some of my Christmas gnome placemats for the last time, serving up the last of the Christmas cookies I’d baked, and four little pieces of rose-flavored Turkish Delight that I’d bought especially for Christmas. That rose candy was so beautifully flavored, to me it seemed the exotic star of every plate of sweets. If only it weren’t so, so sweet…. but then, it wouldn’t be Turkish Delight.

We Glads have a few Christmas traditions that we return to, not always every year, but when the combination of people and days aligns properly. I’m thinking of oyster stew, which came through Mr. Glad’s German and English families. Or was it just the German side? I have made it many times using the recipe in the Joy of Cooking that my mother gave me at my marriage. This year son Soldier volunteered to make the stew, which is really a bisque or soup, and he began to read the recipe in that book.

Soon everyone in the kitchen was laughing uproariously as he read aloud the amounts of some ingredients. For example, 1/4 teaspoon chopped onion, and “a sliver of garlic.” I didn’t see how much onion Soldier put in, but I heard that several cloves of garlic were minced and added. From my garden I brought in chives and parsley, which were used in generous quantities. After all 18 of us were seated at two tables, the oysters were dropped into the broth, and soon the glorious stew was served into bowls and set before those who were willing or eager to try it. I found it to be the best I’ve ever eaten.

I have another “Overthrow the Tyranny of Months” calendar from Beauty First Films, which leads me in joyful anticipation of upcoming weeks, often several more than four at a time. Here is the page I’m looking at now:


How sweet is it, to have my 2025 calendar start with Christmas Day?? I’m waiting until February 2 to take my tree down, and will wait until next December to write any more about Christmas. More feasts and seasons are upon us, the days full of good things.

One of those that happened in our family recently was the birth of my son “Pathfinder’s” first grandchild, my second great-grandchild. I may need to meet him before I will think of a nickname, and he lives a good distance from me, so you will have to wait for details. The Whole Glad Family welcomes Little Guy ❤

Rejoice Evermore!