I am thinking about the things that make Christmas the season it should be for me. When I was younger, I had the great joy of seeing the best Christmas play that exists - at least as far as my experience goes. And one of the things that always felt very much like Christmas was The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut, & The Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree aka The Butterfingers Angel. It was a play that spoke very much to my understanding of how stuff might really have happened. The way I saw it done Mary's brothers want to eat the baby, Joseph doesn't understand who the father (Father?) is, and everything is almost messy. Until a beautiful baby is born who changes everyone's minds.
The power to do that, to bring a stop to fighting, a moment of quiet, a reminder of life and death and sacrifice - I don't believe in those gods, that God, but I believe with all my heart in Christmas and the power it should have.
My roommate and I were singing - okay, shouting - carols tonight as we trooped across the field for cat food in the not-very-cold winter night. Tomorrow we turn worlds upside down, but tonight there were songs of both joy and peace shouted at the top of our lungs.
Maybe I think that's what Christmas is missing - being together, being joyful, loving. I love getting presents, believe me. But I also love watching movies with my families, making a mess of the kitchen, sewing and knitting and gluing a storm. I love watching a friend at work as he makes me a pink reindeer from a martha stewart tutorial, and half-assing a little sheep from pipe cleaner and wool to give back. I don't want to forget that stuff when I'm shopping - I want to hum along to the canned music and remember.
You know there's something wrong when:
I trucked out to see the Golden Compass last night with the people (not, strictly, my people, but a people to whom I sort of belong). It was, well, okay. There was some stuff that was right some stuff that was wrong and some stuff that was. And then there were the knits.
Yeah. You know there's something congenitally wrong with you when you spend the whole of a much-anticipated movie trying to figure out the composition of the knitting. Which, by the by, was gorgeous. There were lovely rich thick knits. It made me so happy and calm.
The movie itself? Freaked me out a little and seemed unfinished. But was nice.
About 9 times of 10, when change comes, I hold out my arms for it, I've been waiting for it, I embrace and leap to it and move to the next thing with joy and hope. But the tenth time. I huddle in a corner and close my eyes and hope and hope and hope that change didn't really mean to darken my doorstep. Oftentimes, the latter reaction is to a change I, personally, have been working for.
It was, in actual fact, less than a month ago when I figured (and was chatty about) changes coming. I had this feeling of holding my breath of waiting to move. Suffice it to say that in the ensuing month, changes jumped out of the woodwork and into my life like nobody's business. For the most part it was the lives around me that are altering so very quickly. Mine has stayed, for the moment, static. Tomorrow, later this week, that may seem a laughable statement, but it's one that I'll stand by: my life has not moved as have the lives that surround me.
At this time, I am hoping that my life will not remain so, that it too will take steps and jumps and leaps into the future, rather than meandering aimlessly. I hope that big scary (but good) life-changing changes make their way down the pipe and that I am able to open my arms to them. Yes, I hope this because I persist in believing they're coming, but too, because I know they must.
Last night, Fred and I wandered down to something called the Butterdome Craft Sale to spend an evening looking at crafty goodness. It was pretty much what I expected - super-nice when you're missing Sundog (no I'm not going to be explaining the semi-trad holiday craft sale 'round these parts). There wasn't a tonne that fascinated me - I was kind of evil and pointed out that the hot chocolate sample we enjoyed had many of the same super-processed chemicals as the one we drank when we were eight. I did, however, stumble upon some simple bags that stood out because they were still pretty much beautifully put together. Ellis Designs was the seller - I think I'm going to need to come back to this post tomorrow and add links and pictures.
Today I spent mostly in a haze of crafty mania: started the Santa Lucias - not, sadly, from the kit - didn't make it to ordering one, but from stuff I'd collected. They're coming along in the way my craft projects often do: first attempt is somehow blessed and good, later ones fall apart a little, but I keep at it and try to like 'em all.
I also finally figured out the faces for some other clothespin dolls inspired more by the angry chicken - it was unbelievably hard for me to figure out some simple things but now I'm completely in love with my final effort.
I also played around with some fabric & button bases.
For reasons I'm not ready to mention here, this Christmas season isn't calm or relaxed or good right now - but I'm working on it.
It's only about 10 p.m. but I need to change laundry and tuck in - with something called a wheatie jr. to warm my feet: see, I guess there were some other things I liked.
Walking home in the dark snow the same way I'd gone that morning, it was so much the calmer. Less rushed, knowing that I'd be home soon, that it would be safe and, I hoped, quiet and calm. I had a fairly depressing realization that this season, all about family, isn't really for solitary celebration. Which is why, I suppose, it feels so wrong to be alone in celebrating. I so want an excited and excitable small child or two to bring to the Joy of the Season. Maybe I will have to borrow one. Now there's an idea.
I'm so tired this week, overwhelmed and cold at all times, and wishing that it was Friday already (I want to say that it's the last Friday I don't work but that ain't quite right - it's the last Friday-Saturday-Sunday I don't work for a while).
I deeply loved almost all things about living in Montreal. The giant perfect Indigo that was about 10 minutes from school, the open-very-late grocery stores where I could shop at 2 a.m. with the tiny perfect McGill girls who were trying to be stylin' (yes, I says "stylin'" because there's no other word for it), the other many and varied grocery stores including anything from the Italian grocery to the PA to the huge markets (also, yes, I have a deep and abiding love for all things grocery).
I loved the Plateau and Monkland Village and Westmount for just wandering around in, finding random wee shops selling things that were both gorgeous and useful; and the lights at Christmas, everywhere points of light, making you part of the season just by being there with them.
I loved the language: the old ladies in St. Leonard who spoke either French or Italian but not really English, the shop girls downtown who spoke immaculate French and then beautiful English if you needed. But it wasn't always that easy. Like the day that I became determined to hunt down pinking shears. Which is a great concept. But just try explaining them to someone whose first language is different than yours, and who may not have ever seen or heard of such a thing (even, I defy you, try explaining them to someone who's never heard of 'em in a language that you share completely). It's pretty much a no go. Even the girls at Fabric Ville (i.e. Fabricland) just looked at me sideways and doubtful.
Today I finally got 'em in hand (yeah, something like 3 years later, I move slowly) - ciseaux a denteler - which, I checked, SPECIFICALLY means cut in the from of teeth. Right ON.
Also, the above pictures is from Montreal ca. December 2006 - parked in front of the Italian grocery. I am still so in love.
I am in love with Christmas. At least I hope I'm still in love with Christmas. When we first got to know each other, Christmas and I, I was enchanted by her ability to turn grouchy people into...less-grouchy people, to make people think of each other instead of themselves.
As I grew up, it seemed that Christmas did too - she got herself some makeovers and sometimes seemed only to remember that she wanted you to spend money on her, and not pay any attention to some of the better qualities she possesses.
In Alberta, of all places, it's difficult to remember this - I walk by a bus advertising the Oil Sands and remember a bus back home in Saskatoon advertising only its own Bio-Bus nature (a meta bus). Here, we are all about presents, and no so much about Jesus (which, I admit, is not my personal wagon), or even about Santa, really, just what he's bringing you.
Ultimately, for me, this season is all about light - it's so dark and so cold, that the return of the sun, celebrating presence just as it seems to be gone for good - that's where the actual meaning is - in hundreds of tiny points of brightness in the darkness, of candlelit masses and oil that lasted, of blazing wreathes borne on young heads. That out and out fight for light in the darkness that attempts to engulf us sometimes, the ability to spread light without giving up any of our own - we forget that, sometimes.
It's day 1 of advent and I want a calendar, but I'm searching, as is my way right now, and getting ready, and it's not done on time. So I'm going to haul out the Christmas box that is hiding itself under my bed and start the season another way.
Also, the pictures of the scones in this go-round will not be forthcoming and they were frightening looking and I gobbled 'em at every meal until I'd hidden the evidence.
