Remainder
christmas 2024
Boxing Day 2024
Everyone has returned home; K returns to work tomorrow — the 2024 holiday season is over. The timeless magical period of Wigilia and Christmas and all the time preparing for it disappears, and the worries that for a few days we put out of our minds come crowding back in.
Worry 1
I woke up this morning thinking of school. The students are great — the best group I’ve had in years. The amount of micro-managing and mindless paperwork has increase so much over the last two years that it has me dreading a return. I’m left in a stressful quandary:
- stay at the school where I have a reputation, where I am (by administration’s own admission) the most frequently-requested teacher and put up with the increasing fiddling in every single decision I make while taking a little bit of comfort in the fact that that reputation serves as a bit of a buffer as I push back, or
- move to a new school (preferably a high school — I think all middle schools in the county are under the same micro-management stress: it comes from the district) where I am an unknown with no capital and no reputation, where it might in fact be even worse.
It’s a difficult decision that I’ll have to make very soon, and it entails a conversation with my school’s administration that I don’t really anticipate gleefully.
Worry 2
L is still recovering from surgery. It will take a couple of weeks. It’s still stressful to us all, though. It’s “Worry 2” instead of “Worry 1” because we know it’s temporary. She’ll recover; she’ll be able to breath better; her sinuses won’t be giving her constant headaches. So it’s a short-term worry — hence, “Worry 2.” But it’s our daughter we’re worried about: even when it’s a seemingly unfounded worry, we can’t just shake it off.
Worry 3
We have a leak in our roof. It might be under warranty from the company that replaced our roof a few years ago; it might not be. We won’t know until the company comes out and looks at it. But we’ve been on the list for over a week now. It took them forever to start the work in the first place. I’m not confident we’ll see anyone here for a long time.
And it’s supposed to start raining tomorrow afternoon and rain through the weekend.
I’ve got it tarped, but not sufficiently for a heavy rain. The location of the leak and the shape of our roof make it difficult to tarp. And we have no idea how long this will last.
Do we just call another company and take the hit?
Do we call insurance (they suggested calling the company that replaced it in the first place — a company the insurance adjuster had recommended, for the wrote our current roof)?
Worry 4
We have elected as president a narcissist who’s a convicted felon who tried to retain power by overthrowing the democratic process, a man who is, in every possible sense of the idea, completely unfit for the office. And some very worrying people will likely have an influence on him. People like Curtis Yarvin:
Yarvin, who considers liberal democracy as a decadent enemy to be dismantled, is intellectually influential on vice president-elect JD Vance and close to several proposed Trump appointees. The aftermath of Trump’s election victory has seen actions and rhetoric from Trump and his lieutenants that closely resemble Yarvin’s public proposals for taking autocratic power in America. (The Guardian)
When Trump takes office in a few weeks, it could conceivably lead to the end of America as we know it. Sure, the Republicans said the same things about Biden, but those fears were based on baseless conspiracy theories and good-old-fashioned hate-mongering. The people surrounding Trump aren’t being conspiratorial about anything: they’re saying it all aloud. They’re not holding their cards close: they’ve laid them all out with the Project 2025 manifesto and rhetoric people like Yarvin are saying.
Given the post-election period and Trump’s preparation for a return to the White House, Yarvin’s program seems less fanciful then it did in 2021, when he laid it out for Anton.
In the recording of that podcast, Yarvin offers a condensed presentation of his program which he has laid out on Substack and in other venues.
Midway through their conversation, Anton says to Yarvin, “You’re essentially advocating for someone to – age-old move – gain power lawfully through an election, and then exercise it unlawfully”, adding: “What do you think the actual chances of that happening are?”
Yarvin responded: “It wouldn’t be unlawful,” adding: “You’d simply declare a state of emergency in your inaugural address.”
Yarvin continued: “You’d actually have a mandate to do this. Where would that mandate come from? It would come from basically running on it, saying, ‘Hey, this is what we’re going to do.’”
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to carry out a wide array of anti-democratic or authoritarian moves, and effectively ran on these promises. Trump has suggested he might declare a state of emergency in response to America’s immigration crisis.
Trump also promised to pursue retribution on individually named antagonists like representative Nancy Pelosi and senator-elect Adam Schiff, and spoke more broadly about dispatching the US military to deal with “the enemy within”.
Later in the recording, Yarvin said that after a hypothetical authoritarian president was inaugurated in January, “you can’t continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past since perhaps the start of April”. Later expanding on the idea with “the idea that you’re going to be a Caesar and take power and operate with someone else’s Department of Reality in operation is just manifestly absurd.”
“Machiavelli could tell you right away that that’s a stupid idea,” Yarvin added. (The Guardian)
This is, of course, a worry that leaves me thinking, “This is all out of my hands — I can do nothing about it,” and yet. And yet…
So when the holidays are over, it’s not just a return to “normal” life. It’s that with a few additional stressors (not even all mentioned here) thrown in. We’ll get through it all, but it doesn’t diminish the stress levels.
Christmas 2024
Wigilia 2024
Going into Wigilia sick is no fun. K was ill during the 2011 Wigilia, and I had to make the barszcz as a result. It was probably not as good as K’s.
Still worse than heading into Wigilia sick is going into it after an operation. The Girl’s last Wigilia here as a full-time resident of our house and it was a struggle for her — the whole day.
She stayed in her room for most of the day. “I’m saving my energy for tonight,” she explained.
Evening came and she put some nice clothes on, came down stairs, and had dinner with us. After soup, she took a break in the living room, but she came back for the fish.
When it came time for the gifts, she lay on the couch and smiled as E passed out all the gifts she’d bought for everyone.
That was a bit of a role change: she’s always been so thrilled to get the gifts (what kid isn’t?), but tonight, she was more enjoying watching everyone else open her gifts.
The Girl is growing up. In fact, how long can we continue calling her “the Girl”? Isn’t she legally an adult now? A woman?
But some things never change. Wigilia never changes. The same food every year. Perhaps a different fish — trout this year. Or did we have trout last year as well?
And the same faces around the table, with one exception — a new guest this year.
So if some things don’t always change, if some things just stay the same seemingly forever, I guess the Girl can remain the Girl in our eyes indefinitely.
And what of the Boy this year? He retained his role as the gift distributor, but his voice is a little deeper now when he hands someone a gift.
But some things with the Boy don’t change: he’s still the most grateful gift-receiver.
Everyone, happy with their gifts, discussed whether to go to Mass tonight or tomorrow. They all decided on tomorrow, so we watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The girls’ pick. I hadn’t seen it since I watched it in the theater, I don’t think.
I checked the release date of the film: 1989. I was two years younger than the Girl is now. And like that, those thirty-five years disappeared.
The movie ended, and like that, yet another Wigilia was over. Everyone slowly went their own ways.
Another Wigilia.
Another little bit of perfection.
Wigilia Preparation 2024
Getting ready for Wigilia is a multi-day affair. We actually began a couple of weeks ago by preparing an absolute truckload of pierogi and uszki for the dinner as well as the zakwas for the barszcz This morning K put the dried mushrooms to soak just before she began the vegetable stock for the barszcz (carrots, parsnips, celery, a couple of turnips, some prunes and an apple) and the beets themselves were roasting in the oven. As I was grating the roasted beets, she was preparing the crust for the cygan.As I cleaned up the mess we’d made, K was chopping the massive amount of dried fruit (mainly prunes, dried apricots, and raisins) cygan requires. As K was melting the butter, chocolate, and sugar to mix in with the dried fruit, I looked for recipes for spanakopita. A bit of a mixed morning.
In the afternoon? I’m sure K finished the cygan, and she was going to make a rolada, one of the Girl’s favorite desserts, for L. That was the plan. I’ve no pictures of that process, though, because I was with the Girl in the hospital. We arrived at twelve as instructed. At 3:30, the surgeon still hadn’t met with us.
“Things are running behind,” the nurse said. “That happens.”
True enough. Medicine, though, is the only industry for which we have this kind of patience. Everywhere else, we would have long ago gotten up and left. “We’ll take our business elsewhere.” Not such an option for surgery.
Finally, a little before four, they wheel the Girl back for her minor procedure: a deviated septum which has contributed to never ending sinus problems for our poor girl. The day before Wigilia is hardly the best time for surgery, but we have to fit it in wherever we can between volleyball, winter/indoor track, work, school, and everything else that crowds the Girl’s calendar. After waiting over three hours in preop, the Girl gets wheeled to the OR, and I head to the waiting room for more waiting.
It seems somehow appropriate that the last Wigilia that L is living at home is so wonky. It gets us thinking about how it’s so different from every other Wigilia and so similar at the same time. We spent the day not preparing as a family, and we go into Wigilia not even knowing how L will feel a day after surgery — will she even want to sit at the table? (Not really a serious worry.) And yet Wigilia will be the same as it always is, as is my post about it: the timelessness of tradition in the midst of an ever-changing world for our family. Next Wigilia, L will be coming home from college, probably with a big list of foods she wants K to prepare and a big bag of laundry. It’s always been this way: all the same, never the same.
Jasełka 2024
Every year for as long as I can remember there being an active Polish community in a local parish, the Poles have gathered for a Christmas potluck. Everyone shares the opłatek tradition, sings carols, and simply spends time together. Before all this, though, is the jasełka performance.
We’ve been doing it for so long that the kids who participated in it when we first began fifteen years ago are now done with college. Every year, though, a group of kids would put on the Christmas play. Every new a few faces disappeared and a couple of new faces made appearances.
It was truly a labor of love, cliche though that might be. Parents brought their kids for rehearsals, helped the kids learn their lines, created costumes and a set. Someone would have to find a script online. Someone would have to arrange for space for rehearsal. It took weeks to get everything together.
One year L was Mary. Another year the Boy was the baby Jesus. And once, in a pinch, L was Mary. That might have been the year E was Jesus. Or maybe not. Fifteen years of performances have all run together into a blur.
This year was the first year there was no jasełka. At all. But there were carols. There was a meal. There were opłateki. And there was, as always, a special moment for everyone to thank Father Theo, the parish’s head priest. He’s a gentle man from Columbia who took over celebrating the Polish Mass when no Polish priests could. He’s gradually added to the portion of the ceremony more and more Polish, and now, he celebrates almost the entire Mass in Polish.
“I love Polish!” he said this evening. “All that sh sh ch sh sh sh!”
The whole afternoon/early evening is a microcosm of all my little obsessions: the passage of time, the loveliness of tradition, the importance of family, the importance of culture, the love of good food.
Things change; time passes; people grow up; people grow old; it all stays the same; it all passes in the blink of an eye.
Everything I write about here almost incessantly.
Some Previous Years
Sunday Prep
We have spent most of the weekend getting ready for Christmas. The Boy, for example, has his first Christmas concert as a member of his school’s wind ensemble. They don’t wear the usual Maudlin Middle band outfits for that performance; the girls wear formal black dresses and the boys wear tuxedos. The Boy’s tux pants are too long, so K hemmed them this morning.
Yesterday, I made the farsz for the pierogi and uszki we’ll have during our Wigilia meal in a few weeks. Today, K made them. We have every cutting block and baking sheet covered in dumplings of various size in both freezers of the house.
How many times have we had these prep days? Well, truthfully, it’s something I could count. It seems timeless and endless, but that’s only a trick of the brain. We’ve been married twenty years now, so that seems to make counting simple. But of course, we spent Wigilia together several years before we were married. Twenty -two times now? Twenty-three?
Decorating 2024
And so we enter the Christmas season, which this year promises to be unlike any Christmas we’ve shared. This is the last Christmas that L will still be living at home. It certainly won’t be the last Christmas we spend together, but it will most likely (excluding any unforeseen contingencies) be the last Christmas that she spends with us where the weeks leading up and the weeks trailing off see her still in her lovely room. “I guess I’ll head back now,” will be the phrase we’re dreading next year.
Last year, apparently, was a last for us — at least for a while. I am no longer in charge of the tree: this year, the Boy insisted on taking care of the tree. He unloaded it yesterday afternoon, suspended it under the deck to allow the branches to relax a bit, and carried into the house by himself — irritated that I wanted a picture as he did it.
“You’re like the paparazzi!” he declared.
This reticence to having his picture taken has been building, and it’s positively a thing now. L has gradually disappeared from the majority of the entries because of similar reasons. It’s understandable: teens are so very self-conscious of everything they do, of how everyone might look at them. I remember those anxieties myself. I would have felt even more aware of myself during this time of year: nothing stands out like not celebrating Christmas. At least when you’re the one not celebrating it. Like so many “distinctives” in our little sect, that one is more wide spread than I would have suspected as a seventh grader.
He did allow me to snap a shot of him putting the first ornament on the tree.
And as we were putting lights on the house, there was not much he could do to protest.
I don’t have nearly the number of photos from my own childhood as my children have of theirs. The reason, of course, is simple: digital is cheaper. We currently have 135,184 pictures in our Lightroom library, and that’s including scanned pictures back through the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties — well before the masses went digital. There was certainly something about the old film days that’s lacking now: that wait. You take a shot and you think you have a really great shot, but you’re not sure. So you send the pictures off for development (or do it yourself — I’m fortunate to have had a little darkroom for a few years), and there’s that excitement going through the pictures (or watching the developer bring the image out of nothing).
I still get that a little with digital, though. Snap a picture and a series of possible edits in Lightroom start running through my head. I’m no longer wondering if I got the shot, though. And that delayed gratification — it’s gone for good.
Finally, we get everything up and L asks, “Why is are the lights on the tree blue at the top and white at the bottom?” Because, to return to the opening thoughts, this Christmas will not be like others. Nana and Papa have been gone for years now: this will be our sixth Christmas without Nana and our fourth without Papa, true, but it still feels wrong.
It will also be our first Christmas without a long-anticipated Christmas party. Almost everyone we usually spend Christmas with decided to go back to Poland for this Christmas. (That’s why we all got together on Thanksgiving: the only difference was the food and the lack of carols, though everyone made up for it singing everything else they could think of.) I can’t blame them: Christmas in Poland is magical in a lot of ways. But it means things will be different around here.
Quieter, for one.
That’s almost always a good thing.