The Pause Continues

Contrary to my "best laid plans" - the Thanksgiving Day "Pause" has continued on into December!

It had crossed my mind that at this point, I might have already brought the Christmas decorations down out of the attic and that I might have already attached a number of colorful decorative nuances to this blog. I also thought I might have begun to pour forth a cornecopia of Christmas cheer on a daily basis by now.

But the "Christmas spirit" hasn't laid hold of me yet.

So let me tell you about how I have spent the "pause".

Ab, AA and I took part in our annual after-Thanksgiving Day-tradition of a Waffle House Breakfast!

What I had envisioned as an early frosty morning breakfast, turned into a late-morning brunch. R. chose to work the day after Thanksgiving and our start was a little sluggish. We got there in time to join the tail end of the "Black-Friday" red-eyed breakfast tour. The atmosphere was festive as we joined the masses of frenzied sleep-deprived consumers trying to slurp down enough caffeine and to scarf down enough maple syrup so as to stay awake for the drive home.

It was neat to see that the Waffle House we frequent for these occasions has a considerably low employee turnover rate since we saw a number of familiar faces that we remembered from our last visit and possibly even a time or two before that.

As usual, we took our seats at the counter so as to be near all the action!

The rest of my time off was something of a blur; I spent a considerable amount of time tinkering with my chainsaw and then a little while actually using it on Saturday. The kids got involved in a "hut" building project out in the woods. Our work site experienced exactly one day without an accident - then we had to start over after Ab had a little mishap with a handsaw (nothing serious - but enough to cause the hut building project to be shut down for a time - I think we are still awaiting our OSHA inspection).

I also participated in one of my annual exercises in futility as I attempted to blow a generous portion of the leaves and pinestraw discarded by our trees, off of my driveway and a portion of my yard and into some specific designated area.

The kids and I did get an opportunity to venture back into the woods since we were reasonably sure the poison ivy and most of the snakes had retreated to the their winter hideaways.

We did manage to accomplish a couple of yule tide activities: We officially broke out the Christmas movies and we lit our first Advent Candle of the season.

As mentioned before, I have a strictly enforced policy of "zero-tolerance" for Christmas movies until the week of Thanksgiving and -in a best case scenario- not until after Thanksgiving Day altogether.

Our first movie this year was the 1938 version of "A Christmas Carol". We all enjoyed this annual story of Christmas Redemption.

Since that time, R. and I have attempted two other Christmas movies - "The Preacher's Wife", which is one of the few newer holiday movies that I think is destined to be a classic. I really like this movie - mostly because of Whitney Houston and the gospel choir singing; but also because R. and I first went to see this movie about a couple struggling in their marriage, when our own marriage was in the throws of its own struggles. In the same vein, we purchased the video and grew to love the movie even more after God had worked out some really neat things in our marriage.

The other movie we attempted to watch was "White Christmas". Unfortunately, in both cases sleep seemed to call to me in such a compelling way that I had to bail.

We are trying to approach our family celebration of Advent by looking at the "coming" of Jesus in three ways: first, how He came to earth as a Babe destined to grow into a Man that would bear my sins. Second, how He is a Savior Who promised to return to earth and thirdly, how He came to each of us that knows Him as Savior and took residence in our hearts.

Hooray for Post Cereals!

I love cereal.

Where I come from, we drag out our words but we compensate for it by shortening them. So it's a shorter word or phrase but by the time we insert the drawl it takes about as long to say it as it normally would. So we call it seerl.

Unlike the rest of my immediate family, I am NOT a breakfast cereal man.

R. and the kids could eat cereal for breakfast most every day and be satisfied. I, on the other hand, consider inferior, any breakfast that doesn't include cheese and a generous helping of animal fat.

I like my cereal at night as a just-before-bed snack.

There is something compelling about the literature on cereal boxes.

How many times have you munched a rhythm with your Captain Crunch as you read off the ingredients ..."SUGAR, corn starch, riboflavin, artificial color, artificial flavor, artificial ...."

Some savvy marketers have harnessed the power of the cereal box and have used it as a billboard for various movies or action figures. Other cereal companies have somehow absolved their conscience of all the guilt associated with being associated with an industrial concern in a capitalistic society and so they have used the cereal box to promote "awareness" . . . . environmental concerns, carbon footprints and all the other trite that fills our post-modern society.

The other night I was pleasantly surprised by the back of a box of "Honey Bunches of Oats".

I love stories, and there on the back of the box was a story all about Vern J. Herzing, who worked for Post Cereals as a student in the early 50's. He later returned to work full-time and became a facility manager in the late 70's.

Vern came up with an idea to combine all the cereals that his plant produced into one and on a Saturday afternoon, he and his 18 year old daughter set up something of a test lab in their kitchen. They worked together measuring and tasting various cereal combinations.

You see, Vern did not have a job - he had a passion!

Do you know what it's like to get an idea that gnaws away at you, and you just can't wait to jump into the doing of it.

We are created in the image of God and one of the things about us that most favors Him is creativity. Don't you hear the excitement and passion in God's voice in the Genesis creation account? Especially when He says ...

"THAT IS GOOD."

Anyway Vern's idea eventually came to fruition; people came alongside him and joined in his creativity by adding their own ideas. Eventually the cereal was market tested with the name of Battle Creek Cereal . . . that name didn't take, so they brought it back later and tested it under the name of Honey Bunches of Oats.

The cereal grabbed a big market share it's first year and has "grown to become one of the top-selling cereals in America today."

In the 19th century, an author of boy's books by the name of Horatio Alger, Jr. churned out numerous stories of boys who applied themselves, did the right thing and succeeded. AA is trying to read his first Horatio Alger, Jr. book now, but I think he is struggling with the antiquity of the language. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope that he will be able to find something contemporary that will pack the same punch - maybe even a cereal box.

Thank you Post Foods LLC of St. Louis, Missouri, for bringing back something we have lost in America - stories of the energy and fun of capitalism at work.

PostScript: It is difficult to know how to properly credit literature from a cereal box, so I will have to settle for linking to the website. . . http://www.onespoonful.com/ .

Traditions - Black Friday @ Waffle House

I do not like referring to the day after Thanksgiving Day as Black Friday. But I figured it communicated my point.

In an earlier post, I mentioned the "tradition" of sorts, we try to honor each year - going to breakfast at the Waffle House on Friday after Thanksgiving.

I like the hustle and bustle of the season and in the past I actually liked hanging out at malls and other retail establishments during the fury that is the Christmas shopping season. I thought the Waffle House would allow our kids to see some of that excitement ... and they always shout "Good Morning!" when you walk in... it's just festive!

One Christmas Day, my parents and I stopped at a Waffle House for breakfast en route to my Grandparents home and it was a memorable occasion, one wait-person was singing Christmas Carols, it was crowded because most other restaurants were closed... but it was a neat atmosphere.
So we went again this year; but I am rethinking the feasibility of this tradition.

In our town, we have three Waffle Houses and a multitude of them within a fifty mile radius.
We usually choose the newer one that is on the other side of town, but this year, I decided we would go to a smaller town nearby. They now boast a Walmart Supercenter AND a Waffle House so I thought we would go there since it was closer.

I was not impressed - and my expectations were not exactly lofty.

We like to sit at the counter so you can see all the action going on around the grill. Unfortunately, we didn't sit at the front counter but rather at the lower counter to the side... closer to the floor. We could see all the staff trudging through grease and bits of food that looked as if it had been there awhile. It was not very appealing.

I then looked down at the floor under my feet on the other side of the counter. I saw very little difference.

Apparently the restaurant was doing their part to conserve water because they never offered us any and they didn't appear to be wasting any water on dishtowels with which one might wipe down a counter!
Sometimes, restaurants will use a menu or place mat in case the surface doesn't appear to be -clean - not these folks, they were highly transparent... just piled the menus over in the corner.

Our first wait-person immediately evoked pity from me because I thought she must be in pain from the hardware hanging from her lip.

She called Ab by name and we all looked at her like the folks in George Bailey's dream on "It's a Wonderful Life!" when Clarence was showing him what it would be like if he'd never been born.

I looked down and saw that Ab's book bag had her name monogrammed on the front so I felt better. The "clever" wait-person had seen that.

When she walked away, Ab said, "I didn't think anybody with a pierced lip knew my name". I like to encourage open-mindedness and tolerance but honestly, I was cautious about this person in great part because of her appearance...

I thought she may be considering selling my daughter to the gypsies.

Wait, I'm not sure if I can say "selling her to the gypsies" - that may be considered insensitive.

Anyway, we got another wait-person - and not because we requested it. I think some of the other employees were correcting her in an insensitive manner because I heard one wait-person tell another that she was crying (they probably said something about gypsies).

Despite the atmosphere and the filthiness (by the way, I am of the opinion that "filthy" is a higher degree of unsanitary . . . it goes: dirty, nasty and then filthy), the food was pretty good and the kids scarfed it down quickly.

As I mentioned, I may be re-thinking this tradition in years to come - or at least I will try and do a better job of scouting our location before we visit.

Traditions

I have big plans for December and this blog, however, I would recommend that - as a reader - you adopt a "wait and see" attitude. You see we have embarked upon what is my favorite season of the year. Fueled by anticipation, this time of year, is always preceded by a flourish of creativity and energy - usually during the month of November. Unfortunately, the brutal pace of the season, with parties, concerts, shopping, and things that have to be done, tend to beat the life out of any creativity and energy that emerged before Thanksgiving.

Again, - think "wait and see"

Today I want to talk about traditions since - traditionally in our household, we try to restrain any mention or focus on Christmas until after we have properly let Thanksgiving have its day.

Then the floodgates open and eleven months of pent-up Christmas celebration comes bursting through.

I believe traditions are an important part of families and the Christmas season especially. Some families think outside the box for Christmas - planning vacations to areas with warm climates is one example of thinking outside the box; that's not for me. In fact, it's just hard for me to fell Christmassy if the weather is warm.

The problem is traditions are not practical. Many times one has to do illogical things in order to keep traditions.


This fact was illustrated on the morning after Thanksgiving by my attempt to keep a tradition with the kids that began about four or five years ago.


I usually take off the day after Thanksgiving, R. seems to usually end up working that day.

So several years ago, I thought the kids and I would start a tradition of eating out for breakfast - at the Waffle House on the morning after Thanksgiving. I believe on the first year we did this, we actually went to a local shopping mall for awhile afterward just to be a part of the excitement.


One year, the tradition was threatened by some gastronomical difficulties Ab was experiencing at the time. We were able to go but had to leave pretty quickly. Last year we spent Thanksgiving with R.'s family in Memphis, Tennessee and so we skipped the tradition.


This year I was moving slowly and while I was getting ready - my wife gave in to the pleading of my children and fed them.


So when I emerged from my room all dressed and ready -there they sat with peanut-butter toast still in their wicked little hands -


"We're starving!" they had cried. And Mom gave in.


I am not sure what I would have wanted her to do. . . but I was not pleased with her response and sulked for a period of time. I think in my tradition-based-paranoia, I deduced that she had tried to sabotage my plans since she couldn't join us


It was almost as if the success or failure of my entire holiday year had hinged on getting to Waffle House with hungry kids in tow.


Anyway, I plan to tell you more about the rest of the day in an upcoming post, but suffice it to say I placed the importance of keeping a tradition higher than the importance of maintaining good relationships.


So I will be more careful not to be Clark Griswald this Christmas.


I do like traditions - I beam with pride when my children tell other people... "we ALWAYS...." I like the permanence of that. I like that these regular events become a part of who we are as a family.


I think God is okay with traditions... the Jewish calendar was filled with feasts, holidays, and various other traditions: bringing families together, addressing injustices or bitterness, bringing hearts back to God and History, celebrating victories, remembering struggles.


R. and I have had traditions that have come and gone ... some stayed.


For about two years we kept a tradition of decorating the tree on Thanksgiving night. Turkey fatigue got the best of us one year - I think - and so we never returned to that tradition.

When Ab was a baby, we baked a "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" cake every Christmas Day. By the time AA had come along, there just wasn't enough time on Christmas morning to add one more baked item.

Since the year before R. and I married and for about 8 or 9 years, we went Caroling every year. It had begun as something to do during the "lull" that used to come about after all the parties and holiday events were over. There was very little planning, some folks just got a phone call saying -"we're going Caroling tonight". And someone would volunteer their home to serve coffee and snacks afterward. It was a lot of fun and we felt that we were really uplifting some of the folks we visited. But that tradition became too organized and large and we got too busy so it fell by the wayside.

I want to talk about a few of the things that we do -as a family- to keep the season special and hopefully to keep our focus on the birth of Jesus.

If you have any to share, feel free.