Almighty Christmas Dollars

Homer: I love you Marge.

Marge: I know that. You tell me that all the time.

Homer: Oh? Good. ‘Cause I do love you Marge. And I don’t deserve you as much as a guy with a fat wallet and a credit card that won’t set off that horrible beeping.

$$$$$$$$$$$$

Here’s the thing. Christmas costs too much. Not a little too much. A lot too much. Massively too much. It just does. All the way around. I know our economy depends on it. I get that. Whoda thunk that the birth of God into the world as a human would become the linchpin of western financial stability?

But it costs too much. It’s insane really. It's some form of cultural insanity. And the pressure on people who simply don’t have the money is immense. They have kids too. They have friends with all of the cultural expectations about gift giving. People say "It's the thought that counts." But they are lying. No one cares about thoughts.

I don’t know what to do about it. We try to cut back, but it's not as easy as you'd think. It really is bigger than all of us. It has very little to do with the real deal of Christmas, and I’m not saying it’s all bad.

It just costs too much.

That’s all I’m saying.


© LW Publishing 2011

The Same . . . Only Different

It's bizarre. My kids all have the same birth parents - moi and the better half - but they are totally different. Sure, they look a little bit alike, but they act like they were raised on different planets. Perhaps in different universes. And the thing is, I did not make them that way.

What I mean to say is, I haven’t raised them all that differently. Frankly I don’t have the time or the energy to treat them each as unique and special individuals. But they turn out to be unique and special individuals anyway. They seem to manage it without my controlling it, and that’s fine with me.

But you see these unaccountable differences all the time, from day one. When it’s time to eat we toss the same food in front of them all, but they don’t eat the same food. Toss down a plate with some chicken, broccoli and a slice of bread and kid C will eat the broccoli, kid A will eat the slice of bread and kid B will eat the chicken. They specialize in their own diversity with no help from myself or the better half. We simply try to keep up with the vagaries of their immaturity, which we personally find pretty challenging. We’re late bloomers, so the definition of our current lifestyle is “tired.”

One of my kids is a total people person. Like her mom. It’s all about relationships. She doesn’t like animated movies much because there aren’t any real people in them and that’s pretty much all she cares about. She likes to be with friends all the time. ALL the time. And she like to write stories about people. She’s a storyteller. And a computer whiz.

One of my other kids is a self contained unit. She loves playing with other kids, but she can go solo for hours at a time, fiddling away with toys and dolls and blocks. She likes watching musical movies, but she could watch static, it’s all the same to her, just as long as she can play with her dolls while she watches the show.

My other kid is a scientist. She mixes anything she can find (that isn’t locked down) up in bowls to see what it will do or what it will smell like. She likes to play teacher and she’s a good artist. She likes animated movies, old sci-fi movies and movies with animals in them, pretty much anything, as long as her sisters don’t touch her while she’s watching it. No touchee touchee.

I’m telling you: I have nothing to do with any of this. I did not create or plan their differences. They came out of my wife looking and behaving totally different. And yet they all have one amazing thing in common.

They are astonishingly beautiful.





Genesis 4:20-21
Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2010