Santa Claus was a Bully!

Now this might come as a surprise...but last night as Kristine and I were watching the Rankin & Bass classic Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer Kristine made an observation that had never really struck me before.  That classic Christmas show revealed that bullying was something that has been happening for years.  Rudolph first aired in 1964, 47 years ago.  What this movie shows is that both Rudolph and Hermie were victims of bullying.  But not just from their peers, but in Rudolph's case, from his father, and even Santa. 

Yes, I said it!  Santa was a bully.  If you've never noticed it before, in this movie Santa is pretty much a grouch.  When the Elves practice their song for him all Santa can say is "Needs work."  When it's revealed to all the residents in Christmas Town that Rudolph has a red nose Santa's only comment is to tell Donner (Rudolph's father) that he ought to be ashamed of himself.  Yes, that's right, Santa tells Rudolph's father that he should be ASHAMED to have a son who is different.  And the coach (Blitzen) encourages this bullying behavior.  Instead of being the adult and discouraging this behavior, Blitzen not only partakes, but then declares that Rudolph will no longer be allowed to participate in the reindeer games. 

In today's society, Rudolph might have resorted to violence towards himself or the other residents of Christmas Town.  When Santa came to Rudolph and asked for help to get through the storm on Christmas Eve, Rudolph COULD have told Santa what to do with his sleigh.  Instead, he took the high road...he led the sleigh..and he did indeed "go down in history". 

Is it wrong to psychoanalyze Rankin & Bass? 

Making Rocks

This weekend was spent in a combination of football viewing, some Christmas decorating around the house, and the baking of the rocks.  If you read my earlier blog you know that rocks are a family recipe that has been passed down for at least 3 generations.  I haven't made rocks in several years myself, but isn't it amazing how memories can come flooding back just from the smells that certain things create.  I remembered that it wasn't JUST the smell of fresh pine that brought back Christmas memories, but the smell of Christmas cookies (especially rocks) being baked.  I'm sitting here at work right now and I just went back to grab a couple of rocks...when I opened the tin the smell of the spices and brown sugar and walnuts took me back to some of my boyhood Christmases.  So allow me to share some of this with you.

First you cream together 2 cups of shortening with 3 cups of brown sugar

Then you add 4 well beaten eggs to the mixture

And mix well

Then add 1/2 tsp ground cloves, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp ginger and 1 tsp salt

Then dissolve 2 tsp baking soda in 4 tblsp of hot orange juice and add to mixture

Now comes the fun part... add 6 cups of flour, 2 lbs of walnuts and 2 lbs of dates (optional)...this part usually involves mixing with you hands so PLEASE wash your hands.

Put dough in muffin tins about 3/4 full.  You can use full size muffin tins or mini-muffin tins...your choice

And bake in 350 degree oven.  If using mini muffin tins bake for 15-20 min.  If using regular size tins bake for 25-30 min.

The rocks can be stored in metal tins (we used to use the Charlie Chips tin)

Christmas in a Different House

We moved from Groveport to Pickerington in 1978 and for the first time bought an artificial Christmas tree.  What used to take an hour just to set up changed to about 10-15 minutes.  Putting up the artificial tree was easier, and therefore less stressful.  It was nice not to have the stress, and once the tree was decorated it looked just as nice as a real tree.  The Christmas lights were still tangled, but that would soon end too.  The only thing I missed was that smell of pine that always reminded me that it was Christmas season.  I guess that's the reason why, when I finally bought my own house, I've always gotten a real tree at Christmas time. 

The house in Pickerington was decorated a little differently.  I no longer shared a room with my older brother, but my bedroom became the gathering point on Christmas morning while we waited for mom and dad to wake up.  The house in Pickerington was two stories, so instead of having the sheet hanging over the opening to the living room, we just knew that we had to stay upstairs until dad went down and prepared everything for us to come down.  This change led to Christmas music being played, along with the Christmas lights being turned on.  By this time we all knew the "truth" about Santa Claus, so that bit of fun was no longer part of the day.  But we still enjoyed the holiday.  We still made the trips to the grandparents' after doing our own morning Christmas routine. 

1978 would be the last year that we spent with all 4 grandparents, as one of my grandfathers would pass away a little more than a month later.  Realizing that fact now keeps me in mind of that fact that we need to cherish these memories each time.  We all know that family can get on your nerves.  They can do things that you don't like, or don't agree with, but they are still family.  That doesn't mean that you disregard the things they may do to hurt you.  But maybe what we need to do is distinguish between the times when people do things to hurt us, and when people do things that we don't agree with.  If someone makes a decision in their life that doesn't affect me, isn't malicious, and doesn't affect the people I care about...then it's not my place to judge that decision.  Just like it's no one else's place to judge my decisions.

Christmas Eve at Work

When we lived in Groveport as kids we attended the Groveport United Methodist Church.  Although none of us could sing, we were all members of the church Jr. Choir.  On Christmas Eve each year the Jr. Choir would put on a Christmas presentation.  One year dad was on call at work and while on the way home from the Christmas Eve service his pager went off.  We went home and dad dropped off my mom along with my younger brother and sister.  My older brother and I went in to work with dad.  Dad worked for the phone company and had to fix some problem with the system.  It was a change from the routine and was something that made that particular year a little more special.  For two kids our age to go to work with dad on Christmas Eve was something special. 

One other year that there was a change to "normal" Christmas routine, was the year that dad had to work overnight on Christmas Eve.  At the time I didn't realize how hard it must have been for dad to work all night on Christmas Eve, and then spend all day Christmas day doing the Christmas stuff at home and then driving 90 minutes to go to the grandparents' and back at the end of the night.  He had to have been completely exhausted.  On that morning, instead of waiting in the bedroom we all went to the kitchen and ate breakfast.  But we had to cut through the bathroom to get to the kitchen and for the shutter doors between the kitchen and living room were shut.  That was the only time that happened in all the years we lived at that house.

More Christmas Memories

Although this has nothing to do with Christmas...I'll start by saying that I ran my first 5K Event of the season this past Sunday.  The "Beat Michigan 5K" on the campus of Ohio State.  I really like this course as it winds through campus, passing Ohio Stadium and running through the Buckeye Grove outside the stadium ... for you non-OSU fans, the Buckeye Grove is an area where the university plants a Buckeye Tree for every OSU Football player who is named as an All-American.  I wasn't fast, and I did take a few walk breaks along the way, but the weather was great for running (not to hot and not too cold) and running around "The Oval" and past Mirror Lake...and of course, past both the north end and south end of "The 'Shoe" and through the Buckeye Grove made for a nice 5K.  I'm hoping to find a 5K or two each month to run as I prepare to run a half marathon in May...I'm still debating on which 1/2 to run...do I run the CapCity Half Marathon in Columbus or do I run the Flying Pig Half Marathon in Cincinnati?  The Flying Pig will get me in to Kentucky so I can cross that state off my list of states to run in, but I've seen the hills in Cincinnati...do I really want to run those?

OK...now to Christmas.  Last night, as I was sitting around watching TV I started to do some lite decorating.  I have a picture frame that hangs on my wall.  It's holds eight different pictures.  I have my normal year round pictures and behind them I store pictures to display at Christmas time.  The Christmas pictures are now in front of the others.  I took down my large picture of the NYC skyline and hung a big picture of Santa.  I removed a few other pictures from the walls and hung up Christmas photos and plaques.  Tonight I will remove the Hummel figurines from my corner cabinet and replace them with the figurines I bought a few years back of Rudolph and all his friends from the Island of Misfit Toys.  I've put together a shopping list of ingrediants that I need to make rocks, and plan on making them for the first time in several years.  Unfortunately the hanging of Christmas lights outside will have to wait this year, as I will be waiting for Able Roofing to replace all my gutters before I put up any outside decorations which might get in their way.  I'm hoping to hear from them soon.

As I think about the decorating I remember the fun times, but I also remember that they usually didn't start out fun.  Getting the Christmas tree to stand up straight was always a struggle.  It always involved a lot of adjusting, a few firring strips under one or two legs of the tree stand and a lot of words that I won't repeat here.  Then there were the lights.  For some reason the lights were always tangled when we tried to get them out of the box.  It would take a while to untangle the lights and a lot of those same words that usually came with trying to stand the tree up straight would also be used to untangle lights.  As a kid I could never understand how lights that were put in a box and left untouched for a year could somehow get themselves so tangled up.  (As I got older I figured out that if "someone" would have taken the time to put the lights away without just bundling them up and throwing them in the box then they might not have been so tangled up the next year and he might not have gotten so frustrated the following year and wouldn't have had to resort to taking out his frustration on those of us who had nothing to do with tangling the lights)  ;-)  Then came the matter of testing the lights.  Of course these were the kinds of lights that, when one bulb didn't work, none of them worked.  And this was all truely like a scene from "A Christmas Story".

But once the tree was up straight and the lights were untangled and working, then we would go about hanging the ornaments on the tree.  There were a few ornaments that I remember hanging every year.  I can't remember getting the ornaments, we had them for as long as I could remember.  The red felt cello.  The four elves on shelves ornaments.  The string of copper bells.  Every year some of the ornaments would be broken when we opened the box, but some of them would last year in and year out.  Once all the lights and all the ornaments were on the tree, then the icycles got thrown on.  We didn't waste icycles either...we had another bread bag that contained all the icycles that were on the tree the previous year.  I used to really like just sitting in the living room with all the lights out and looking at the Christmas lights.  I still like that.  Now the Christmas tree stands are made to adjust easier to get the trees to stand up straight.  Lights can have a bulb or two burned out without the entire string going out.  I've started my own collection of ornaments that go on my tree each year.  I have my own string of bells.  Even though my house is small, I have, for the last ten years, gotten a real Christmas Tree.  Although getting an artificial tree made erecting the tree easier, the thing that reminds me most of Christmas is the smell of fresh pine in the living room.  That's something you can't get with an artificial tree.  So far it's been worth the extra effort to put up each year and extra effort to clean up too.

Thanksgiving Week

Well, as we enter Thanksgiving week I'll try my best to maintain that thankful attitude that I've been working on this month.  But the joy for me will come when the Christmas season is officially here.  I've loved Christmas since I was kid.  My earliest memories of Christmas involved my younger brother and sister coming to the bedroom I shared with my older brother.  We would wake up Christmas morning to find our stockings sitting outside our bedroom doors...always with an orange in the bottom...and that hard tack ribbon candy that would get red felt stuck all over it.  We would go through our stockings and open whatever gift was included as a stocking stuffer.  Then we'd wait until mom & dad woke up.  Sometimes we would argue over who had to go in to their bedrooms to wake them up if it was taking them too long.  In that house the living room, where the Christmas tree was always set up, was at other end of the hallway from all our bedrooms.  There would be a sheet up over the entry to the living room so we couldn't see what presents were there.  Then dad would go in to the living room, turn on the lights on the tree and remove the sheet (or one year it was a cardboard box that had held the air hockeye table that we received that year).  Then, and only then, were we allowed to enter the living room and start opening presents. 

After opening presents and playing for a little while, we would all get ready and head down to Guernsey County.  We would head down to the grandparents' to celebrate Christmas there.  First stop was always the Burkhardt grandparents to drop off gifts and food.  Then we would head to the Lyon grandparents.  In our younger years Santa would stop by on Christmas Day.  I remember the day we found the Santa suit in my grandparents' basement and realized that John, a boarder who lived there for several years, was "Santa". 
After opening presents at the Lyon grandparents and having an early Christmas dinner, we would head back to the Burkhardt grandparents.  Now my mother is an only child, so Christmas at the Lyon grandparents meant we were the only ones there.  My dad is the oldest of six, so Christmas at the Burkhardt grandparents meant the house was full of family.  Both situations were special for their own unique reasons.

At the Burkhardt grandparents we could count on a few things...rocks, anise cookies and sugar cookies.  Now when I say rocks, I'm not talking about the kind that made up the driveway to the house, I'm talking about a family recipe.  A spiced Christmas cookie that I'm assuming had been passed down for at least a few generations.  They're made in muffin tins and contain a lot of different spices, walnuts, and originally dates (although most of the family started leaving out the dates several years ago).  I can tell you this about rocks...they last.  I've only missed being home for Christmas once, when I was stationed in Germany in 1986.  That year my mom sent me a care package with some rocks in it.  Only after I had eaten them was I told that the rocks she sent were left over from the previous Christmas.  It didn't matter, they tasted GREAT!

We would usually end up getting home pretty late in the evening (or maybe it was just because it got dark so early that it SEEMED late).  But it always made for a full day. 

But it wasn't just Christmas day that was full...the whole season was full of memories that made me love the season.  Decorating the yard was always fun.  Dad had made a huge wreath out of some styrophome and garland.  He would hang it on the front of the house and have a spotlight in the yard shining on the wreath.  Plastic bread bags sealed with nylon ties would cover the plugs to keep them from getting wet.  My older brother and I would climb up on the roof to run a string of lights across the top because dad, although he was ok climbing a ladder, was not ok with getting on the roof (or actually I think he was not ok with trying to get back on the ladder if he had to get on the roof).  So, since dad was never a big fan of heights, Kevin and I would get to climb up on the roof to string the lights.   

I'll talk more about Christmas memories over the next few weeks.  I love the season!

Better News

After last week's news I thought I really needed to find something more positive in the news.  The fact is that, however horrific the "Penn State Events" were and are, there really is bad news out there every week.  So I thought, in the interest in staying positive, I would go on the local news website and look for some good news to highlight in this blog.  It was harder than I thought it would be. 

The headlines I found on the website included things like:

3 Hospitalized: Shot in East Columbus Apartment Complex
Shooting Victim Runs, Collapses in Store Parking Lot
Computers Stolen from OSU Building
Female Suspect Accused of Misuse of Credit Cards
Accused Mom Posts She's 'Unfit Mother' on Facebook

But, believe it or not, I was able to find something positive in the news.  A story out of Portsmouth, Ohio.  The headline... Ohio school has shy kids practice reading to dogs

The program, at a Portsmouth elementary school, had so many children interested that they couldn't all fit in the classroom.  Now I'm willing to bet that some of the kids that participated did so more because they liked the idea of being able to have some time with the dog, and not because they were quite as shy as some of the other kids.  But it's something positive...at some point someone started thinking outside the box to figure out a way to bring these kids out of their shells and help them to socialize a little more comfortably.  In a week that started with hearing about kids who were targeted as victims, it's nice to see a situation in which some people are trying to help kids and build their confidence.  I'll still be praying for those kids who were and are victims...but I'll be praying also for more teachers like those at Portsmouth West Elementary school too.

Abundance Based Living

This morning I was going through my email and reading the weekly newsletter from my pastor.  In the email he wrote about his experience with "Abundance Based Living" through the month of October.  He had made a commitment to spend the month of October focused on Abundance Based Living rather than Scarcity Based Living.  Promising to start each day knowing that his needs would be provided for, pausing in the middle of each day to reflect on his blessings, and ending each day thankful for what had been provided.
Now, whether you're a believer or not, the idea of trying to focus on Abundance Based Living seems to me to be a good attitude to have.  It basically boils down to focusing on the positive rather than the negative.  It's not always easy.  So often we focus on what our lives lack instead of focusing on the blessings in our lives.  So often we focus on what "the other guy" has that we don't have.  So often we focus on what how we'd have done it differently or "the RIGHT way" instead of recognizing that doing it "different" is NOT the same as doing it "wrong". 
So I challenge anyone who follows my blog (all one of you)...lol...try it for a a month.  Try to wake up every morning thankful for the day you've been given and the blessings you have.  Pause each day to reflect on the good that has happened.  And end each day thankful that you made it through another day.  If you're reading this then let me clue you in....you've obviously got access to a computer, so I have no doubt that you've got a roof over your head and food to eat.  There's a start.  Many in this world don't even have that much.
To ramble on just a bit more....a few years ago I had the priviledge of meeting two women from New Orleans, LA.  These women were both dispatchers for the New Orleans Police Dept. and had been at work when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast.  Both had lost their houses in the disaster.  Not only had they lost their houses, but they had lost everything that was in their houses.  They came out of Hurricane Katrina with no possessions other than the clothes on their backs.  These two women were the most positive individuals I had ever met.  They laughed, they joked and they were thankful for what they had.  Yes, that's right...two women who had lost what we might describe as "everything" were thankful.  I wondered how that could be.  How could these two women have such a positive outlook on life after what they'd been through and everything they'd lost?  I asked them that question...and the answer I got was so simple.  It wasn't the fact that they'd lost so much that they focused on...it was what they had.  They knew that, following such a disaster, they were really the lucky ones.  They still had jobs to go to...many did not.  Even though they'd lost their homes, they had been provided with a roof over their heads...many had not.  They woke up each morning and went to bed each night...many had died in that disaster.  Simply being alive was a blessing.  We take so much foregranted and maybe THAT is why we have to work to focus on the positives in our lives.
Try it for month.  If you can honestly say that you focused on your HAVES and not your HAVE NOTS for a full month and it didn't change the way you think about life...it didn't make you happier...it didn't make you more content...it didn't relieve a lot of the stress in your life...then I'll concede defeat.  But if you honestly live an Abundance Based life for the month, spending each day being thankful for what you have and what God has given you, instead of being upset about what you don't have and can't control, then I predict that you will live a much happier life, not just in November, but for a long time to come.

What if God says "No"?

"Touched by an Angel" was a show I used to watch on occassion.  The premise of the show was that three angels roamed the earth helping people to see God's glory, or preparing people for their transition from their earthly existance to their heavenly existance. 
In one episode a town in the American Southwest was experiencing a severe drought.  The townspeople prayed for rain, but none came.  So..in order to make a point, a lawyer in the town filed a class action lawsuit against God.  That's right, they sued God for not answering their prayers.  During the show one of the angels is on the stand trying to explain that God answers prayers "in his own time" and that it was beyond human understanding to know why and for what purpose God had not answered the prayers.  The court recessed for lunch, and when they came back the same angel took the stand and said that she had spoken with God during the recess and that God had given her an answer to the town's prayers....the answer was "No".  It wasn't a case of God not answering the prayers or not listening.  God had listened..he had heard the prayers..and his answer to prayers of "please give us rain" was ... "No". 
Now that's a difficult concept to grasp.  It's difficult for a believer to grasp the concept that God would say no to such a request.  I mean, it wasn't like God was being asked to give them an extra helping of their favorite flavor of ice cream.  These people were in dire need of rain and were being told no. 
Most of the times I've asked God for help I've received it.  And it's come in a form that is I understand.  I almost immediately see the results of my prayers.  But there have been times I've been told No.  Usually I figure out why at some point down the road...but at the time I'm told no, it's really difficult to understand why.  I'm a good person.  I consider myself to be a decent, loving human being.  That's not to say that I haven't made my mistakes along the way, and not to say that I won't make more in the future.  But overall I'm a good person and I deserve the things I ask for don't I?
The Garth Brooks song "Unanswered Prayers" comes to mind.  At the time the answer of "No" comes around, it hurts.  No one likes to be told no.  But just like a parent tells a child no, we have to remember that we are children of God.  And we must have faith that when He tells us no, there's a reason that's beyond our understanding, and at some point in the future that reason will be made clear to us.