Fear of Creating a Christmas Monster

In case you hadn't noticed, it is Christmas time. Last year, Christmas was stressful because we traveled to see both of our families [one in Texas, one in California]. This year, still recovering from last year, we said no travel. This year, I'm under pressure of an entirely different sort.

As far as Sofia was concerned, Christmas wasn't too big of an issue last year. She got buried in gifts, which she loved, but the event itself didn't much sink in. Now, we are approaching the first Christmas where Sofia will be aware enough to develop some expectations for next year. This has been freaking me out. 

I watched videos after Halloween of parents pranking their kids, pretending that they'd eaten all the trick-or-treat spoils. Those kids melted down like it was an Apocolypse. It was then I started worrying about the precedent I'd be setting for Sofia this Christmas. And sure enough, as we walked the isles at Target a couple of weeks ago, she was grabbing at every toy on the shelf shouting, "I want that! What is that? I want that!" Those toy makers sure know their market. Oyvey. 

I can still remember the joy I felt at discovering that Christmas was a season of giving. When I was old enough to have a little allowance, I could save up and then go shop for presents for my family and friends. It was so much fun that it began to outweigh the fun of receiving gifts. And so as I approach Sofia's first memorable-Christmas, that was the joy I wanted to teach her. I wanted her to know that God gave us the greatest gift, His own Son, and so we too give gifts to others to follow His example and show our gratitude to God. 

And we're doing activities to try to teach her about giving. She participated in Operation Christmas Child with our church, she's making crafted presents for our family members, today she decorated a cookie as a gift for Daddy, etcetera.  

But I don't want to give her zero presents. Heaven knows I can't hold the grandparents back [nor do I really want to, they come up with great stuff that I couldn't afford to provide her]. How does one lavish love and supply excitement without creating an entitled brat? I was coming up short on an answer to this question. 

. . . until today, when I heard this quote from Brennan Manning:

"The Kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves.  They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior.  Twenty centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping about our human weaknesses and character defects.  The child doesn’t have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn’t have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn’t have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn’t have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding.  All he has to do is happily accept the cookies: the gift of the Kingdom."

- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, copyright 1990, 2008, page 53

I'm not sure Brennan was thinking of Christmas when he wrote it, but I was. I was decorating Christmas cookies, wondering how many I'd let Sofia eat when she got up from her nap (or lack there of, because I let her eat one this morning and that seems to have been enough sugar to last her through the rest of advent). But I think it gets at a piece of Christmas I've been forgetting about for years, or a piece I've maybe never grasped at all. Yes, Christmas is a season for giving. AND it is also a season for receiving. Accept those cookies. Accept those gifts. Accept THE gift. It made me think of a passage I've been meditating on lately, that talks about Christmas, children, and receiving:

John 1:

⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him,the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The tragedy in the story of the life of Christ is that He was not RECEIVED. And for those who did [do] not receive, they pass[ed] up the right to become CHILDREN of God. 

There is an art to receiving. I think I often do not do it well. I am too often un-gracious and ungrateful of my gifts. But I can be working on that. And if it's taking me this long, it probably couldn't hurt starting to teach Sofia now a thing or two about how to receive well. We can start with receiving Christmas gifts, with delighting in the excitement of unwrapping something new, with showing appreciation and value for the giver. And as we get that discipline down, maybe we will prepare her little heart to receive the gift of Christ, the gift of New Life, with reverence, with gratitude, with humble honor and affection for the giver. 

The giver of all good gifts doesn't just need us to be givers. First of all, He needs us to be recipients. 

Eating with Zoe: Good Gifts

I have been thinking lately about how thoroughly my mother has spoiled me with her supreme gift giving skills. It makes me feel like I can never give anyone else a proper gift, because it just can't measure up to her success. I realized her gifts provide three key components:


1) Something the receiver will get excited about and enjoy making good use of


2) Something that communicates her personal relationship with that person, that she knows them well


3) Something that creates an exciting experience that lasts for a long time as a special memory


That means I've gotten lots of good gifts in my day, and am also always disappointed with myself when I give to others, because the bar in my mind is so high. One might think that this is fairly doable for a mother give such things to a child when they're growing up. But as I considered even that caveat, I realized that since I've left home, there have still been amazing gifts from her. The ones that really stuck out in my mind all had to do with food, surprise surprise. So since that's a bit of a theme for me on this blog, and Mother's Day is coming up, I thought it would be fun to publicly thank her for her gifts of love, and share her secrets with you. Even if you're like me and have trouble giving amazing gifts to others, maybe you can just steal her ideas and take all the credit ;)


The Tastebook
Soon after I got married, my mom started peppering me with questions about my favorite recipes she used to make when I was growing up. This is a difficult question because she was so committed to being creative in the kitchen, that there were few dishes she repeated, she was always too busy trying new and fresh recipes. But it turned out that working hard to remember the special ones was worthwhile, because she was putting together a family cookbook. It took her months (in between a full-time job of teaching and everything else her life demanded), but she used TasteBook to pull together all our favorite recipes and add in special photos related to the people or memories associated with each dish, captions included. Not only to I regularly reference that book for all my go-to-comfort foods, but also I treasure it as a bit of our family history as told through food. 


Kitchen on Fire
Manny and I love to eat and cook together. So knowing this, my mom did some research about Berkeley and got us a gift certificate for Kitchen on Fire, a cooking school in the Gourmet Ghetto, the hub of restaurants that grew up around Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in Berkeley. The experience was SO Berkeley! All the food was fresh, local, and ethically impeccable. The class we picked taught us how to cook a full Asian feast of about 8-10 dishes. And the chef that taught the class did not only teach us how to cook the food or what acceptable substitutes to use, but also he taught us all about the chemistry and physics around the cooking process. It was intellectually stimulating and a delight to all our senses. It was such a fun date. We've continued to benefit from both what we learned there and the memory of the fun experience we had together. 


Epicurean Adventure
Each year at Christmas, my mom asks me what "big gift" I am wishing for. I always have so much trouble with this question, because what I would probably like most every year is a huge stack of books that I'll never have enough time to read through, and so will consequently provide more anxiety than joy. Lose-lose. But my mother is a determined one. So with a little tip from Manny, that being rather poor and stingy, I would like to get to eat out somewhere nice, she put together an "Epicurean Adventure." She did loads of research on all the great spots in the Gourmet Ghetto. She got a colorful file folder, decorated the outside and all the inner tabs, and in each slot she put a relevant sum of cash along with the printed out menus of a restaurant. There were options for everything from sit-down meals, gelato, to fun breakfast spots. We discovered all sorts of neat places in back alleys we never would have seen. We got to discover these restaurants in time to return for fun visits ourselves and with visitors (my mom included) from out of town. Soon after that, our church actually bought a building in that same neighborhood, and we were fully informed and prepared to enjoy all the culinary delights in convenient proximity! We made that adventure last for several months and the benefits lasted for years! 


Thanks, Mom, for all these great gifts. Even when you aren't cooking for me on a regular basis, you're making sure I eat so very well, and feel so very loved! 


Lobsters, what are some great food related gifts you've given or received? 

the cheapest, best Christmas gifts ever

Jeff and I found out we were going to be parents in November 2010. Let me tell you - that is perfect timing as far as telling people the good news that a baby is en route is concerned. We decided to wait until Christmas to let our families know about Squirmy McGee (Eiley's pre-gender name). While this was mildly excruciating because we were hiding it from everyone until then, the payoff was outstanding.


We decided it would be fun to give the grandmas, grandpas, great-grandmas and Great-Grandbob photo albums as Christmas gifts. We wrote "Grandma's Little Monster" on the front (or Grandpa or whatever, you get the idea) and had Squirmy's sonogram on the inside. This did work out well, except these three things happened first:


1. We could not wait to tell my sister, who lived near us in Virginia. We were pretty freaked out when we first found out about the baby, so we needed someone to be purely excited for us. So Sissy didn't get a nice sonogram and photo album - she got the pee stick, gift wrapped. We invited her over, and I nonchalantly told her I'd picked up a gift for her because I saw it and had thought of her. (By the way, I'm surprised she fell for this. I'm just not that thoughtful.) She opened it, squealed with excitement, teared up, then realized exactly what she was looking at and said, oh, ew and, grimacing, set it down. It was touching.

2. We flew home to California on Christmas Eve and wanted to wait until gift opening that night to tell my parents. At our annual Denny's dinner that night (classy!), I had waited a smidge too long to eat so my first trimester body was starting to feel nauseated. I let Jeff know, and he sprung into action (it looked like he was running to call 911 for a heart attack victim) finding a pack of crackers for me to eat. After I explained his intense exit away with the fact that I had asked Jeff for some crackers, my mom teasingly said "Are you pregnant or something?" Jeff, Sissy and I just laughed nervously. I think I said some sarcastic yeaaaahs. The surprise was saved though, and she and my dad were sufficiently shocked that evening.

3. We placed my grandma and Grandbob's photo album at the bottom of their large stack of gifts at the big family Christmas gathering. We did not anticipate the fact that Grandma would take eons to get to it though. She loves opening gifts and watching others open theirs, so she was apparently relishing every moment while Jeff, Sissy and her husband, my parents and I anxiously looked on. But then this happened, and it's a memory that I'll vividly remember for the rest of my life:

That year, we spent a total of about $6 on photo albums and gave some of the best gifts we've ever given. We figured any additional gifts we might give would be forgotten and overshadowed by the fetus anyway. 

So, the moral of the story is obviously: Always get knocked up near Christmas. 

Presents! Gifts! YEAH! Part Two

Giving gifts is fun for me, but let me make it clear: I LOVE getting gifts too. If you'd like to send me one right now, I will give you my address, just ask. Here's a top five gifts I've received list, in no particular order:

1. Tickle Me Elmo. For most of middle school, a backwards Elmo hat was my signature, every day accessory. Don't mock it, I still know it was awesome. Anyway, the Christmas that Tickle Me Elmo was the hot item and people fought over them in toy stores and sold them on ebay for hundreds, I had the flu. I felt like crap. That night, when Grandma had convinced us all to leave the dinner table to rush to the presents, everyone was instructed to watch me open my first gift. Weary and confused, I sat in a chair while my cousin grabbed her camera and handed me the gift she had purchased for me. And it was...Tickle Me Elmo! I realize I was technically way too old for a toy like that, but MAN was it exciting. And it gave my great-grandmother the giggles, which made it entertaining for the whole family.

2. An Insurance Deductible. The Christmas before Jeff and I got married, he got in a wreck that required thousands in repairs. Fortunately, Jeff had insurance to cover most of it. Unfortunately, his deductible was super high. This was rather crushing for us. We were at my aunt's house a week after the crash, and she pulled me aside and told me that God had told her to pay the deductible. She ended up splitting it 50/50 with Grandma, and this gift blew me away. Not only was it super generous, but it was something we never would have considered asking for and gave us such peace and glorified God. BAM! Awesomeness.

3. A Military Pin. For my 16th birthday, my Grandma Bradshaw gave me the pin and compact set that Grandpa Bradshaw had given her when they first started dating. They have such a beautiful love story, and I was utterly honored to get this heirloom.

4. A Children' Book. For our anniversary this year, Jeff wrote a children's book, incorporating pictures of us and hilarious fictional names. I love it. It's thoughtful, creative, and funny. (For the record, my engagement/wedding ring was probably the single best gift I've ever been given, but that feels like cheating.)

5. A Wedding. Sometimes I am dumb and forget what an amazing gift my parents gave Jeff and me. I guess our American culture makes us girls feel all entitely, which is whack. Not only did they finance the whole shindig, they were also super supportive and helpful through the whole thing. Obviously that is a gift I will never forget.

This is just a sampling. Other favorite gifts that pop into mind: a photo collage with a brain teaser incorporated into it from Zoe, tickets to see Jimmy Fallon from Sissy, a surprise short family vacation at the Disneyland Hotel from my parents, a homemade quilt from Grandma Bradshaw, a maternity sweatshirt and mini celebration from my friend Tabitha (it was the exact right amount of hoopla for a freaked out unexpectedly pregnant me), a surprise party with a spy theme from Zoe and our friend Nathan (we were really into Alias then)...the list goes on. I'm blessed. And I'm leaving out tons of other examples. 

What are some of your favorite gifts?

Presents! Gifts! YEAH! Part One

Every Christmas, my family gathers around the dinner table and eats an elaborate turkey dinner. About ten minutes in, my grandmother (who, by the way, is one of my favorite people out of all the people ever) inevitably interrupts the feasting with "Is it time for presents?!" And it's not that she can't wait to open her presents - she just loves the excitement of it all. I think I get my love of gifts from her.


To be clear, I'm not really the best gift giver in the world. I tend to forget birthdays fairly often, even sometimes with Facebook reminding me. Fail. However, when something strikes me as perfect for someone, I get very excited about gift giving, and I thought you Lobsters might enjoy some ideas. Here are my top three favorites:


1. For my sister's birthday many years ago, I sent a letter out to a bunch of people we love asking them to write a short story or memory from their life and to send a picture that related to it. I compiled them all, scrapbook style, creating "Chicken Soup for Jenna's Soul." This gift was slightly ruined because Sissy found the letter I sent out before she received the gift, but it was pretty great nonetheless. 
2. Speaking of sister, she and I have been recreating childhood memories via poorly scripted/poorly acted short videos that we compile on DVDs for our parents. I highly recommend this. We have a great time making them (we think we're way funnier than we are), and my parents claim to love them too. 
3. For my best friend Mikkele's birthday this year, I wished that I could surprise her with a visit. As I am not made of diamonds and gold, that was not possible, and I decided to make her a video instead. And then I thought about how most of her closest friends live no where near her, and maybe they would like to make her a video too. So I sent out a Facebook message to anyone I'd ever heard her mention and asked them to send me a birthday video. I compiled them all on a DVD and edited it because I am a fairly new Mac user and find that stuff exceedingly fun. It ended up being like a really weird variety show - there were poems, songs, words of wisdom, a prank, a dance (well...me sitting in a chair dancing to Britney, but that still counts), dramatic readings, a tongue twister recitation, and even a fake cooking segment. 


Zoe also wanted me to mention a little mini garden set that I mailed to her. I painted little pots and sent seeds and a tray to arrange them on. She had recently been expressing her interest in cooking, and I thought she might enjoy her own personal herb garden. This was cute, but not quite a gifting masterpiece. But I'm sure glad you liked it, Zoe. 


I think part of the reason these were so fun to give was that I had a blast making them, and I felt like they gave a little glimpse of how much I love the recipient. Lobsters, what is the best gift you've ever given?