There were shepherds abiding...along with GI Joe

During the Christmas season we browsed through the antique stores in our little historic town, more to see what kinds of free treats they were offering than for any actual interest in buying something. We saw numerous manger displays, and the Hero recalled with fondness that he had sometimes played with his family's manger when he was little.

I could see the young Hero being more into boisterous action figures than the solemn Mary and Joseph and Jesus and the shepherds. I couldn't help asking whether Superman had also visited the manger with him.

"No, I wasn't really into Superman," he said.

I took another guess. "How about GI Joe? Did HE play with Baby Jesus?"

He admitted that at times GI Joe had come along to play with Baby Jesus and the other figures in the manger. But he was always well behaved.

A coworker recalled that in her house, Baby Jesus did not appear in the manger scene until Christmas morning, which in some years caused her great concern in the days preceding this. Had someone taken Him? Had he gotten lost? Or worse, accidentally tossed in with her brothers' action figures? One year, unable to bear the thought of any of these possibilities, she added her doll to the manger scene as a stand-in. The doll being several times larger than the rest of the figures, the effect was of Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. But it relieved her mind, and on Christmas morning her doll mysteriously returned to her room. When she ran to the living room, lo, there was Baby Jesus in His rightful place in the creche.

GI Joe. An oversized doll. Misfits in the manger, to be sure. But aren't we all? And yet, we are all welcome there.

It's not easy being an elf

The Hero and Princess enjoyed seeing various other individuals in the kingdom over the holiday season, in far-flung places, and are very glad that none of those they visited were intimately connected with hospital emergency rooms, as was the case last Christmas. As the Hero made clear, their itinerary did NOT include such a visit this year. Of course, the itinerary last year did not include one either; it was just sort of a last-minute decision on the Princess's part. Fortunately, there were no unscheduled visits this year.

Now that Christmas is past -- at least until we start being bombarded with ads for NEXT Christmas, which should start anytime after Easter -- certain individuals can finally take a well-deserved break. These include elves, whose complex and sometimes stressful position I was only recently able to appreciate after being given a glimpse into their duties.

A coworker explained that, as the youngest in her family, she has the responsibility of the Elf, a very critical position without which there would be no opening of gifts on Christmas morning. Or, in her family's case, on the morning BEFORE Christmas. For reasons still unclear to me, they did not wait until Dec. 25 to open presents when she was growing up. But I digress.

The Elf is responsible for distributing all the gifts under the tree. This sounds easy enough, but in this particular family they open gifts one person at a time, which necessitates a certain strategy on the part of the Elf. She must arrange the gifts and present them in a timely manner to the correct recipients. Only one gift at a time may be presented, and there must be sufficient time between the presentation of gifts, but not TOO much time, as the giftees will become restless and may even start to heckle the Elf. "Mercilessly critique the elf," is how she describes it. "It's a lot of pressure," she admits.

So this year the Elf was counting on the assistance of two young Elves-in-Training, cousins, to help bear her burden. Specifically, she was counting on their cuteness -- at 2 1/2 and 4 1/2, they possessed a considerable amount of it -- to offset the possibility of heckling should the elf duties not be performed to expectations.

But choosing trainees is tricky, even for elves, and the Head Elf quickly realized that young elfins are subject to grumpiness when they are required to work well into the evening hours without a proper rest beforehand.

"It didn't work out so well," she sighed.

She took heart, however, from signs that the 4 1/2-year-old enjoys running things, which she feels bodes well for next Christmas. Perhaps by then the older child will even be able to maneuver the younger one to do her bidding, and the Head Elf will be able to sit back, relax, and maybe even become a Retired Elf. And perhaps even engage in a little gentle heckling.

Goodbye, Charlie Brown

In our last post we mentioned that we had adopted a Charlie Brown tree, that hapless and precarious, but lovable, bundle of sticks for which a single ornament is life-threatening. The tree was, sadly, with us for only a day before going back whence it had come. We admit that this was entirely due to our inability to be without a REAL tree -- that is, a fake tree that at least pretends to be the real thing. We exchanged Charlie Brown for a sleek, slim fir that is too tall for the room but which -- this is important -- can accommodate many presents underneath. But perhaps most important, all our ornaments fit on it, which allows us to avoid the effort of paring down our collection. Someday we might even post a photo of it.

Searching for the perfect tree

It's not official, but we may be up for an award for Couple Spending the Most Amount of Time in the Artificial Christmas Tree Department--Without Buying Anything.

But that would not quite be true. We DID buy a tree. Sort of.

We are in this predicament because of our last Christmas tree, which gave up the ghost after several years of silently enduring being pushed and shoved in and out of the attic, twisted into just the right position for the placement of ornaments, and snarled at for being too large and not fitting nicely back into the toothpick-size container in which it had come. Near the end of its life, it had only a few working, prelit lights as its spirit slowly diminished and, finally, left altogether.

Let not tree purists think that they are the only ones who search for the perfect tree. In our own search for an artificial tree, we have been to five stores (six if you count going back to the same one again), agonizing over a choice that will from henceforth affect our Christmas cheer. A forever tree.

The Hero likens it to choosing a life partner: "Do you, Princess, take this tree, committing to its care for its natural-born days, loving it through its faults..."

But the problem was I didn't WANT it to have faults (just to clarify, we are talking about the tree here). The forever trees I was willing to commit to were no longer available, and the others had, shall we say, special needs. Or they required soaring cathedral ceilings, where we could offer them only cottage-type surroundings.

(As an aside, are makers of fake trees on a quest to make trees that look, if possible, even MORE fake? We have noticed a disturbing tend wherein there is more than one type of branch on a particular tree. I have my doubts that this trend was inspired by nature.)

It was a slow night at the last store we visited, and we debated so long over the trees on display that no doubt the employees were placing bets as to whether we would 1) actually take home a tree or 2) leave with no tree AND in separate cars.

If trees were people, the Hero wanted a Lilliputian. I wanted Gulliver. We ended up with Charlie Brown.

Yes, for roughly $21.99 you can buy an authentic Charlie Brown tree, complete with one decorative bulb that makes the top branches bend over so charmingly. We were sorry to disappoint the store employees who had placed bets; the Charlie Brown tree wasn't exactly a tree, but neither was it not a tree.

It just needs a little love, as the side of the box proclaims. Which we will give it, at least until next year, when the trees are on sale again and we can find our perfect, forever tree. With just one type of branch, please.

The Thanksgiving games

Like many families on Thanksgiving, we partook of the bounty before us as though we were the original Pilgrims: overworked, underfed, and unsure of when -- or if -- we were ever going to see so much food in one place again. We therefore loaded up on turkey and gravy and dressing and vegetables and four kinds of potatoes, and just to be sure our bodies would have enough to see us their through the long, difficult Black Friday ordeal, we consumed several pies and numerous cookies. (Technically the latter were the Little Persons' desserts, but in a society where food is so uncertain, everyone needs to share.)

But after dinner, the Little Persons extracted their revenge for the forced sharing. Taking advantage of the adults' brain-deadness, they hosted a magic show, which we were all urged -- indeed, compelled -- to attend. The magic involved was, er, less than magical, unless one considers the difficulty of accommodating five young egos on the same stage.Truly, THAT was magic.

When a large ball materialized, the action heated up. The magicians were transformed into two teams fiercely trying to keep the ball away from each other. Perhaps it was our brain-deadness, but it was difficult to follow the action, what with arms appearing where legs should have been and heads sometimes disappearing altogether.

Within the space of several minutes the game was forfeited by both sides, owing to the number of injuries that left too few players able to play. Sadly, the injuries also overwhelmed the onsite clinic, which was caught embarrassingly short on ice packs and had to rotate them among the patients, enforcing a strict 2-minute limit per patient.

The non-injured Little Persons, resourceful and quick thinking, hastened to put on a skit wherein both players played multiple parts as animals, or possibly fairy godmothers. It was hard to tell sometimes.

First a duck appeared. It seemed to be overly influenced by A Christmas Carol, as suggested by its urgent message:

"I am the Duck from the Future. I am here to tell you what will befall all ducks. (Pause.) It is not good. The ducks will die if you feed them. Do NOT feed them!"

Here the duck disappeared, to be replaced by an elephant who looked at us gravely. "The ducks are lying. Feed them! And feed us too! Otherwise we will starve!"

The elephant had scarcely left when the duck flew in again, squawking, "Don't listen to the elephant! He's the one who's lying! The food in the future will be ... " -- the duck searched for an apt description of the food of the future -- "poisoned! Do not feed it to the ducks!"

The pace quickly accelerated until we could scarcely tell the duck from the elephant, and were further confused by the appearance of a fairy godmother whose role seemed to be to grant wishes to cowboys who longed for a horse. We did not know whom to believe. Did we want to have our conscience burdened by dead ducks if we fed them poisoned food? We did not. Thus we continued in our brain-deadness, which we found pretty convenient. We were too tired to feed anyone.

Who knows what heights of drama and theater may have been reached had not the excitement been cut short by the father of several injured Little Persons, who declared it time to go home. Yet the possibility of further injuries remained: On the way home, they were stopping at Old Navy.

The great turnip experiment

Okay, so it wasn't really great, and it wasn't  REALLY an experiment since I used a recipe. But it did involve turnips.

It is a fact universally known to people who manage a CSA that their customers must be in want of foods they do not particularly like, or of whose identity they cannot be absolutely certain. And so the customers receive those foods. In GREAT quantities.

Some of these foods demand creativity to make them palatable. Sometimes the customer pairs them with other foods they DO like (I personally recommend copies amounts of chocolate). Or pairs the foods with other foods that go well together, such as more chocolate. It the foods have parts that must be removed, such as leaves or skin, the customer throws herself exuberantly into peeling or deleafing, sometimes resulting in more of the food going into the disposal or garbage than is strictly necessary. In extreme cases, she pretends the food has gone off on a Great Adventure in the bowels of the refrigerator, and expresses surprise and regret -- sometimes real, sometimes feigned -- when it emerges, months later, inedible and must be disposed of.

We have received turnips several times in our basket, and I have tried numerous ways to make them palatable. All were about as successful as making a chess board palatable. Weighing my options this time, it seemed a shame to waste chocolate on them, and so I chose to pair the turnips with sweet potatoes and hearty sage. In this way I hoped to obliterate the taste of the turnips altogether, given that the recipe called for 30 leaves of sage, which could pretty much obliterate the taste of anything.

After a few bites I declared the dish a success, based on 1) actually using the turnips, but 2) not actually tasting the turnips.

The Hero is extremely enthusiastic about nearly every dish I make, to the point where I once said I needed a more objective opinion to help me truly improve my cooking. He took this suggestion seriously, and now offers one of two measured, thoughtful opinions on any given dish or meal:

1) This is the best dish EVER made ANYWHERE!
2) This is not swill.*

So I fully expected one of these responses when I asked what he thought about the sweet potato-turnip mash.

"It's okay," he said, shrugging.

"Wow," I said. "That bad, huh?"

He thought it would be improved by "some spice...cinnamon, maybe."

"Hmmm," I said.

"You don't think it would be better with cinnamon?" he asked.

"Well," I said. "it wouldn't be swill."

____
*We are indebted to certain readers for introducing this word into the Hero's eating vocabulary.

Big and bigger

Several people, upon hearing that I recently returned from Dallas, have asked how it was.

"Big," I tell them. "Big and gray."

The buildings are tall. Many, such as the convention center where I spent several days, are gray. The insides of hotels and restaurants soar up to wasted space. The overpasses, which are numerous, are tall -- and gray.

True, many of the hotels in the area are lit up spectacularly at night, such that when you close your eyes in bed at night, that bombardment of color -- blue, purple, green, red, blue, purple, green, red, bluepurplegreenred -- invades your sleep. But during the day, the city pretty much resembles a gigantic herd of oddly shaped elephants.

Just a guess, but this is probably not the image city officials were going for.

And there are a lot of hospitals. Or course this is probably reflective of Dallas being a large city, perhaps even one on the forefront of medicine. But riding in a Dallas taxi -- as it careens around town as if in a supercharged video game -- gives one a unique perspective on health care in general and emergency medicine in particular. One has occasion, although not much time, to wonder whether one will need these services as a direct result of the taxi ride.

The airport, too, is large, unless you fly in to the smaller airport. This airport has a friendly, almost cozy feeling, with gate numbers like 3, or 7. This raises travelers' expectations that their luggage might actually arrive in a timely manner. Such expectations are unfounded, however, as luggage appears to travel from the smaller airport over to the larger one, take a little ride on the carousels there, and them finally make its way back to you.

In keeping with the BIG theme, food portions in restaurants are large enough that you may need another set of luggage to take your leftovers with you, but who is complaining? Grilled cheese on Texas toast, with three kinds of cheeses and ham high enough to fit under your Stetson -- what's not to love? The only regret, perhaps, is that such indulgences leave little room for dessert, which is why you have to engage in strategic food planning by having dessert for lunch.

Which is just what we did, encouraged by the free dessert provided at our convention lunch every day. But we didn't feel much guilt, because after lunch we had to hike about four miles within the convention center, and surely we walked off our lemon pie or Killer Mexican Chocolate Cake several times over.

Because, did I mention the convention center is big?