Home sick home

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. 

We try to make things homemade and put less emphasis on stuff and more focus on the reason for Christmas. And we have fun for that too. We have two nativity sets, one that is covered with magical ornaments making the nativity set look like a mix of Charlie and the Chocolate factory meets stable....but it looks like a party.

And the other is a ceramic Mexican set that we got as a gift for our wedding. I really wanted to add some nature to that so pulled out some of my favorite rocks that I have collected from the beach and hiking, propped the sheep up on coral and it really made the set come to life.

Awaiting baby Jesus

My favorite part of "decorating" is deciding which socks to hang up for Santa. Usually the most destroyed sock gets hung.

Our little family is coming up with traditions each year. Some of them are old, like making fish (a true Italian tradition) and some of them are new (like hanging up the ugliest sock we own).

Since we have moved to NJ we have gone each Christmas season to New York City. That city really takes the cake for having a holiday feeling. Bergdof Goodmans is decorated to the nines, jazz is playing in coffee shops, the air is crisp and most people are in a good mood (rare for New Yorkers).

I'm not sure if we will make it this year because we want to take precaution from the potential of violence that has happened since Eric Gardner was killed. Christmas time is full of tourists but right now the city is aching in pain and anger. I think, however, that the majority of the protests will do good for the city if not the country. I was looking at my Christmas tree ornaments today, contemplating Christ, the sanctity of life, and also the tough racial road that this country has been on.

I thought that the recent police violence might seem pardonable to modern-Americans to a certain extent. The black men were tantrumy, they therefore needed to be stopped. Then I remembered an exhibit I saw in Baltimore once of beautiful men and young boys. They were antique pictures of the turn of the century. The pictures were all framed on tree trunks and in each picture was the still, quiet, lifeless body of a hanging black man or boy. Each of these men were lynched by mobs (tortured, burned alive...Medieval torture) and were given up by the police to the mobs. Many times the mayor and town locals would organize a picnic for the event. How is it that we can't remember these victims of historical violence in our country? Crimes where over 10,000 people showed up to view one lynching in Paris, Texas. I don't understand how lynching was legal. I don't understand how people could have so much evil in them. There was a poem at the gallery called "Strange Fruit":

Strange Fruit

By Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol (1937)

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.



It might not have to do anything with Christmas, but my hanging ornaments, and the sanctitiy of life that Jesus promised for all people, and the historical lack of it makes me sad. It makes me pray and hope that one day we can all have humility and empathy to listen to each other's stories and scars. In the meantime, I asked myself what I can do in this life to help. Where to start?