Today I learned the word “macaronic,” which refers to a style of work where all kinds of languages are thrown together, not necessarily in the most elegant or scholarly way. Like, apparently, a peasant dumpling.
Read about and hear the rest of ten of my favorite pieces of Christmas music at the Register.
I assume you’re already doing all the religious stuff, and have already bought, made, figured out, or given up on gifts. Here are a bunch of other nice Christmasy things you can do pretty easily, using materials that you may actually have in your house and skills you can probably muster up even at this stage of your life.
SOMETHING SWEET TO EAT:
Fudge recipe that doesn’t require a candy thermometer.
Can be dressed up with various nuts, crushed candies, flavored chips (peanut butter, mint, butterscotch, etc.), but yummy on its own. There are also lots of other great recipes on that page, with clear instructions.
Also more of less foolproof, and without any exotic ingredients or equipment, but messy to make: buckeyes. I let the kids do this one, since it involves a lot of hand-mooshing of dough and unsanitary dipping in chocolate.
SOMETHING SAVORY TO EAT:
Jew-for-a-day potato latkes that are great for Chanukah but don’t require any special Jew ingredients. I didn’t bother with the cheesecloth; I just squeezed out the potato shreds in a colander and added a bit of extra flour. So tasty and tender. Serve with sour cream. Leave time to go lie down afterwards.
SOMETHING TO LISTEN TO:
Christmas music that is free and won’t make you grind your teeth: The Boston Camerata never disappoints.
SOME DECORATIONS TO MAKE:
Neat Christmas decorations that require only some paper, a stapler, and some string.
The dog actually made this one, and he’s an idiot! That’s how easy it is! The dog couldn’t even find the stapler, so he used needle and thread. For a fancier look, try using this basic idea, but with lots of different sizes and shapes (giant to tiny), different cuts (straight, scalloped, etc.), with shiny, patterned, or regular paper, and hang them from string or ribbons or yarn, and add sparkly beads to the string. Instantly dresses up a room if you hang up half a dozen from the ceiling.
We also had fun last year gluing together various kinds of pasta for ornaments. Hot glue worked the best. These can be painted (metallic spray paint is great) or even colored with markers, but you can also get on board the “natural pasta look” train that is not actually a thing. We made wreaths, trees, angels, instruments, and all kinds of stars. We really did! But here are the ones I can actually find, to take a picture of, including the inevitable unfinished Dalek:
Just look on Pinterest for “pasta ornament” and you’ll see all the possibilities. Because it’s Christmas, I didn’t say “pastabilities.”
SOMETHING TO READ OUT LOUD:
Full text of A Christmas Carol by Dickens from Project Gutenberg. I have never actually gotten around to reading this out loud to the kids, but it’s doable. It’s a long short story, not a novel. If you can find a copy of it anywhere, the 1951 movie with Alastair Sim is the best by far.
SOMETHING TO AVOID:
Contentious social media. Seriously, if you are feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, you will not feel more peaceful and generous after spending time arguing about torture, racism, rape culture, or liturgical practices, so just close that tab and go find something nicer to do with your time. It’s not that these things aren’t important, and it’s not that you’re wrong. It’s just arguing about them is not going to help us get ready for Christmas. Save some argy bargy for the New Year! It’ll keep.
I’d love to put together a gallery of Christmas art for the Register on Christmas day. If you have a photo of a work of original art you’d be willing to share (and if you own the copyright or have permission to share online!), please drop me a line at simchafisher[at]gmail[dot]com and write “Christmas art” for the subject. I try to keep the wordiness to a minimum on Christmas, so this will just be an image and, if you like, a link to your blog or website. Thanks!
We don’t want to convey to our kids that love can be bought on Amazon; but we also shouldn’t try to persuade them that love is some kind of nebulous, moonshiny, spiritual quality that has very little to do with their everyday experiences. Rather than turning Christmas into a story about God vs. Happiness, the trick is to turn love and giving into part of one seamless idea.
Well, one chapter of it, anyway.
This is so dang stupid. Right before supper, FedEx delivers a box of ten copies ofCatholic and Married: Leaning Into Love , which looks good, but I have never heard of it, and I certainly didn’t order ten copies. So I fire off a note to the publisher, saying that I think I got the author’s shipment by mistake, and what should I do with them? Ha ha, I says to myself, I’m not the only one who flakes out from time to time! They don’t even know who wrote their own book! Ha ha, it is to laugh!
So then Laraine posts this picture to Facebook:
. . . and I suddenly remember, Oh yeah, I did write a chapter of that! Duh. Boy, life is so exciting and unpredictable when you have no long term memory whatsoever. I can remember what we had for supper a few hours ago, but mainly because the kids did such a lousy job sweeping that a lot if it is still on the floor, looking at me. (Tacos.)
Oh, so that’s what my chapter is about (apparently): children. It’s called “Mirrors Around a Flame: The Gift of Children.” I forget whether or not it was a taco night when I wrote it. Anyway, it’s a good title, whoever wrote it.
Other than ridiculously flaky me, this book includes a fantastic line up of authors! Here is the table of contents:
Here is the description from OSV:
“And they lived happily ever after.” Only in fairy tales, you say. But there is life after the honeymoon-messy, challenging, happily-married life. That’s the great promise of Catholic marriage, and if you’re married or considering marriage the joy is there for you, too.
Many Catholics today share the culture’s unease-fear of divorce, the prevalence of cohabitation, the wounds of past relationships all conspire to make til-death-do-us-part seem like a risky proposition. But the authors of Catholic and Married all agree, marriage is the adventure of a lifetime.
In these sometimes funny, tell-it-like-it-is chapters, this diverse group of men and women offer you their insights and advice on:
- Children – the gift that keeps on giving
- Marrying young – objections and object lessons
- Contraception – an honest discussion on a touchy subject
- Parenting skills – it’s not rocket science (it just feels like it sometimes)
- And much more!
These stories will encourage you to lean into love. Hold nothing back. And experience the Catholic marriage God intended for you.
I couldn’t be more delighted/astonished to be part of this great project!
P.S. I wrote that chapter before I was pregnant, so there is at least some chance that it makes sense, unlike this post.
Reviewer Christine Emba says in First Things:
What especially recommends The Sinner’s Guide to a broader audience is Fisher’s ability to use NFP as a starting point to engage with the larger and more universal questions facing anyone attempting to live out a Christian life day to day. What is prudence? How does one persevere in adversity? What does charity actually look like in relationships, and in daily life? As Fisher asks, “Does God just hate women, or what?” The question “Is it the right time to conceive” gives way to a plainspoken yet illuminating discourse on the phrase “God’s will.” A chapter entitled “Groping Toward Chastity” helps define the oft-misunderstood word in terms relevant to any reader—single or married.
Read the rest of “Marriage with Benefits” here. This review makes me realize how desperately I was longing for someone to describe it as “this slim volume.” I feel so happy.
You can order SGNFP in paperback directly from Our Sunday Visitor or from Amazon. Also available: the ebook for Kindle or Nook, and the audiobook, read croakily by yours twooly. And looky, it has 230 reviews, with an average of 4.9 out of five stars!
Christmas is the infancy of the Faith, and most people find it pretty easy to be happy about about their Faith at this time of year — at least in the good moments. Even when the season is stressful or exhausting, most of us at least occasionally taste those golden moments where the music is right, the candles are glowing, we’re finally holding a mug of something hot, finally hearing the happy murmurs of the baby in the manger. At the best moments, we love Christmas, baby Jesus loves us, and it is just plain nice. It’s simple to respond as we should, at least on the good days. A simple “Gloria!” and we’re doing it right.
But what about when the liturgical year grows up?
Sometimes we all need some clarity
{PIC} “That should clear up a few things around here!”
And sometimes, our mothers are just glad we’re staying in one place for a few minutes.
Breaking news from the Boston Globe: a federal appeals court has overturned a district court’s 2012 ruling that Massachusetts inamate Michelle Kosilek’s gender identity disorder must be treated with gender reassignment surgery.
The appeals court said Tuesday it had been asked to determine whether denying Kosilek the surgery constituted cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by the Eighth Amendment.
The appeals court said:
“After carefully considering the community standard of medical care, the adequacy of the provided treatment, and the valid security concerns articulated by the DOC, we conclude that the district court erred and that the care provided to Kosilek by the DOC does not violate the Eighth Amendment,” the court said in an opinion written by Judge Juan R. Torruella.
How refreshingly sensible. The “community standard of medical care” most likely takes into account the 2011 Swedish long-term study of people who had sex reassignment surgery, which showed that, in short, sex change surgery doesn’t give people better lives in the long term. Dr. McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in the Wall Street Journal:
The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.
The website Sex Change Regret and the article Trouble in Transtopia: Murmurs of Sex Change Regret discuss how recipients of this surgery are pressured to stay silent if they regret their choice.
The takeaway? In denying the Massachusetts inmate a taxpayer-funded sex change operation, the federal appeals court may have just saved Kosilek a lifetime of regret.
Is it my imagination, or is the Catholic internet just bristling with lists of gift ideas for men this year?
Are there suggestion lists like this for women’s gifts? Is it my silly little lady imagination going all kookie again, or is it actually fairly easy to buy presents for women? Of course it’s possible to go astray, but most women will tell you exactly what they want, if you ask them. Then what you do is you go out and buy or make or get or do that, and then either add an unexpected upgrade, or add something a little extra to show that you like buying stuff for her (which you don’t, but shut up, it’s Christmas). It’s pretty easy.
But buying presents for men is quite another thing.
This may be women’s fault. It’s possible that men will also just tell us what they want, and we should buy or make or get or do that, and then also some beer, and everything would be fine. It’s possible. But women do not like to do things the easy way, because we want to show our husbands that we care. We want to put some deep thought into our gifts. We want it to be a gift that only we, alone in the world, would have the insight and creative intuition to give to him.
Which is what leads us to give our husbands such terrible, terrible gifts.
Now, I tried to do a little research into the fascinating field of “Terrible Gifts My Wife Once Gave Me,” and the results were far from illuminating. 93% of male respondents outright refused to answer, citing the right against self-incrimination, the Geneva convention, the Gettysburg Address, and “HEY, LOOK, A FLYING CHICKEN!” and then they ran away. The other 19% simply smiled mutely, pulled out the combination corkscrew, tire gauge, and boar’s bristle shaving brushes that their wives thought they would want for some reason, and fatally stabbed themselves, whispering through faintly smiling lips as they died, “I didn’t talk . . . “
And one guy said, “Well, ha ha, one time she gave me this stupid little–” and the other 99% screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” and tackled him, giving him the greatest gift of all: a traumatic brain injury that rendered him unconscious until after Epiphany.
So, since all the men are too chicken to talk about it, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned about gifts for men.
1. They do not want a heating pad from the drug store.
Let me explain. This was our first Christmas as a married couple, and we were still learning about each other, and didn’t even yet realize just how radically different were our ideas about — well, a lot of things. Also, we were broke, and I didn’t have a car or a debit card, so I could only shop at places that were within walking distance of our cruddy little city apartment. (To my credit, I never even considered doing my Christmas shopping at the only other nearby store, Jesus Grocery.)
At the time, my husband suffered terribly and repeatedly from crippling sinus headaches caused by bad teeth that we couldn’t afford to get pulled. All I could think about was that I wished his head didn’t hurt so much. Then I saw this awesome device where you bathe your entire head in this chamber of therapeutic, head-clearing steam. It looked great! But it was too expensive. I considered a neti pot, but even I knew enough to realize that he was not a fancy enough man to enjoy tea, or even if it’s, you know, nose tea. Or whatever that neti thing is.
At this point, I was getting confused. I was pregnant, it was a cold and slushy winter, my boots leaked, my nose was running, and I think they were playing “Wonderful Christmastime.” My head was whirling and pounding as I searched the shelves, rejecting one idea after another, getting more and more panicked, feeling less and less certain about life, the universe, nosey pots, and everything. What could I get? What could I possibly get, that would be a good use of our precious spending cash, but would be thoughtful, and a surprise, and would convey love and tenderness, and would make him weep with delight, despite not being a fancy man, when he opened the package?
And then I saw it: a heating pad. Right in my price range, just as good as a sinus steam machine — even better! He could use it on his bad back, too! Absolutely perfect! The gift of a lifetime, and did I mention, right in my price range! Indeed, itwas a wonderful Christmas time!
You see, to me, this present said, “My dear, I wish for you all good things, including health and happiness and ease. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make your troubles disappear; but, in our sweet and simple poverty, all that I can offer is this simple heating pad–and may it bring you some warmth and relief, and its radiant presence reminded you ever of the warmth and love of my womanly heart, which belongs, my dearest dear, to you.”
To him, it said, “Here, stick this on your head, you smelly old cripple.”
So, that was no good.
2. He does not want something you found at the dump.
Not really much else to say about this.
3. I guess you could just ask him what he wants for Christmas, and if it’s not illegal, you could give it to him.
Nah.
4. HEY LOOK, A FLYING CHICKEN!
***
(This post originally ran in the National Catholic Register in 2012.)
