Heading a Humbug Off at the Pass

Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year. It seems as if it starts almost immediately after Labor Day. In an effort to combat my Inner Scrooge, I'm re-reading a blog post I made last year in a different forum. I'm going to share it here:

Every year it gets harder and harder for me to get into the Christmas spirit. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who loves Christmas more than I do. I love the Nativity story, I love going to church for candlelight Christmas Eve services, I love singing Christmas carols, I love decorating the house, and I even love giving gifts. I do not love, however, the mercenary aspects that seem to have overtaken Christmas- like people rushing about seeing how much money they can spend, getting into fistfights over parking places at Target, and stores putting out Christmas decorations immediately after the 4th of July.
I also find myself distracted by worldly things. Like work. Paying bills. Planning for the coming year. I forget, sometimes, where my emphasis ought to be. That Christmas is not about me and my petty concerns. That Christmas is about a child and children. I forget that, "Unless you become like a child you can never enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
My children, Joshua (6) and William (5) are now old enough that they really are getting into Christmas. They've always liked getting presents, but they're now starting to be aware of some of the symbolism. We didn't decorate very much this year and Joshua was sad because his house, "was plain". In my struggles with my inner Scrooge, I forget my obligation to them. To make Christmas special for them so that they will remember it their entire lives. No Christmas can compete with those you had as a child. Nothing in this life will ever outshine the excitement and joy you felt in rushing downstairs on Christmas morning. I want that for Joshua and William.
When I was little, my mother and I lived in Jefferson in an apartment in a grand old house almost exactly half way between the square and Kesler's grocery store. We lived on the south side of Sycamore Street and my Aunt Willie and her family lived across the street. Mr. Medlin lived across the hall and Mrs. Grace Craig lived upstairs. They were sweet old folks whose kids were long since gone and they probably did more to spoil a little boy than bears repeating.
At Christmastime my mother would pull out all the stops. We decorated, we put up the most elaborate trees, we sang, we did almost everything you could imagine. I remember being distraught because our house was heated with gas and the chimney had long since been sealed up for insulation. How was Santa to get into the house to leave the presents? My mother assured me that she would leave to door unlocked so that he could walk right in! Apparently, that satisfied me.
Looking back with an adult's perspective, I can say without shame that we were poor. I always had a roof over my head and food in my belly, but some months, I'm sure that it was only just. I had a lot of health issues as a baby and growing up. I had problems with my lungs and my immune systems and was hospitalized repeatedly until I was up into double digits.
I never came out and asked my mother, but I don't doubt that I would be horrified to know the amounts of money that this cost her. I do remember her saying offhand one time that she had finally finished paying off my doctor's bills when I was in college. My Aunt Willie helped out some and my Uncle Henry did as well, but mostly it was my mother, working three jobs sometimes, who took care of me.
This being said, there was never a lack of presents on Christmas morning. I would get up as soon as I woke up and there would be presents, presents, presents! Two presents that stand out in my memory are the Little Tykes Airport and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. I loved both of them. My mother probably borrowed from Peter and begged from Paul to buy all of this stuff for me, but I always had more presents than any one boy needs.
After we opened my presents at my house, we would go across the street to my Aunt Willie's house for breakfast with our extended family. She would've been in the kitchen for hours and there was food, food, and more food. We would have pancakes, eggs, bacon, grits, and freshly baked biscuits. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. After breakfast, we would open even more presents and my cousins and I would spend the rest of the morning playing with all of our wonderful toys.
Later in the afternoon, my mother and I would get into the car and ride over to Beaverdam Baptist Church between Commerce and Carnesville. There we would place a poinsettia on the graves of Coile and Lula Allen, my grandparents, who died before I was even born. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. It's a tradition I hope to continue.
Nothing in my adult life will ever come close to the warmth and affection I have for these memories of my youth and my family as it was. I can only hope to give my children something similar to what I had as a child. I just have to continually remind myself to keep my head when all around me are losing their's and remember that children are the ones who benefit most from Christmas. Not just from presents but from family, tradition, and love.

Merry Christmas! But for Heaven's sake, enjoy Halloween and Thanksgiving first!

MantisMania

About a month ago now, Joshua and his second grade class at Barnett Shoals Elementary started a series of lessons on insects. Mrs. Ayoob (she's from Maine. That's all I know. I wondered about the origin of that name myself, but didn't get around to asking her about it.) made the mistake of asking the class to bring in a praying mantis. I don't know why she did this, but she did. And Joshua, being the Joshua that we know and love, treated it as if it were a holy commission.
He pestered the life out of me for three solid weeks about finding a praying mantis for his class. "Where do praying mantises live? Do they live on the ground? Or in trees?" These are questions we had to look up on the internet. After wikipedia and repeated trips to the library, I think I now know more about your everyday praying mantis than anyone else in the world. Like the fact that there are about 2,500 mantis species worldwide and that only about 20 live in the United States. They're exclusively opportunistic ambush predators and also practice cannibalism.
With this information in hand, Joshua and I set off one afternoon to our local park. Two knights perilous on a quest. I had no idea where to find a praying mantis but I wasn't really fond of the idea of letting Joshua know that I didn't know. He still thinks I'm the smartest guy in the world and I want to keep that up until he's at least thirty.
If you can imagine a grown man and a seven year old looking high and low for an insect that didn't want to be found. I've lived in Georgia my entire life and I think I may have stumbled across two or three of these bugs, and those were complete accidents.
Needless to say, we came home disappointed. Joshua went to school for the duration of his insect studies dragging his coat and mumbling his words because he couldn't find a praying mantis. The fact that no one else found one either was only a small comfort.
Today, however, was his lucky day. I walked out of the house this morning and what do I see on the hood of my car? You guessed it. A common Carolina Mantis (Stagmomantis carolina), a brown little critter with wings that is about four inches long.
I caught the little bugger, put it into a jar with holes in the lid, and waited for Joshua to get home. You would've thought that I bought him a car or something. He danced around and sang songs for the whole evening about how he had finally found a praying mantis. The fact that it was a total coincidence was totally forgotten.
Mandy the Mantis (named so because the girl mantises eat the boy mantises.) was taken to Mrs. Ayoob's class and was declared to be a class pet. Hopefully she'll last for a few months. After all, who's going to catch all the crickets for her to eat? Not me.

Take Back the Sabbath

When I was little, on Sundays, we got up early and went to church. We attended a small Southern Baptist Church on the north side of town called Faith Baptist. The church is still there, but I haven't attended there in decades.
After church was over, most of the time we came home to eat dinner. After dinner we went out to play, or read books, or took a nap. Sometimes, we were fortunate to receive out of town family. Aunts, uncles, and cousins from up yonder somewhere who had all piled in their family car to come visitin'. Once in a great while, we would be the ones to go wandering. We would visit sisters and brothers of my grandmother who lived in Gainesville, or Athens, or the thriving metropolis of Homer.
The point being that we did all of these things as a family because there was absolutely NOTHING else to do on a Sunday afternoon between the morning and evening services at your local church. Everything else was CLOSED.
Nowadays, its nothing to go out to eat after church, to go grocery shopping, or to head out to the Mall or to Target to wander around aimlessly passing the time. No one is closed on Sundays anymore except for a few stubborn holdouts like Chick-fil-a and Hobby Lobby. (In S. Truett Cathy's biography, he stated emphatically that, "If my business had to be open on Sunday to succeed, we'd fail." A fine fellow, Mr. Cathy.)
I will tell you that the thing about my job at Kroger that I hate the most is having to work on Sundays. I absolutely despise it. And its our busiest day of the week! Most people have no qualms about doing their shopping on Sunday and Kroger obliges them by being open.
It doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be, this way. The executives at Kroger think that they would lose their shirts by being closed on Sundays. Wal-Mart isn't going to close on Sunday, so why should we? First off, the vast majority of people shop at Kroger because its NOT Wal-Mart. Not because its so very much cheaper. Secondly, this attitude shows very little faith in your product. I've always been of the opinion that if you have four things, you'll be successful and people will find you when you're open. If you have a good product, a good price, a good location, and good service, you'll do well, no matter when you're open.
Even if you take the faith out of the equation, the 24/7/365 lifestyle we've cultivated in this country is taking its toll. I've tried to explain to people before that if you go into a store during traditionally non-business hours, you're only causing the prices on the products you're buying to be higher than they need to be. (If you go to Wal-Mart at 3 AM to buy a hammer and there's someone working in the store to complete the transaction, that hammer is more expensive than it would be if Wal-Mart was only open during traditional business hours.) When I tell people this, their eyes glaze over and they look at me like I'm speaking in tongues.
You cannot depend on the Wal-Marts, Targets, and Krogers of this world to do the right thing and close on Sundays. You can only give them the message with your wallet. Just remember that the next time you run into the grocery to get a few things after church, some poor soul is missing time with their family. Take back the Sabbath, and either go on Saturday or wait until Monday.