Anita the Christmas Angel

December 4, 2008

Yes. The curly-headed angel hovering over the Baby Jesus is me, serving as photographic evidence that being a lesbian is the least of the reasons why I’ve spent my fair share of time in a therapist’s office. This and the Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer costume I was forced against my will to wear in high school that consisted of a brown sweatsuit and a ginormous paper-mache head with yes, a battery-operated blinking red nose. I give thanks daily no photographs of that sordid time in my life remain.

Oh stop laughing. Like there’s no humiliating snapshots from your childhood. No butt-naked baby on a rug. No screaming toddler on Santa’s lap. No spaghetti bowl dumped on top of your little pointed head. You know you have them and all it would take is a private detective and a small-minded schemer with too much time on their hands to get a hold of them. Lucky for you I don’t the liquid assets to hire a detective.

So Christmas. I love it. Despite the childhood trauma. And this weekend I’m busting Christmas out with a children’s Christmas party on Saturday, an Advent social after church on Sunday, and a progressive neighborhood Christmas dinner that will be making a stop at our home that same evening. Since it all begins tomorrow morning with gluing together 210 plus gingerbread house parts with 18 pounds of sugar spackle (royal icing) for Saturday’s main event, I won’t be able to blog until the first of next week. In the meantime, enjoy a few of my Christmas favorites:

• The Advent Conspiracy is an awesome concept that encourages us all to be more intentional this Christmas season.  Worship fully. Spend less. Give more. Love all.
• My Christmas reading every year includes The Bird’s Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Higgin. While there’s an electronic version of the complete text available, you’ll miss something if you don’t sit in your favorite chair and flip through the pages of this small book and if you’re a bibliophile like me do yourself a favor and get your hands on a hardcover copy.
• For the past twenty years no Christmas has been complete for me without watching Disney’s animated “The Small One.” It’s the story of a little boy and the old donkey he loves who ends up carrying Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem. What’s not to love?
• If that special someone has everything give a flock of chicks to a family in the Carribean or tree siblings to a family in Tanzania in their name through Heifer International.
• Playing on my ipod this Christmas season are the newest Christmas releases from Sara Groves, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Sarah McLachlan, James Taylor, Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, and of course, Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas!
  
• My mouth is watering. Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-yum.

And can you ever see this too many times?

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