Tag: christmas

What’s for supper? Vol. 358: In which we end strong (thinkin about beans)

Heyy! Merry Christmas! Happy goodbye old year. Happy indeed. Let’s end strong with FOOD. 

It’s been a bit since I’ve done a WFS, so I’ll just do a highlight reel of the last few weeks.

I published the last one before I finished making my VERY FIRST PAVLOVA. Turns out to be very easy. I used this recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen. You beat up a bunch of egg whites and sugar, then mix in lemon juice, corn starch, and vanilla. Then you just glop it onto a pan with parchment paper and bake it in a low oven for an hour; and then you turn the oven off and let it cool down verrry slowly. 

Then you whip some cream and sugar and plop that on top, and then you throw berries on it. That’s it!

I forget exactly what boneheaded thing I did, but I ended up putting the pavlova into an oven that was warm, but not actually turned on; and I didn’t notice for something like forty minutes. So then I turned it on for a while, and then I turned it off for a while. Guess what?? The pavlova still turned out fine! 

I was skeptical that I would want to eat this much meringue, but it’s got more to it than meringue, and was very pleasant, and not as blindingly sweet as I expected. I think the outer crust was a little tougher than it’s supposed to be, but it was still delicious. The outside is sweet and glossy and crisp, and the inside has a marshmallowy, almost custard-like flavor. It’s supposed to have more cream on top than you see here, but the whipping cream had frozen, so I didn’t have a lot to work with. 

As you can see, I put blackberries, blueberries, pomegranate arils, kiwi slices, and mint leaves on mine. That was a very pleasant combination. I thought the mint would taste weird, but it was very nice having that green freshness along with the hot sugar taste. Some people make wreath shapes, which would be very pretty. I also made a bunch of individual pavlovas. Lots of possibilities. Many more pavlovas in our future!

One of my birthday presents was this wonderful cookbook: Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni.

That week, I ended up using a lot of odds and ends of meat we already had in the freezer, so my budget had a little room, and I splurged on a giant hunk of lamb. I cut it up and divided it, and froze 1/3 of the pieces along with the bone.

The first portion, I made into lamb braised in aromatic cream sauce (rogani gosht). You can see that recipe here. You can also make this dish with beef, which I’m sure I will end up doing, because it was fab. Fab fab fab.

Eating a hot bowl of rogani gosht is like being cuddled by a gigantic, affectionate, fluffy cat (that’s the fragrant cream part) who keeps licking you with its rough tongue (that’s the warming spice part). I know that’s weird, but normal descriptions just won’t DO for this dish. It’s not super spicy, but enough to get your attention, and the meat was insanely tender. It just fell apart with the merest nudge from a spoon. 

I also made a giant taboon bread. I wanted naan, but it was too late to get it started, so I went with this recipe, which is so easy, and you bake it in the oven all in one big slab.

Jump to Recipe

The only thing I forgot was to dimple the dough with my fingertips, and it had already been baking for 7-8 minutes, so like an idiot I stuck my hands in the hot oven and attempted to dimple it anyway. Did not get very far. 

But the meal was worth a little burnt fingers. I made a pot of rice in the Instant Pot and we had a really wonderful meal. 

The braised lamb doesn’t look like much, but I’m telling you. IT WAS MUCH. My goodness, what a treat. 

Let’s see, what else? 

For the last day of school, which was December 22 (ridiculous), I made cookies for Benny’s class party. Just good old reliable no-chill sugar cookies,

Jump to Recipe

which I cut out with little holes, and then filled the holes with crushed Jolly Ranchers, so when they baked, they had little candy windows in them.

We frosted them with royal icing and whatever miscellaneous decorations I could find in the cabinet,

and they turned out looking like a bit of a crime scene, but we did have fun. 

Another nice meal: Pulled pork on tater tots with red onions and corn. Maybe I was just hungry, but this meal was so freaking delicious.

I made the pulled pork using the apple cider vinegar and cloves recipe I have developed

Jump to Recipe

and it was just so dang tasty. 

Oh, and then we had this over-the-top bacon risotto for the last day of school. Heavy cream, egg yolks, bacon, salami, freshly-grated parmesan, white pepper, and so much butter . . .

I knew it was gonna be amazing, and it was. I didn’t even make anything else for dinner, and nobody complained. I had arborio rice in the house, leftover from the suppli I made for our anniversary, and now I don’t think I’m gonna be able to go back to my old cheap regular rice risotto ways. It was just so luxuriously creamy and rich. 

I think people will be asking for this dish for their birthdays. It’s really special.

On Sunday, it was finally Christmas eve! We went to Mass in the morning at our normal time, because Benny was altar serving. Then I got everybody to clean up the house. We weren’t expecting any guests, but we had SO much incredible extra clutter in the house — giant cartons of things, random baskets with other random baskets on top and wads of torn-up leggings flopping around, extra pieces of furniture, dying plants, half-finished crafts, and of course a million Amazon boxes, and of course all the cartons of Christmas decorations that I didn’t manage to put up. And there was this TREE in the living room, and some idiot had strung garlands all over the place, and the line between “merry merry” and “mental breakdown” was getting a little thin. The thought of starting with this mess and adding dozens and dozens of presents and half an acre of discarded wrapping paper and forty six tons of candy wrappers with little wet wads of candy still stuck to them was more than I could deal with. 

So I cracked the whip a bit, and we all cleaned that shit up. Even though we weren’t having guests! Then I made everyone take showers, and then we had supper, and then we decorated the tree, and then I started Alton Brown’s overnight cinnamon rolls.

I made a triple recipe

and had some help from Corrie spreading on the cinnamon sugar, rolling them up, and cutting them out. 

and then they got wrapped up and put in the fridge to rise slowly. 

Midnight Mass was lovely. They’ve started having it at actual midnight in the last few years, which is not so hard when your kids are older, and also it’s been warm out, so there wasn’t that horrible “venture out into the icy wind with your flimsy little spangled dress on” challenge. Corrie immediately went to sleep with her head on my lap, so I was tragically forced to sit down the entire time. 

We had the foresight to take pictures at the beginning of Mass, rather than at the end. Here are the goons (some of them still in the Covid window, UGH):

and Ma and Pa Goon:

Got home, Damien and I put allll the presents and stockings out

and then we tottered off to bed at around 2:30 a.m. 

Dora and Moe came over for Christmas, and we had an excellent Christmas day. We had cinnamon buns and bacon, orange juice and eggnog, and plenty of fruit. Several of the kids made each other homemade presents, and everyone just went above and beyond with thoughtful and amusing gifts.

 

For dinner, we had our traditional Chinese takeout, acquired in the correct volume by pretending to be four different people (it’s a long story); and Irene got her traditional Jersey Mike’s sub because Chinese food makes her throw up; and then we all played with our new toys and ate lots of candy and then eventually we went to sleep and slept SO HARD. 

The next few nights, we had easy dinners: Leftover Chinese food one day, and Italian sandwiches the next, and then we watched Baahubali: The Beginning. 

This is one of the most gorgeous, violent, insane, joyfully ridiculous movies I have ever seen, and the very last thing that happened on screen made me go, “WHAT???????” So we’ll be watching part 2, believe me! In the mean time, I went back to my Indian cookbook and pulled the rest of that lamb out of the freezer, and this time I made a curry with tomatoes and potatoes, and also a big pot of rice and some spinach yogurt salad. 

Sahni describes this curry as having a “garnet-colored sauce” and that’s just what it is. It’s so rich and the spices blend so nicely, I just don’t even know how to tell you how tasty it was. 

I had my doubts about the spinach salad (you cook some spinach, squeeze it out and chop it up and mix it into some heavily seasoned yogurt and sour cream), but it was a completely delightful accompaniment to the curry, very cooling and refreshing along with the savory meat. 

I think one kid ate the curry or the yogurt salad. The rest of them had leftovers or eggs. Too bad! Damien and I both had seconds and it made us very happy. 

I chose this meal because the recipe called for stuff I already had in the house, but I am so hyped about making more recipes from the book. Her style is nice and clear, and I’m excited!

And that’s it! That’s the year. We have New Year’s Eve coming up, and we usually have a DIY sushi party; then New Year’s Day is Sophia’s birthday, and then we have Benny’s birthday party that we had to postpone because we all got Covid, and then it’s Damien’s birthday, all in the first eight days of the year. I may just make a series of pavlovas. I can see it now: Turning the oven on, turning it off again, turning it on again, turning it off again, whipping more cream, eating more whipped cream, turning the oven on . . . .

I can think of worse fates. 

Oh, one last thing: Benny got a taiyaki maker for Christmas.

She made her first batch with Nutella filling. If you’ve had yummy taiyaki, what filling did it have? I’m thinking of red bean paste for New Year’s Eve, if I can find the right kind of beans. 

That’s it. That’s my final words of 2023: IF I CAN FIND THE RIGHT KIND OF BEANS. If the world ends and this is my legacy, estoy contenta.

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taboon bread

You can make separate pieces, like pita bread, or you can make one giant slab of taboon. This makes enough to easily stretch over a 15x21" sheet pan.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups bread flour
  • 4 packets yeast
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.

  2. While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.

  3. Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.

  5. If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.

  6. Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.

  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

 

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No-fail no-chill sugar cookies

Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.

Servings 24 large cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups flour

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.

  3. Add egg and extracts.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.

  6. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.

  7. Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.

  8. Let them cool completely before decorating!

 

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Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

  • fatty hunk of pork
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for browning
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 2/3 cup apple juice
  • 3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions

  1. Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.

  3. Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.

  4. When pork is tender, shred.

 

The long game of Advent parenting

I don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s almost Christmas. Advent — what’s left of it — is a time of preparation, but unless you live a very unusual life, you probably need some time to prepare for this season of preparation.

We have done various things over the years to try to make Advent a season of anticipation that leads up to a day of Christ-centered joy, rather than a month-long wallow in decorations and cookies that leads to a volcano of presents. We fail every single year.

But we do always try. The nice thing about Christmas is that it’s a birth, and that means it’s a beginning, not a culmination. Call me hopeful or call me delusional, but I always feel like as long as we TRY, then we’re getting Advent and Christmas right.

So this is how we try: We set aside the day after Thanksgiving as Jesse Tree Day. And that is about all we do the day after Thanksgiving. The kids are home from school, nobody expects me to cook anything elaborate, and God has granted me the gift of a profound unwillingness to rush out and shop for amazing Black Friday deals at Target. So Friday is the day of getting ready to get ready.

The first step is to choose a list of Jesse Tree readings. The idea is to find one that more or less matches up with the actual calendar. Advent begins Dec. 3 this year, but if we end up with one that starts on Dec. 1, it doesn’t matter that much, because we know we’re going to miss some days anyway, so it all evens out. Then I print it out, round up the kids, and read off the symbols, and they dibs the ones they want to do.

Some years, I get fancy and buy special paint markers and a bunch of blank capiz shell discs with holes drilled in them, so we end up with a set of more or less uniform ornaments. Other years, I just open the infamous craft cabinet and pull out everything that looks like it won’t cry if you put glue on it. (This is my first act of Christmas Generosity: I renounce my claim on anything I put out on the table. If you’re not going to use the good stuff for getting ready for Jesus, then what in the world are you saving it for?)

Then I start some music going. In this house, we do not listen to Christmas music before the day after Thanksgiving; and the very first one we listen to is “A Medieval Christmas” by The Boston Camerata. The kids groan and complain, but I’m a big believer in building unwilling fondness through repetition. I choose my battles with music, but I insist on this one at least once a year. This is my first act of Christmas Bullying, which is also an essential part of the season, if you’re in charge of other people.

So then I toss the list with names into the middle of the craft heap, and I leave the room. The kids are going to be incredibly mean to each other while they work, which is just how they show affection; and they are going to make an insane mess, which is something I don’t need to see happening. This is my first act of Christmas Surrender. Some things are beyond my control, and it’s very good to keep this in mind and not waste emotional energy getting upset about it.

Read the rest of my latest monthly column for Our Sunday Visitor.

The last thing on your to-do list before Christmas

I have a confession to make: I have not been to confession yet this Advent. Every year, I bug people to go sometime during the season, and I think most of my family has been. But I have not yet gone myself.

So the following pep talk is as much for myself as it is for anyone else who needs to hear it. I do believe to my core that there is really only one indispensable preparation you need to make before Christmas, and that is getting to confession.

Let me make my case.

Maybe, like me, you’ve been putting off hanging up lights. You need to make your house beautiful and bright to get ready for Christmas morning. Understandable, but it would be awful to overlook making Christmas personal, intimate. Inviting Jesus into the dark places is what the sacrament is all about. There have been times when I have gone to confession utterly hopeless. I just went because I could not think of anything else to do, but I had no hope that things would get better. And guess what? Day broke. Jesus, the sun, came up. The dark confessional is where you meet the light of Christ. It could happen to you.

Or maybe it is baking that is weighing on you…. Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image by régine debatty via flickr (Creative Commons) 

Christmas morning: Are you doing it right?

One of the great mercies of being the mother of a large family is you know one thing for sure: This can’t all be your fault. How could it be? You have raised at least some of your children more or less the same way, at the same time, using the same parenting techniques and the same amount of money in the same house, being the same person the whole time, and yet they all turn out so very different.

If ever I feel sorry for parents of one child, it’s because they might think all their child’s virtues and flaws are the result of their parenting. They’re not. Some are, to be sure, but some is pure witless genetics, and some is environment beyond family, and some of it is luck, some is miscellaneous, and a lot of it is meaningful but completely mysterious, known only to God himself, and he’s not telling.

Let’s take a look at my own kids. Let’s take a look at them on Christmas morning after Midnight Mass, when they’re opening presents, and the secrets that lurk in the hearts of Fishers are revealed. I have tried to teach all my children generosity and gratitude, thrift and any number of other salutary virtues that I think will serve them well in life. How’s that worked out?

Well, one of them will be sitting in a pile of wrapping paper and random things her siblings grabbed off the rack at the dollar store, every single time she opens a present, she will shout, “It’s just what I wanted!” and she will mean it, too.

What a grateful and generous heart, you will think! Yes, up to a point. But that same kid will have carefully wrapped either a 50-cent Walmart cake or a 50-cent Walmart pie for everyone she knows, because it was the cheapest thing she could think of. She figured out long ago that this method allowed her to pocket a good half of her allowance, while the rest of those suckers were blowing the whole thing. But also, she is so extremely delighted with her cleverness, and that delight is so contagious, that everyone who opens a present from her is delighted, too, and we eventually all begin chanting, “Cake or pie? Cake or pie?” as each person opens up yet another tiny, squashy box from her, only to cheer uproariously when it turns out to be either a cake or a pie. And so it became a tradition. The “cake or pie” chant is now my favorite part of Christmas morning.

One of my less favorite parts is when one kid invariably manages to convince themselves that all their carefully curated presents are disappointing, not anywhere near what they wanted, and probably a sign that nobody really knows them or loves them, and then retreats guiltily to their room with their stocking to sulk, and also feel embarrassed about sulking. It’s not the same kid every year, mind you, just to keep us on our toes. Next year, that same kid will spend November earnestly begging us to donate their present budget to the food pantry, because they already have everything they need…Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

 

Four ways to keep the Advent season in proportion

Off we go, into Advent and Christmas! If you’re a mother, you’re probably in charge of setting the tone for the entire family for the next month or so, and it probably feels like a gargantuan job. Here are a few things I’ve learned, that help me keep things in proportion.

Nobody is doing everything. If you read a lot of lifestyle magazines and websites or if you go on social media, especially if you are a member of a lot of women’s groups, your feed at this time of year will become an overwhelming parade of gorgeous, meaningful, liturgically appropriate practices and traditions. Foods you can make, prayers you can pray, special events you can plan or attend, presents you can craft, decorations you can arrange, songs you can sing, stories you can read, and all manner of fragrant and illuminated and sparkly and reverent and crafty and fulfilling ideas.

You must firmly tell yourself: This is the work of a CROWD. Nobody is doing all of this. Most people are doing a few things, and when you put it all together, it’s a lot. That’s what you’re seeing. If you look at your individual efforts and match it against what you’re seeing, of course it’s going to look paltry, because you’re just one person.

There are a few people who are doing a lot of things, and hooray for them, but they truly do not win any prizes for this. If you are doing anything at all to mark Advent and Christmas as a season that is different from the rest of the year — even if you’re just making sure you get the family to confession sometime before Christmas! — then you are doing it right. Light a candle and call it good. Nobody is doing everything.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

 

Thomas Aquinas doesn’t teach you how to have a holly jolly Christmas, and other insights from the AMDG Jesuit podcast

Had a very enjoyable pre-Christmas conversation with Mike Jordan Laskey, the host of the Jesuit podcast for Canada and the US. It was a pretty wide-ranging chat, covering having adult children, dealing with materialism and other Christmas-related anxieties, managing and building traditions, my favorite Christmas carol that I couldn’t quite remember at the moment, CAKE OR PIE, and recognizing Jesus, or not.  Have a listen! 

 

Present madness

Ladies and gentlemen, do you suffer from . . . . PRESENT MADNESS?

Present madness is when you find yourself choosing, paying for, and possibly even being ecstatic about a gift, even though it is stupid and insane and nobody wants it. You do it because you’ve been caught up in the panic and hysteria of Christmas shopping, and after a certain point, your brain takes one look at your emotional state and decides it wanted no part of this, and leaves. So you end up paying too much money for something that is objectively garbage, but it presents itself to you as if it’s not only a good present, but the thing without which Christmas simply will not happen. 

If this has never happened to you, then please consider the following essay my gift to you, so that you may be happy in the life you have chosen. If what follows is familiar, then this is also your gift: The gift of knowing it’s not just you. 

Present madness happened to me when, as a newlywed, I ended up buying my new husband a heating pad from a drug store for Christmas, and was devastated when he very understandably didn’t like it, because it was a heating pad from a drug store. 

It happened to me back when I was single and had time to wander around a mall unimpeded, and yet somehow I ended up buying my younger brother a rubber steering wheel cover decorated with red and yellow flames. (My brother did not own a car.)

It happened to me last year, when I came within microns of pressing “order” for a pair of Harlem Globe Trotter Heelys for a child who not only never expressed an interest in Heelys, but doesn’t know who the Harlem Globe Trotters are and may not even know what basketball is.

And it came very close to happening this year, when we went to GameStop (ptui, ptui) a week before Christmas in search of a very specific item.

Before you judge us for what I’m about to relate, please remember that we had “finished shopping” weeks ago, and were smugly resting on our materialistic laurels, quietly sneering at those inferior parents who had squandered their Advent praying or serving the poor or whatever. We, being wise and prudent, had Christmas literally in the bag. We had ordered almost everything online, and let the goodies come to us, and honestly, most of the gifts were wholesome, thoughtful, and occasionally delightful. But, about a week before Christmas, we locked ourselves into our bedroom to make sure everything on our list was actually in our possession. 

Oh dear. It turned out two items we had ordered were still in transit, and expected Thursday (Christmas eve). One item had quietly changed its expected arrival date to March 25. One apparently hadn’t realized it was coming all the way from China, and in a panic, sent us a rather hostile email saying that there’s no way it would make it on time unless we coughed up an extra $40 in shipping, and we had to say yes or no two weeks ago, and it went to spam. And one was still meekly sitting in an Etsy cart, hoping and praying I’d actually order it. 

The lo, the twinkly world of Christmas joy became dark in our eyes. And so we succumbed to Present Madness.

We shouted something vague at the kids about being back soon, and we went to, uh, seven stores, looking to just pick up a few things to fill in the gaps in our carefully calibrated present list.

And we found nothing. Walmart, Target, Michael’s, the local toy store, the local comic store, even the retail wasteland known as TJ Maxx, but NOTHING.

To GameStop then we came, burning burning burning. 

If you’re not familiar with GameStop, it’s a sort of geeky gehenna that sells video games, used video games, and a horrifying array of spectacularly useless game-related merch. The rug smells funny, the air is bad, the employees are all shriveled monsters, and whoever sets the prices should go to prison. Last time I went to GameStop, many moons ago, I went to advocate for my gangly, curly-haired teenage son, who had somehow gotten himself embroiled in a complicated situation involving a box of special edition Sonic the Hedgehog breakfast cereal. I don’t ever want to talk about that. But the line was moving turrribly slowly, and I soon saw that the delay was being caused by a middle-aged woman with stooped shoulders and baggy eyes, who was passionately arguing for justice on behalf of her gangly, curly-headed teenage son. Something about reward points and the collectable My Hero Academia shoelaces he had ordered.

And I says to myself, I says, if I wanted to look in a mirror, I could do that in the comfort of my own home, and at least I could sit down. So I never went back, until last weekend, when we had nowhere else to turn and GameStop knew it.

My feet hurt so much, they were audibly whimpering.  My nose was running behind my mask, and I had to go to the bathroom. We hadn’t made a dent on our list at all, except that we had bought one thing that took care of one kid, but which shifted the balance of presents so that now a kid who had formerly been done suddenly needed a little extra present to even things up. Yes, I said “needed!” Don’t question me! I’ll cut you!

So we made the ultimate sacrifice and went to Game Stop, and we still didn’t find the thing we were looking for, because it’s Game Stop. We circled around and around to make sure the thing was not there, and it was not. But. What is this?  What is this amazing thing? It is so amazing! It is, and you’re not going to believe this! It is a Dragonball Z hot air popcorn maker that lights up! So cool! And we knew exactly who would want such a thing: A child who didn’t need any more Christmas presents. But it is on sale! And it is a limited edition! Or maybe it doesn’t light up, but is just orange! Hard to tell from the box! Only six left! And her birthday is in April, so we could pack it away and be ahead of the game! We’d have to be insane NOT to buy it! So we grabbed one and got into line, chortling to ourselves at what a wonderful present we had scored, and how much progress we were making, because look at us, buying something!

Luckily, it was GameStop, which means the line was moving slowly. As we waited, we had time to stop and reflect. And we realized that we were about to spend $30 on absolute garbage that would make zero people happy. So, get this, we put it back, and we left the store without buying anything.

Just this once, we triumphed over Present Madness.

Except then we went to Walmart and bought a Frozen II Karaoke machine and also a rose gold microphone at Aldi, in case we need it. We might need it! I’ll cut you!

Maybe you think this is an essay about how we learned our lesson about excessive materialism, and how, having renounced the Dragonball Z Air Popper and all its empty promises, we vowed to realign our hearts toward the Christchild, who was born in Bethlehem with only swaddling clothes to cover him and only a choir of angels to sing him to sleep, and that was enough. That was enough. 

But no. One of my sisters just mentioned on Facebook she’s eyeing a self-stirring mug they just put out at Walmart, and now I need to find my car keys. I honestly think the angels will still be singing when I get back. 

The O Antiphons reimagined: My interview with Sr. Ansgar Holmberg

Ansgar Holmberg, C.S.J., 86, didn’t paint her O Antiphon series to edify or instruct anyone. They were meant only for herself.

Ansgar (she likes to be called by her first name) has been with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet for 67 years, and although she has spent time teaching children and offering spiritual direction, she created these seven paintings over the course of three years as a personal way to contemplate Scripture.

“I had read what other people had said, but I decided to paint them for myself, for me to understand them better. That’s one of the ways I learn,” Ansgar said.

Now the seven paintings, done in brilliant gouache (a kind of opaque watercolor), are gathered in a small book, Praying the Advent Names of God, paired with poems composed by another sister in the community, Joan Mitchell, C.S.J.

The O Antiphons are a series of seven verses dating from the sixth century and prayed during vespers during the last week of Advent. Each antiphon is a name of Jesus taken from Scripture, and they are the basis for the popular Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

Ansgar’s images are saturated with color and inhabit a strange space between iconography and myth. Ansgar said she did not set out to express a theological idea with her works; she simply followed her intuition.

“I didn’t have any rules or laws or requests put upon me, but it was my own expression of where I was at that time as I worked with these,” she said. “I put my own spin on it, and it went a bit more cosmic.”

Wisdom, for instance, is frequently portrayed in Western art with symbols like a lamp, a book or a female form enthroned; but in Ansgar’s conception, Wisdom is a figure descending fluidly from the heavens, grasping the sun in one hand, breathing out waters and engraving the bed of a riverbank with the other hand. Wisdom, Ansgar said, is proceeding from the womb of God.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image: “O Wisdom” from Praying the Advent Names of God by Ansgar Holmberg, CSJ, and Joan Mitchell, CSJ, used with permission 

 

Hush, there’s a baby nearby!

Advent at the Fisher house includes singing, lighting of candles, opening a door on the Advent calendar, reading the passage from the calendar’s matching booklet, picking the appropriate homemade ornament and hanging it on the Jesse tree, looking up and reading the corresponding passage from scripture, and plucking the chocolate out of your own personal Advent calendar, if you haven’t already eaten them all, if you haven’t already brushed your teeth. Well, brush them again, then.

Fisher family Advent has, in short, transcended tradition and achieved rigmarole status. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m happy to be doing special things that we don’t do at any other time of year. It’s a nice combination of scripture and aesthetics and memorable lessons, perfect for children and adults alike. It wouldn’t really feel like Advent without it.

But it would feel even more like Advent if I didn’t yell at everyone the whole time we were doing it. It would feel more like Advent if I focused less on reading the right Bible verse in the correct tone of voice, and focused more on being open to the word of God. If I lit a flame in the darkness and let that symbol speak to the kids’ hearts’ directly, rather than correcting them for pronouncing “Is-ra-el” wrong, or brooding in my heart that I’ve raised them all wrong, and we need to start doing scripture drills every night, and I need to start being a better mother so I will have better kids who do things better. 

If, in short, I prepared a way for the Lord for the sake of the Lord, rather than preparing for the sake of getting preparations done.

Shh, there’s a little baby nearby! 

That’s what I’m trying now to keep in mind. This thought, this image of a newborn nearby, helps make my Advent a little more like Advent. It makes everything a little gentler, a little quieter, a little more slow and thoughtful, just as if there were a tiny baby in the next room, someone I don’t want to disturb, someone I don’t want to grieve. Someone whose world I want to make warm and quiet, soft, welcoming, and kind.

I can’t always control what I have to do during the day, but I can control how I do it. For the sake of the baby nearby, I can take a breath and give a mild answer if someone insults me. For the sake of the baby, I can offer help to someone who’s struggling, rather than waiting for them to ask. I can warmly compliment someone for achieving something small. I can hush my tone of voice; I can apologize sincerely when I screw it up. I can try again without flagellating myself for my inevitable sins. I can skip the sarcastic remark; I can forego the conversation that will only lead to irritation. I can think of the baby nearby, think of the kind of world I want him to grow up in, and I can do what I can to make it a little softer. 

I can recognize that I have been noisy and quarrelsome, critical and demanding, and I can think of the baby nearby, and I can hush.

This is what works for me, since so much of my life has been dedicated to caring for babies. But what about you? What if you don’t have a baby in your life?

Oh, but you do.  You have someone helpless, someone in need, someone who needs patience, someone who is easily frightened or overwhelmed. Someone overlooked. Someone who is just starting out, someone who isn’t getting much done but could still use some praise. Someone whose world would be better if you decided to act out of love. 

The “baby” may look like a snotty teenager, an obnoxious co-worker, or a difficult parent. It may look like a pushy stranger on the sidewalk, or a rude cashier. It may look like a priest who’s disappointed you, or an internet troll who really is out to get you. It may look like someone who never thinks of what you need. 

Or it may even be yourself. We can be so extremely hard on themselves at this time of year, keeping up a constant interior litany of blame and reproach for not doing it right, telling ourselves terrible things that we’d never dream of saying about anyone else. 

This is what people are like: Needy and demanding, fussy and inconveniently fragile. Would we respond any differently if the people we encountered were new babies? Could we be a little more gentle?

What if you remembered that you, yourself, were a little baby once, and even though you can feed and care for yourself now, you still deserve to be treated with gentleness, even if only by yourself? 

At all times of the year, but especially at Advent: It’s always about the person closes to us – or, if you like, it’s all about the baby nearby. And this is how we serve the Person who, liturgically speaking, is nearby, about to be born. We tell our kids that Christmas is Baby Jesus’ birthday, and the kind of presents he wants is for us to be good to each other — and yes, to ourselves. Sometimes the best kind of goodness we can offer is just a little gentleness, a soft touch, a decision not to make noise. A little hush, for the sake of the baby. This is a good way to make way for the Lord: With gentleness.

It’s Advent. There’s a baby nearby. Hush, hush. 

[This essay has been modified excerpted from an essay first published in The Catholic Weekly in 2016.]

Image by Paul Goyette from Chicago, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

THIS IS NOT THE YEAR: A 2020 Advent song for people with good taste

As I walked out one evening
In the dark December air,
I saw my neighbors hanging lights
On trees and everywhere.
My first thought was to chide them
Because Advent’s barely here
But a passing angel thwapped my head
And whispered in my ear…

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.