Feast of the Holy Innocents (Childermas)

This is the day Matthew 2:16-18 is remembered. The wise men came asking about the baby born "King of the Jews". Warned by an angel, they did not return to tell Herod where they had found Jesus. Herod, in jealous fear, slaughtered many male children in his attempt to get rid of Jesus. Thus the beginning of the choice for mankind: for or against Jesus.


Matthew quotes Jeremiah, "...a voice was heard...sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children." Have you ever really thought of this piece of the Christmas story? Many artists have pondered it, so that it's depicted in many paintings and stories. (The pictures here are by Giovanni, Giotto, and Ruebens.)

Joseph was warned in a dream to flee this slaughter and escape to Egypt. I have a book we read every year by Madeline L'Engle called Dance in the Desert. It imagines the Holy Family traveling in a caravan to Egypt, and one night all creation comes to pay homage to their Creator. The pictures are beautiful of toddler Jesus and various animals. The caravan men have knives ready but Mary always says, "Wait".

All cultures throughout time have the stain of innocent, unwanted children. On this day we can think of children all over the world who suffer innumerable forms of violence which threatens their lives. We can pray for our children and the world.

"Today we celebrate the heavenly birthday of these children whom the world caused to be born unto an eternally blessed life rather than that from their mothers' womb, for they attained the grace of everlasting life before the enjoyment of the present ... For already at the beginning of their lives they pass on. The end of the present life is for them the beginning of glory. These then, whom Herod's cruelty tore as sucklings from their mothers' bosom, are justly hailed as 'infant martyr flowers'; they were the Church's first blossoms, matured by the frost of persecution during the cold winter of unbelief."

— St. Augustine

Peter Pan!

Starting in 1904 in England, everyone would wake up on this day and say "Peter Pan. We get to go see Peter Pan today!" The tradition of the play went on for years.

That's why Peter Pan movies periodically come out in December. The movie "Finding Neverland" came out for the 100th year anniversary in 2004.

I've been a Peter Pan fan for over a decade now. There's a message there that was a part of my pursuit that eventually led to the experiencing of God in a deep way.

I started with recognizing things missing in my life. I had become so rational, so "adultish". I wanted to regain my sense of wonder. So I started down a path of pursuing what it meant to be childlike.

My favorite Peter Pan movie is Spielberg's 1991 "Hook". The setting is Christmas, so he knew of the tradition of Peter Pan at Christmas time when families are gathered together seeking entertainment.

It's an "adultish" Peter in the movie. Grandma Wendy invited the family to England. Peter is forever on his cell phone. His wife is frustrated. His kids are enamoured with Wendy and the nursery window and are full of anticipation.

Grandma Wendy finally has to get in Peter's face and ask, "What do you remember of your story Peter?" Peter had forgotten his story. He didn't know who he was!

The rest of the story, since Captain Hook stole away his children, has Peter relearning how to be childlike to win back the hearts of his children. He had to relearn how to play, how to fly!

That too was my quest. Who was I really?

Watch the movie "Hook".

Watch "Finding Neverland" (with Johnny Depp!). It is so close to the real JM Barrie story in that it tells us why he wrote Peter Pan. Barrie wrote many stories inspired by his mother's Scottish highland tales. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Barrie saying, "I am a capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you are a man of genius. Take care of yourself for my sake. It's a devilish hard thing for a man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should get so few to read. And I can read yours, and I love them."

In the movie you meet the family of boys who inspired the lost boys (the movie shows these boys' father as already dead, though in real life, Barrie nursed him through his illness.) When the Davies boys met Barrie, they said they'd found a childlike adult in the midst of stodgy Victorian England.

There's a line in the book that's central to Barrie's vision. Over the years his vision had been watered down, thinking it too dark for families. It's - "To die will be an awfully big adventure." This line is the heart of the story (as too in many stories, including the Gospel).

It's a looking for something good out of something tragic. Tolkein calls this 'eucatastrophy' - a victory of good over evil, but with a price to be paid - a redemptive sacrifice. So when faced with the possibility of drowning in Mermaid's Lagoon, Peter is going to make it an adventure.

Hmmm ... "to die will be an adventure"... Doesn't Jesus ask me to come to him as a child? and to die to self? and that in dying there's true life/living?!

Photoblog

I just started a photoblog. Not because I'm some great photographer. Dawson posts on his site just about everyday. And since he is a gifted photographer, it's a great tool for making him take pictures everyday, therefore, practicing.

I experienced this in college. A requirement in an architecture class was to buy a sketch book and do at least one sketch a day. I still have that sketch book. I drew pictures out of doors, from pictures in magazines and books, of people posed ... it really advanced my observation skills and transferring what I saw to paper.

I started the photoblog so I will have a place to send people to for viewing pictures, like events. So on Heather's wedding date, the 18th of December, I posted a bunch of pictures. On November 10, I posted some shower pictures, and will be adding more to those. Travis sent me Christmas pictures and photo captions and I wanted to save them, so I posted them on the 24th of December. Who knows what more I'll post at some earlier date!

Here is my photoblog address:
http://www.photoblog.com/kareyswan/
and Dawson's site address is -
http://www.photoblog.com/dawsonswan/

Fruit Soup

Like I said before, when I was dating Monte and he told me about fruit soup, I thought it sounded awful. But now it's my favorite Christmas food and I make a big pot so we have leftovers and plenty for serving at all sorts of get-togethers during the holidays. Here is my fruit soup recipe:

12 oz bag of pitted dried prunes, cut them up
1 1/2 c raisins
1 c cut up dried apricots
(about 2/3 cups each cut up dried apples and pears)
(I usually add cranberries too)
(Now I add dried bing cherries instead of adding 2 cans of sour cherries)
10 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
6 whole cloves (put in a little mesh basket or cheesecloth)
slices of lemon

Bring this to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add 6-7 Tbs tapioca to grape juice to soak a bit before adding to the soup. I eventually pour in a whole jug (32 oz) of unsweetened grape juice. This needs to simmer a bit more for the tapioca to cook and thicken.

It's good both warm and cold. I like it room temp. Monte loves to eat it with cream. It's great with ice cream. It's good with aebleskivers and pancakes and rice pudding ...

Potato Sausage

Though we could buy potato sausage at a meat market, we've been making it since we got married. So we've been making it for 32 years (but since we're past our anniversary does that mean our making it Sunday afternoon would be the 33rd time?).

I have a meat grinder attachment for my Bosch Kitchen Machine and a sausage stuffer attachment. Before that I had a KitchenAid and a meat grinder for it too. Before that, how funny ... I still laugh! we scrunched up the casings on an angel-food cake pan center, and tried stuffing the meat mixture thru that tube. It was not easy and a mess!

Usually we grind the meat ourselves too, because then we have control over the fat amount and the kind of fat. For years we did it with elk, but now we don't have any elk or venison. I grind the onion first and then the potatoes, because the onion mixed with potatoes helps keep them from turning brown.

The meat casings we use are hog, and we get them at the meat market. Some stores have them in the freezer compartment. The casings are in salt and need to be soaked in warm water first. Then we like to put an end under the faucet and run water thru them to rinse the salt out. After grinding and mixing everything together the sausage stuffer attachment is put on and the casings are pulled over it - they end up sort of bunched up. Then run the meat mixture thru to start stuffing the casings. We have a cookie sheet with sides under the machine to catch the sausage. We always bag up extra sausage in Ziplock bags and freeze.

4 lbs meat
4 lbs potatoes
1 onion
1 1/2 tsp pepper
7 tsp salt
(1/2 tsp allspice - we usually don't put this in)

So grind all this and mix together well and stuff the casings. Boil and then simmer whatever you're wanting to eat in salted water, to cover, for about an hour. We cut up sections and have on a serving platter. I eat the casing's, and others don't, but yes, they are edible. Monte likes to eat his sausage in his doppa i grytan.

Leftover, we like to saute it in a skillet for breakfast, or sliced and heated (or cold) for sandwiches.

Christmas Eve Food

For years we've done a Swedish meal that Monte grew up with every Christmas Eve. It was what was done in olden day Sweden and maybe still by some. Monte is 100% Swedish and I am part.

We make a soup in remembrance of poor families who had only broth and bread. It is called 'doppa i grytan' meaning 'dipping in the kettle', a communal thing, because the family would line up and dip bread in the pot. The soup is made to stretch what little meat they had. We make it with homemade beef stock from bones, adding very finely chopped meat and vegetables. So we eat soup with bread, and home-made potato sausage. And we don't do lutefish! I did try it one year as more of a pudding/casserole, but we don't need it. And considering all it's processing, I doubt is has any nutrients left.

For desert we do rice pudding and fruit soup. The tradition is to hide an almond in the pudding and the one finding it will marry next. Sometimes I'll have a little gift. One year my brother Rob got the almond. I guess when he proposed to Karla he had the almond in a ring box. Is that right Rob?

A couple years we made ostakaka from raw milk. We decided rice pudding is the poor man's version of this clabbered milk pudding that tastes kinda like cheesecake. If no raw milk is available, then it's made with cottage cheese.

When I was dating Monte I exclaimed, "Fruit Soup?!!!!?!!!" thinking it sounded awful. But it's my favorite thing now. We always have it and potato sausage leftover to enjoy for the whole Christmas season.

quote

A quote from the very quotable CS Lewis:

The Son of God became a man
to enable men to become the sons of God.

Feast of Stephen

When you sing the song WE rarely sing ... and I'm trying to remember the tune and words, but it's about Good King Wenceslaus and there's the line - "... on the feast of Stephen".

This is the church calendar day that Stephen's story is remembered. And like King Wenceslaus, Stephen was killed because of his convictions about the revelation of Christ in the world. Stephen was stoned to death, with the future Apostle Paul standing by holding everyone's outer garments. We read about it in the book of Acts.

Stephen was the very first martyr of the Christian faith. Remember him for his boldness, courage, and faithfulness. He was given the church job of caring for the orphans and widows.

So, as I posted about Boxing Day, this day can be a day (though in loving God, we should always want this characteristic every day of the year) for selfless care of the poor, the despised, the rejected, and the unloved.

Live Nativity

On this day in 1223, Francis of Assisi assembled the first live nativity scene in Greccio, Italy. The tradition caught on and is still done today.

Our church did it for the Christmas Eve services, but we weren't there. We went to Ft Collins and stayed at Trav and Sarah's and went to their Christmas Eve service.

We had a wonderful time.

Boxing Day

Does 'Boxing Day' come from the need to rid the house of empty boxes the day after Christmas?

December 26 in Britain has always been a day for remembering the people who work for us. Boxes are often left out in places or people carrying them, asking for donations, much like we have the Salvation Army bell ringers at stores.

But gifts are given to employees and boxes of food are given to the needy.