The Gift.                                                                                                        12/24/13

At my church we believe in helping the folks that need to be helped. We do this by taking food out to the poorest neighborhoods in the Santa Cruz area. We pack up bags of groceries and go door to door and hand them out. We also ask them if they have any needs we can pray for and then we stand there and pray with them. Since we do this every month for years now, we hear many testimonies of supernatural help from God. We also pack up what we call, “Survivor Bags” for the homeless. They are one gallon sandwich bags filled with such items as socks, water, health bars and toiletries like hand wipes and toothpaste. We are asked to put these in our cars and when we see a person in need standing on the corner we hand these out as we are driving by. I have never encountered a person who refused one, until yesterday.

It went something like this.  I had been carrying around this one bag of stuff from my church for weeks. It was a special one made up just for the Christmas Season. It even had a Christmas card in it. I had it for a long time because I just could not find someone to give it too. I would see them standing on the streets but I was either driving the wrong way or they were on the wrong side. Today at lunch time, I saw this guy in his late 30’s standing on the corner near Target in Watsonville. He had a shopping cart filled with black plastic bags and was holding some kind of sign which I could not read. I saw him from a distance but when I reached to my back seat I could not find the bag. I pulled over to the side and motioned for people to pass me by in the parking lot as I fumbled for this bag. Finally, I found it and with great joy drove up to him to wish him a Merry Christmas and give him this bag. I rolled down my passenger side window and handed him the bag and said, Merry Christmas!” And he said, “No man I don’t want it”. I was aghast. I said, “But it’s filled with Stuff! And, and he said, No man I don’t want stuff, I want money.” I said but its good stuff, like socks and stuff! He got angry and said, “Get out of my face and move along! At this point I had visions of me getting out of the car and hitting him over the head with the bag and scream, “These ladies at our church went to all the trouble to make these up and you’re going to take one! “ Now take it and have a Merry Christmas!”  Ok, that last part was all in my head. I did not yell at him but I completely lost it in my spirit. I drove on feeling very hurt and sad for him. I calmed down and drove back to work. I sat in the car for a bit feeling very dejected, not understanding why someone would reject this free stuff. Then I felt like God tapped me on the shoulder and said to me, “Now you know how I feel”.  Today, I was waiting for the light to turn green on highway 9 leaving Felton, when I glanced over to my left and across the street going the other direction was a homeless man holding a sign. I grabbed the bag, thinking to myself, “If I throw it, he can’t refuse it”. So I yelled, do you want this and at the same time I held it up and tossed it with my left hand across the lane of traffic. I had visions of a car coming the opposite way as it hit the bag, bursting open tossing socks and hand wipes into the air. He nodded yes and thanked me when he caught it, well actually it hit the ground first, thankful it was a strong baggy. I thought to myself, “Hey that was a pretty good throw!” As the light turned green, I drove away. I felt God tapped me on the shoulder again saying, “See sometimes I have to throw blessings at people and leave before they have time to think of what they just received.” Hu? Yes, I am still mulling that one over. 

Aluminumating Addiction

 Aluminumating Addiction                                                          12/15/13

I have been an Asthmatic all my life. The things that set it off are Cats, Hay and Christmas Trees. I always forget about the Christmas trees until the holiday season hits, then its inhaler and pill popping time so that I can breathe again. Because of this issue, childhood with my parents was an adventure in avoiding things that would set me off or end up putting me in the emergency room. In order to still have a resemblance of Christmas during the Holiday season we had an artificial Christmas tree. (Aluminum to be exact).  Silver Aluminum Christmas Trees were all the rage growing up in the 60’s, that and Pink Flamingos but that is a whole other story. This tree was so ingrained in my childhood memory that to this day whenever I open up a wrap of Aluminum foil, I get the urge to break out in Christmas carols. I remember my parents decorated it in red and green ornaments and then lit it with a multicolored strobe light that would slowly rotate from blue, green, red and yellow. It was quite a site when the light hit the aluminum.  Actually the whole room looked like a huge rainbow.  That with the pink flamingos outside, well no wonder I have issues. Just saying…..

I remember the year the addiction in my family started. Yes, folks we became, “That Family.”  The one family in the neighborhood that over decorated at Christmas. To match the inside, my dad would hang red and green Christmas lights over every inch of the outside house. I believe if we had the technology back then we would have been the neighbors that had their lights synchronized to music. When the movie Christmas Vacation came out with Chevy Chase, my sister and I, turned to each other and said, “Hey That’s’ mom and dad!” It all started innocently enough, one year with a Yule Log of all things. It was given to us by one of my dad’s friends who was a 3rd grade school teacher. Every season she would have her kids decorate yule logs with all sorts of decorations.  And every year there would be one left over, maybe from the Jewish kid, I have no idea. But she and her sister would come over a week before Christmas Eve and give us one of these decorated Yule Logs.  Year after year they would come and year after year we would decorate and soon our living room became a Macy’s window display, with bright twinkling lights and a yule log by the fireplace.  I googled it to find out exactly what a Yule Log is and this is what I came up with. It must be true because it was on Wikipedia.

“A yule log is a large and very hard log which is burned in the hearth as a part of traditional Yule or Christmas celebrations in several European cultures. It may also be associated with the winter solstice festival or the Twelve Days of Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or Twelfth Night. The expression yule log has also come to refer to log-shaped Christmas cakes, also known as chocolate logs or bûche de Noël. The yule log is related to other Christmas and Yuletide traditions such as the ashen faggot.”

Ashen Faggot? I think this story just took a sudden left turn.  I remember the day when dad brought home a Real Evergreen Fake Christmas tree in the box from Sears. My first instinct was to run for my inhaler. Then came the robot Santa Clauses. God knows where they came from. Every year we put Mrs. and Mrs. Santa clause in the front picture window next to the fake Christmas tree. I remember that  they would just stand there waving their hands in slow motion at the passerby’s who would drive slowly down the street to look at our big window display to see the newest addition to our addiction, I mean collection. Sometimes people came up to the living room window and peeped in which was very unnerving! Especially when one was in the middle of watching a Brady Bunch episode.  One night, to get back at them, I secretly pulled the fingers back on the Santa Claus so the entire outside world got the middle finger. Mom and dad never had a clue. Surprisingly we won best decorated house that year. My dad still has the Plaque on his wall. I was very proud of my parents. I think it was 1977.  Maybe this year I can pass on a truly awesome tradition and bring someone else a Yule Log so they can become Christmas Decorating Addicts to!

Happy Ashen Faggot Day? Bah,

 Merry Christmas Everyone!