Well it's Christmas eve again, just about time for all the Scrooge's out there to begin getting ready to receive their three mysterious visitors- that so remind one of three mysterious visitors that came to a manger a long time ago in a land far away.
Christmas Eve is here and I still haven't gotten my tree decorated. The lights are up, but little more. I'm waiting for my wife Dot to return from the nursing home visiting her mother-in law.
As I gaze around the wreckage of my wargame room with projects piled on top of projects, and my other wargaming room now taken over with part of my wargame table now a wrapping table, I have to tell you I am exhauseted. Christmas this year is like Christmas every year. The sme old decorations, the same old cards, the same old tree (though actually we get a new cut tree every year) but the same old rush, and no one seems free from it. I know people who are racing around now doing Christmas shopping. I'm one of those people everyone loves to hate. I do my Christmas shopping early, I shop all year. I'm presently into buying for 2015! I'm of the believe that if you are wandering through a store and see something that "Jack or Jill, Par or Margaret," Sam and Janet" would just LOVE buy it now because when Christmas comes you'll forget it or you certainly won't be able to find it. So I buy early, sometimes years early-- yeah-- I'm pond scum. But I'll tell you know it doesn't help. I still do a blaze of Christmas shopping two weeks before because when I, at the start of December drag out the boxes and boxes of bought (and wrapped already) presents it just doesn't seem to be enough.
Yeah, Jack and Jill, Sam and Panet, Pat and Margaret will SIMPLY LOVE IT and you've bought them the perfect gift but-- it never seems enough. The people who live in the little villge of our friends and day to day acquaintences suddenly become far more precious at Christmas time and even that gift they will love seems to be not enough. We want to love them more, and do more for them for all the good things they do for us day to day just be being in our lives. It is at this time that we are painfully aware of Tom Cratcchett's words in Dicken's A Christmas Carol "That life is a series of meetings and partings" and our friends and loved ones are too soon come into our circle and all too soon must journey out of it. It's very inadequate- it's very shabby in some ways, but we are at a loss to know how else to love them, and we want them to know we love them-- it's very important that they know we love them, and so we search for a way to do it. Don't worry if you overbought or bought them the ugly sweater they hate, or even if YOU got the present you hate the most which is when people who know you play you wargames give you toy soldiers which you absolutely cannot use, and you don't know what you'll ever do with, but you know they do it because they were trying to get the perfect gift for you.
I had great hopes for Christmas. This year, I told myself after last year, I was going to do all the projects ahead of time and get all my decorations up, a new lighting system for the tree, do the decorations RIGHT this time, and I was going to do this, that, an the otherthing besides. Well I haven't gotten even "this" done, let alone that and the other thing.
But it's the same story ever year,and it will be the same story every year. We always over committ- we take too much on, we try and run oursleves double-time to get it all done and somehow it never does--- but-- somehow-- in the end-- it all comes our all right. It's the same story, we go to the same service at Church, we sing the same songs, but somehow, as old as it is, it always seems new
it always seems fresh.
Had a lot of snow here earlier in he week and last week. In the last few days it was unseasonably warm and it rained and all the snow melted and washed away. It was cool today but it looked like we weren't going to have a White Christmas. But it's snowing now-- nice, beautiful, whiet fluffy snow, and we are all snug at home- the perfect way, and so somehow God has a way of making all things new once again. That's what Christmas is all about.
That's kind of like Christmas every year, and we never get bored of it, we never get tired of it, and we, like small children look eagerly for it every year.
My father died on Christmas Day. That's OK, it didn't ruin the holiday for me. He loved Christmas Eve but he hated Christmas Day. He had his last Christmas Eve with his whole family around him (we had not the slightest idea that this was his last Christmas) and he was really happy. He Hated Christmas day. I think Christmas Eve was magical for him, but Christmas day was a let down. So in a way he did exactly what he wanted and somehow, being the empresario and Showman he was, it all seemed to fit. But it is a reminder to me always that life IS a series of meetings and partings and it does us all good to treasure each other and love them and dote on them while they "are come amongst us" because we never know when they will be taken away from our company.
Next year I'll do it better. Next year I'll get this that AND the other thing done, and of course I'm so full of bull that it's coming out of my ears, and next year I'll be as tired and frazzled and exhausted and broke as I am this year, but--- it will be WONDERFUL!
That's the news from Saxe Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein. Merry Christmas to all, and if you are one of those people who are going to have three mysterious strangers visit you tonight-- have fun- it's going to be a wild ride! Enjoy it, you'll never be the same again and you're going to love it.
Otto
Well the wife has just come home and I have to have dinner and then decorate a tree to a bach of egg-nog which will knock you flat.