365 Day Journal Challenge

Dec 20--Body lies/Honest eyes and What I do for Christmas.

December 21, 2008

I find both of these prompts could be fuel for thought so lets just knock them both out.

You can lie with your mouth and body, but your eyes will always tell the truth." ---

I agree this is very much true for me.  I stink at lying, always have.  However, to think this is true for everyone is a form of naiveté we can ill afford to continue to believe.  This is how abusers hook up with those of us who are honest and naïve.  This is how sociopaths lure kids to their house or convince people to drink poison along with the rest of a religious cult.  Your eyes may always tell the truth but you assume that the mind knows what the truth is.  If one thinks he is God, then this is his truth and his eyes will not betray that.  For the rest of us, don’t we all dress more powerful when needed in order to convince ourselves and others that we are more confident than we really are? Sometimes we can fake it until we make it (for lack of a better cliché’” so that it isn’t that we are lying, its that we are trying to convince others to believe in us before we are really able to believe ourselves.  In the spirit of Christmas, we lie all the time to preserve a belief just as parents tell their kids “it was nothing” when they are overheard yelling or a spouse says he/she was at the office while really at the store buying a surprise for the spouse (or the mistress).  We really have to believe in the lie to be able to do it with a  straight face and if we can do it during Christmas, I bet there are many out there who can convince themselves in the truth of a lie so much that even their eyes believe the lie and the rest of us are left guessing (or perhaps we are just left totally oblivious.

On a lighter note: the next prompt:

How do you celebrate the Holidays?

When my husband and I were married, we made some agreements that still stand to this day (9 yrs later).  We said when we had kids, Christmas Eve night and Christmas Eve, we would be at home.  He and I were dragged all over the state when we were young and we didn’t want that for our kids.  We get a lot of flack for that decision from both sides but no matter how much one of us really just wants to give in to shut our half of the family up, we agreed and we help each other hold to that agreement.  We will go to my mother’s on Christmas Eve every other year (sometimes every year depending on whether or not we both have off all of C. Eve or just half day.  His family lives 2 hrs away and mine is 1 hr away.  We can get to my mom’s house at 1 and return by 6-7, drink hot cocoa, set out cookies and milk for Santa, read “Twas the night before Christmas” and tuck the sleepy ones in bed.  My mother usually comes after her party is over and spends the night at our house to be there when the kids wake up. Then the mad dash begins to get ready for the next morning.  The boys will climb in our bed first thing (though the 3 yo may change that tradition as he is really anxious this year) and we try to stall them as long as possible in order to wait on my stepdad to drive here from their house and my father in law to walk over from next door. My mom will keep one of them or both in her room if she can and if they get to our room without seeing anything, we stall them and I go check to see if my mom is up yet.  Then we all go to the living room and watch them open what Santa Claus brought.  The stockings are full, and laying out among the rest of the gifts, some out and some wrapped.  The stockings usually have a few tangerines and apples, a little but not much candy, an old fashioned toy like yo-yos, harmonicas, spinning toys and that sort and then they usually have 3-4 toys each and some clothes from Santa.  We don’t get them much otherwise, maybe some clothes and one toy each from us as well as a toy or item we helped each of them get the other.  Then when my stepdad and father in law get here, we sit on the floor near the tree (in a different room) and open the presents to and from my mom and each other.  Then we have some sort of breakfast casserole and my mother and stepdad leave to go to one of his son’s home after going to my aunt’s house.  We go nowhere except next door for lunch with my father in law and my husband’s sibs and one brother’s family (the other isn’t married).  After we eat a huge meal, and open presents, then help clean up, we go home (all of next door) and spent time with the kids putting together stuff and playing with their toys.  We end up having leftovers or something that night.  Usually, three weeks before Christmas, my mother’s father’s family gets together for a big T’giving/Christmas lunch and “dirty santa” gift exchange.  They are very religions (Church of God) so the prayer can be long at times and we all sing “Happy Birthday Jesus” (complete with party hats one year).  This used to be at my great grandmother’s house every Thanksgiving night and every Christmas night (one of our several stops when I was a kid) –See the poem “They sang you home when you died” for the description of my great grandmother on that side.  Then the weekend before or after Christmas, my stepmother and father have a big get together at their house and we go celebrate Christmas there with my stepmother’s nieces and nephews and her sisters as well as my step brothers and sometimes my dad’s parents. 

Since my husband and I have a 7 yo and 3 yo, we are still forming our Christmas traditions here at home.  Tonight we decorated a small tree (our sons mainly did this) and then we sang Christmas songs in their pj’s while in the dark looking at the lit up little Christmas tree.  It was a first but was really sweet and may become a tradition.  I also painted a Santa’s cookie plate at one of those ceramic places and will give it to the kids for Christmas eve along with the customary new pair of PJ’s they get every year on Christmas eve.  I also made some Sculpey clay ornaments for the boys and my nieces and nephew.  I will paint them tomorrow but I’ve done that every couple of years and put their names and dates on them. 

My 7 yo has also been practicing Silent Night in piano class and here and plans to play it at my mom’s house b/c my step dad is Dutch and sings Silent Night in Dutch every year.  Will can’t wait to play it so he can sing in a different language.  One year, when the exchange student from Germany was living with my mom and stepdad, they sang it in their own languages at the same time along and it was really neat.  One year, way back when I was in high school, we had some friends from Brazil and they sang it in Portuguese with Tony singing in Dutch.  Anyone who speaks a different language has to sing with him b/c the effect is awesome.  At his house, we also have Nasi Goering (Rice and pork dish that comes from the previously Dutch colony of Indonesia) and really hot Sambal (hot pepper paste) and melted peanut butter on it (sounds gross but really good). 

I think I’m rambling now and a bit tired but here’s what we have so far in our Christmas tradition.  Just one more note-my husband and I got married in early December so we had a shower for couples and the gift theme was ornaments.  Then we decided that, for our yearly anniversary gifts, we would purchase an ornament for each other.  We have to find the most creative one for under 15 bucks (could be worth more but we can’t pay more than 15.)  This has been a fun and challenging tradition to find something that has something to do with our previous year.  So, we take ornaments seriously and have a story for most of them on the tree.  No monochromatic just for looks tree in our house. Nope, we have Disney, dough, Murano glass Santas on gondolas from our honeymoon in Italy, tiny clear glass pigs (don’t ask), origami animals from our 7 yo’s most recent obsession (giraffe, frog, fish), a radko looking circus elephant from when I was pregnant in SanDiego and ticked off b/c my husband didn’t want to go to the zoo and I was moody, hot, 6 mos pregnant, etc.  Everytime we pull it out, we joke about it being the pregnant B-word ornament but it is funny…now anyway. 

Okay, My husband is about to give up on my coming to bed and its after midnight.  Gotta hit the sack – work tomorrow.  UGH.  Boy do I miss the two week holiday. 
Merry Christmas guys,

SWPoet




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