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christmas 2017

Christmas 2017

Monday 25 December 2017

So often in life, things come to an end and we don’t even realize that we’re living through last moments of this or that. Someone might lose a job and the whole family leaves, and you never see them again. More tragically, someone might pass away unexpectedly, and we regret deeply that we didn’t know that the last time we were with that person.

When an end comes and we know it’s the end, then we tend to savor it all the more.

Friends are moving to Connecticut. Good friends, for the last several years. Christmas, Easter, and Halloween we have always been together for the last several years. And tonight was the last time we’ll all be together for Christmas, perhaps for good. Sure, we talked about going up to Connecticut for a visit, but the chances of that happening, of us all being together like that, are quite honestly very slim.

It added a gray lining to the rest of the evening.

Wigilia 2017

Sunday 24 December 2017

Down at the bottom of the page, there are posts about the last several wigilias. How many? K and I were counting this evening after the food had been put away, the dishes washed, the presents opened. Thirteen together with Nana and Papa, which would make fifteen together as a couple. I stop and think about it: that would make the first in 2002. Surely that’s not right. We got married in 2004, and we were engaged in 2003. I check my photos from that period and sure enough, there are the pictures of K preparing food at the table where this summer she sat with Babcia in the morning chatting over tea.

Fifteen years. Fifteen times we’ve put up a Christmas tree together, cooked and cleaned for wigilia together (though K has done the vast majority of the cooking), bought gifts together.

We began all this a couple of years before the students I currently teach were born.

It’s not that I’m obsessed with how much time has passed. I used to be that way, but I think it was youthful sentimentality that I eventually outgrew. It’s not that the time has passed but that I no longer really notice it. Not like I did when I was so eager to be somewhere I wasn’t at that moment, when I looked ahead instead of looked around, so eager to be older, beyond where I was, not who I was. Grown. And truth be told, I never really felt that way — grown — until things became serious with K, when the future began to take definitive form. But since then, with our move to the States, the birth of our children, the purchase and eternal remodeling of our house, the pressures of our jobs, and all the other things that pack our days and nights, I don’t often give it much thought.

That’s the greatest gift of wigilia: a pause, a step out of time with the rest of our lives, a ritual that calls us to reflect and remember the past and appreciate the present.

Nothing ever changes in wigilia. Nothing. We have the same preparation rituals, the same cleaning. The one change: the involvement of the kids increases. The Boy eagerly helps with anything; the Girl, not so much, but that is changing as she matures. She’s eleven now, nearing what promises to be one of the most challenging and rewarding period, her teens. Wigilia always provides a metric for growth, both in the amount of help she provides and the willingness with which she eats some of the things she’s not really crazy about.

Nothing ever changes in wigilia. Ever. We eat the same foods with little repetition. Barszcz z uszkami, pierogi z kapustą i grzybami, jakaś ryba. Zawsze tak samo. It’s the ultimate comfort food, recipes that have passed through generations with little change. I sometimes wonder what L and E might do with their families after we’re gone. Will they take these recipes with them? Will they find themselves reminiscing on Christmas Eve about how different their Christmas Eves were as children?

Nothing ever changes in wigilia. Nothing.We follow the same script with little repetition. A nativity story, usually from Matthew. We sing a Christmas carol, usually “Silent Night.” We share the opłatek. And our wishes for each other never change, always involving health in one form or other. Is there anything else we need to worry about? Is there a greater or more important wish we could have for others?

Nothing ever changes in wigilia. Ever. We even give the same gifts (a photo yearbook of the previous year’s adventures). It’s not the most fiscally generous gift, but it’s what everyone really wants. “We always look forward to getting it,” K’s sister-in-law once told us, and in truth, K and I truly enjoy making it. It’s a challenge to narrow a year’s worth of pictures (approximately 12,000 in 2017) to a selection to fit into roughly 150 pages. And for me, it’s always the same: a bottle or two of some libation. We’re all so easily pleased.

Nothing ever changes in wigilia. Nothing. We end the same way, sitting around drinking coffee, listening to carols, watching the kids play with their toys. This is something that will eventually change. L no longer gets toys, not in the sense of something she can play with. E will reach that point too. In ten years, L will be in college, E in high school, and what gifts will we be giving then? Lego won’t be so very special, but we’ll figure that out. Hopefully, the gift of just being home — the Girl coming home from her junior year of college in ten years — will be enough.

Nothing ever changes in wigilia. Ever. I end the evening alone, drink at hand, chewing on a cigar (and it’s even been the same cigar for the last few years, I would bet: a Partagas Black Label — a dark, earthy, rich, strong nicotine kick in the pants to end the evening), with Christmas music playing (this year, Chanticleer’s Psallite! A Renaissance Christmas), working on pictures taken throughout the day, then writing about it all — writing the same thoughts.

Nothing ever changes in wigilia. Nothing.

And yet there are all the little changes, little jewels of growth and change that make this year different from last. The Girl, singing soprano in the children’s choir under the direction of a new choirmaster who, looking for a change, has come through a miraculous chain of events from the Vatican where he was assistant music director at the Sistine Chapel to our little church in Greenville and has made the music of Mass positively angelic. The Boy, trying so hard to be a man, agreeing to change into more formal clothes because K explained that I would be doing the same. K, realizing she doesn’t have to do everything every year — notice: no kapusta z grzybami or zupa grzybowa on the menu, and only two deserts — and having a much more relaxed day as a result.

We’re all growing.

The truth is, everything changes every wigilia.

Everything.

Previous Years

Wigilia 2003

Wigilia 2004

Wigilia 2005

Wigilia 2006

Wigilia 2007

Wigilia 2008

Wigilia 2009

https://matchingtracksuits.com/2010/12/25/wigilia-2010/

Wigilia 2011

Wigilia 2012

Wigilia 2013

Wigilia 2014

Wigilia 2015

Wigilia Eve 2017

Saturday 23 December 2017

It should really have been a different few days. These last few days before Wigilia have always been filled with baking, decorating, cooking, cleaning, and anticipation.

There has been some preparation, to be sure. We’ve done the usual cleaning. But somehow, it just doesn’t seem possible that tomorrow is Wigilia. The build-up is somehow just not there.

Given the stress that it can cause K, perhaps that’s a good thing. Definitely.

Christmas Tree

Monday 11 December 2017

It’s really such a silly idea, positively kitsch in a lot of ways: we cut down trees, bring them into our home, and hang silly baubles on it. For many, it’s more than that: it’s positively evil. Some Christians look at Jeremiah 10:2-5 as something of a condemnation of the Christmas tree. One religious group explains it thusly:

This passage states, “Thus says the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cuts a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good.”

These verses illustrate an idol made out of wood. However, idols were also made out of other materials, such as stone, marble, etc. So this is not a comprehensive description of idol-making. More specifically, it speaks of Christmas tree-making, even as it is still done today.

A reference to the signs of heaven in verse 2 is better translated today as the winter solstice. Most people are unaware of the connection between Christmas and the winter solstice, and that the origin of the holiday is pagan. They observe it because of the customs in our society. We need to be aware of what some of the customs signify. In fact, we read in verse 2 above, “learn not the way of the heathen.” God commands us not to follow that way.

Although the scripture above undoubtedly reflects the ancient practices during Jeremiah’s time, we know that the book is also prophetic. Therefore, we ought to take it as an instruction for our day and age as well.

The use of such a tree amounts to idolatry. This is a transgression of God’s law, stated in Exodus 20:4-6. To learn more, you may wish to request our free booklet The True Origin of Christmas.

So it’s far from a harmless bit of cheesiness for some.

In The True Origin of Christmas, the author, David Pack, explains it thus:

No booklet about Christmas is complete without some explanation of the “Christmas tree.” We have touched on it without directly focusing on it. The modern Christmas tree originated in Germany. But the Germans got it from the Romans, who got it from the Babylonians and the Egyptians.

Like many articles from Pack, he fails to provide any documentation for the assertion that the Romans got it from the even more ancient sources. To be fair, there is something to Pack’s assertion:

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk and wore the sun as a blazing disk in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from the illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes which symbolized for them the triumph of life over death.

Early Romans marked the solstice with a feast called the Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Romans knew that the solstice meant that soon farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. To mark the occasion, they decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs. In Northern Europe the mysterious Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder. (The History Channel)

But Pack believes we’re just supposed to take his word for it. He is the authority.

By and large, it seems to be a tempest in a cliche. So it has pagan origins. So Christmas is a Christianization of solstace celebrations. So what? I find it hard to believe that an omnipotent being would care much about such relatively petty matters when I take into consideration all the other things he should be worried about.

Such considerations fail to take into account all the good that comes from it, the joy my family experiences sharing those couple of hours as we set up the tree, haul out the decorations, and get busy with hot cocoa and ornaments.