A VERY THORNTON CHRISTMAS

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"You can never truly enjoy Christmas until you can look up into the Father's face ad tell him you have received his Christmas gift."--- John Richard Rice (1895-1980), Baptist evangelist

Merry Christmas, everybody! Welcome to the holiday edition of whatever you call this. This is normally the time of year where we'd mail out those "Thornton Year In Review" letters, accompanied by a Christmas card. But there's drawbacks to that approach: 

1. Expense concerns - not just postage, but also the price of Christmas cards. In recent years, I've tried to mitigate the cost by buying those 50-count sacks of Christmas cards designed for distribution to fellow first-graders, but it was really hard for me to fit any meaningful text in the space between the "to" and "from" fields, since most of the card is taken up with pictures of Transformers and someone's Little Pony. So I'm letting the internet do the heavy lifting.
2. Security concerns - the recipients' concerns, not mine. Recently, any hard-copy correspondence from me has been designated by the EPA as the same category of hazardous waste as those pig-tail light bulbs that everybody loves, so any envelope with my name in the return address space usually gets slipped into someone else's mailbox to become their problem. I've sent letters dated December of 2008 that are still playing musical mailboxes in neighborhoods across the country.  In place of snail mail, I thought about sending out e-cards, where everyone gets an email with a link to an animated greeting card, but there's space limitations there, too, and I've found that most people think the link contained in the email notification contains some nasty malware that will turn their computer into a paperweight with ads. So I've opted to let my website be the go-to place for my Christmas greetings. People have been avoiding it for years, so they know it's safe.
3. Strategic concerns: I want the maximum amount of credit with the least amount of effort, and this seems to be the ticket. I'm thinking that maybe I'll just start posting the same letter every year... if no one notices, then I'll have hit that sweet spot where everyone just assumes there's a new piece every year without actually checking it out.

 This year, I've decided to go with something a little more timeless than an annual family newsletter. Instead, I'll talk about the average Thornton Christmas. If Norman Rockwell had lived past the 1970s, I'm sure he would have been pounding on our door with his easel in his hand, aching to capture our Christmas on canvas. Since that's not going to happen, I'll try to paint a verbal picture of the kinds of things we do to make Christmas special, and in some small way help those folks who just want to be more like us. I've done this previously, but every year brings changes, so there's always a new "average" Christmas in the works... which sort of demolishes the "timeless" vibe I was shooting for. Oh well.

Our Christmas season normally begins on the day we erect our Christmas tree. It's an artificial tree, in keeping with a family tradition that I think was started with my maternal grandparents. As far back as I can remember Christmases, we would spend Christmas Eve night with Grandpa and Grandma Lockhart (who spoiled my brother and I mercilessly), and their tree was one of those aluminum jobs manufactured out of the same stuff that World War II pilots sprayed out of their planes in order to confuse radar. We'd take a break from digging the fallout shelter and sit on their plastic-covered furniture and oooh and aaah appreciatively every time the color wheel lamp would cause the tree to change shades. 

Since then, of course, artificial Christmas tree technology has advanced considerably... there are now green plastic trees, so Airstream and Reynolds no longer corner the market. In our 36 years of marriage, my wife (the lovely and talented Susan) and I have been through 3 or 4 fake trees, and each one seems to get closer to the Jetsons' "no-muss-no-fuss" ideal of throwing a pill in a pan of water and seeing a tree materialize. The first fake tree we ever purchased was your basic broomstick-on-a-stand model, with holes in the trunk where you stuck the branches and then spent the succeeding days "sculpting" the branches to give it as much fullness as possible. In other words, it was a work-in-progress all the way up to the day it was packed away for next year. 

Eventually, I bought one where the branches were attached to the trunk like the ribs on an umbrella. The idea was to be able to just slip the tree out of its box, let gravity bring the branches down into place, and then skip straight to the sculpting. Unfortunately, I didn't actually tell my wife about the design improvement, and when the time came to pack the tree back up, she assumed all those pesky branches had to be separated from the tree... so she dismantled it completely. The tree never really recovered from this dissection; every subsequent year we had to reconstruct and dismantle this tree as if it were one of the older models. Susan was never quite the same either, since she had to endure my jibes every year as she put back together the 175 pieces of her "one-piece" tree. 

We eventually retired "Old Jigsaw" (as it came to be known) and now we have this tree:

 which I think looks pretty darn good after the lovely and talented Susan gets done with it. Nowadays, you can get the trees with the lights and ornaments included... heck, you can even get some that rotate and play music and probably pop corn, but Sue wanted to put on her own lights and ornaments. I know there's a bit of artificial tree snobbery out there, and some folks think it's a callow cheapening of Christmas to replace a real tree with a petroleum-based replica, but if it looks pretty and doesn't burst into flame by Christmas, I'm happy. 

When it comes to the trappings of a down-home Christmas, my son Sam is the main enthusiast of the family, and he wants the tree up as quickly as possible. An artificial tree means that if we wanted, we could mark the start the Christmas season with the National League's first pitch of the year , and that would suit Sam just fine (he's not a baseball fan), but Sue insists that no Christmas stuff gets unpacked until the day after Thanksgiving at the earliest. Sam holds her to that, so that's when it usually goes up. It's tough, because we're all still full of Thanksgiving turkey, which means we're still groggy from the effects of that enzyme they say is in turkey (Tylenol? Nyquil? Opium?). But the lovely and talented Susan could be peppered with animal tranquilizer darts and would still manage to rise before dawn and commence the conversion of our living room decor from "Fall" to "Christmas."  

Part of that conversion is taking down all my cool Batman and Superman statues: 

 Normally these perch atop my TV cabinet, and I think they're especially appropriate at Christmas time... who better than Superman and Batman to represent the spirit of selflessness; good will toward men; and striking terror into the hearts of criminals? But ironically, at Christmas time, these masterpieces are unceremoniously dumped into the nearest cubbyhole to make room for items with more candles and pine needles: 

 Superheroes don't make the holiday cut, but apparently Peanuts characters do. One year, Sam gave us a facsimile of the pathetic little Christmas tree that Charlie Brown bought in A Charlie Brown Christmas and the lovely and talented Susan combined it with some Peanuts figures I've been collecting and made it into this charming tableau placed on our sub-woofer: 

 There's a nostalgic element to this display, and not just due to the depiction of the "classic" early 50's version of the Peanuts characters. Putting this display on our sub-woofer means that, during movies with heavy bass, these little guys dance around the tree, much in the manner of those tiny toy football player figures that skittered around a vibrating gridiron back in the days before Nintendo and John Madden.  

Don't get me wrong, I like this display. But I can't help but think that if there'd been a TV special where Batman walked out on a stage, clutching his cape to cheek as he recited the Biblical account of the Lord's birth, my super-hero figures would still be out. 

Once Thanksgiving is over, the tree is up and the rest of the interior decorating is completed, we enter the official Christmas season, with its various traditional activities. Tradition is very important at Christmas... it's both reassuring, and removes the stress of trying to come up with something innovative. 

Besides the tree, we hang the stockings: 

 I realize my stocking seems a little out of place, but it has nostalgic value. My previously-mentioned Grandma Lockhart wrote my name on it and gave it to me, and I just can't bring myself to retire it.  Because it was my stocking, she probably could have gotten away with writing the "k" backwards to add to its charm, but I don't think she was anticipating me holding on to it for so long and probably had higher hopes for me.  

Because I'm a big movie fan with a decent video library to choose from, one of our traditions is to start screening Christmas movies. We usually start with some of the obvious choices: Miracle on 34th Street; A Christmas Carol (versions 3, 21; 74, and 185); Elf; The Bishop's Wife; Die Hard; Gremlins. We always watch our purchased video version of A Christmas Story, even though TBS airs it non-stop for 24 hours on Christmas. I appreciate the fact that TBS can probably send almost all their folks home on Christmas, but I assume there's gotta be some guy there who drew the short straw and, like the technician in the island bunker in Lost, has to keep hitting a "replay" button every couple of hours while he wonders if anybody's out there.  

Of course, eating is inextricably linked to our Christmas season observance. I hesitate to call it a tradition... we do it all year long, so it's more of a habit.... but there's that extra something that goes into the preparation of food for the family at Christmas: sugar. The lovely and talented Susan starts breaking out recipes and by the time December arrives, our kitchen table is covered with enough cookies and other baked treats to feed the armed forces.  Not just our armed forces... all of them. She makes a molasses cookie that's so good I forget I'm eating molasses. 

I'm no cook, so in order to compete, I buy sweets to bring home and to share with friends. I'm a big fan of See's chocolates. The See's company uses some sort of dwarf-star technology that--- like Dr. Who's Tardis, a time/space vehicle whose interior is bigger than its exterior--- allows more calories to be packed into a single chocolate than the actual mass of the chocolate will allow. Of course, such advanced chocolate science doesn't come cheap, which is why the price of a See's chocolate is directly linked to the gold market. 

But it's good, and it's fresh, and so it makes a fine "hey-I'm-dropping-by-your-house-uninvited-to wish-you-a-merry-Christmas-so-here's-some-candy-to-make-up-for-it" gift. There's a storefront See's outlet in our town, so I visit it every Christmas season. You can pick up pre-packed chocolate assortments that contain all the flavors that you stick your thumb into to see if it's solid chocolate... or, like me, you can ask them to hand-pack a 2 pound box consisting entirely of those chocolate-filled chocolates. You get a box of those, and it's sort of like landing on a desert isle and finding out that that no matter where you dig a hole on the beach, there's a treasure chest. 

See's also used to carry some great solid chocolate cigars (or as they call them, "Seegars"), but I didn't see them at my local outlet, so maybe someone's decided that giving a kid an 80,000-calorie stick to put in his mouth and pretend it's a stogie is sending out the wrong message. 

Like everybody else, of course, we shop for gifts. I gravitate toward online shopping, while civic-minded Susan does her part to support our local brick-and-mortar retailers. Both Sue and I like giving gifts to everyone but each other... we rarely exchange gifts at Christmas because we know that some major household expense will inevitably rear its head sometime in December. One year, the water heater busted; another year, the water pipes had to be replaced; yet another year, the car needed four new tires. Etc., etc. It takes a major gift decision off the table, but sometimes I think the lovely and talented Susan deserves more than just a Christmas card that reads "Dead tree removed from back yard... Merry Christmas." 

This is the year that Sue's parents joined our household, so this is our first Christmas as a three-generation Walton-style home. It's a privilege to have them with us, and it also makes things easier logistically-speaking, since all we have to do is fall down the stairs to spend Christmas with them... and Sue's brother and his family also come to our house, so we don't have to do a whole lot of Christmas traveling. 

Still, I like to get to Riverside at least once during this time of year. It's about 90 minutes or so from our home in Santa Clarita. With my mom and brother living back in Virginia, and now that most of my dad's brothers and sisters are dead, there's not a lot of previous-generation Thorntons available for our Thornton Christmas. That's a radical change from my childhood, where it seemed to me like the population of Riverside consisted of Thorntons and the city workers that maintained their infrastructure. My aunt Juanita is the only one of my Dad's nine siblings still around, and my cousin Harley lives just down the street from her, so a visit to Riverside always cranks up my holiday nostalgia. Some of my high school friends are also still in that general area and still speaking to me, so I try to get to see them, too. 

Of course, all of these people would tell you that they're just an excuse for me to come to town and that the real reason I'm there is to go to the only location on the planet where I can get my favorite sandwiches: Delia's Grinders. My love for these sandwiches is legendary, at least to the folks who work at Delia's and have to whip up a gross of them every time I come to town. I come home with a box of them. Some of them I buy for my friend and boss Ken (who's also from Riverside and has the same Delia's monkey on his back), and some I share with Ben and Sue's folks and Sue, but the other 93 are for me.  There's probably about a 3-day window before they go bad, but I've usually polished them off by then, and really, even after 3 days I'm not going to let a little thing like salmonella come between me and a Delia's grinder. 

Church is always a big part of our Christmas season, for a couple of reasons. We go to Grace Community Church in the San Fernando Valley. It has a giant congregation--- almost as big a group as the Riverside Thorntons in their hey-day--- but it also has probably the best Bible teaching on the planet, and, because of its size and proximity to Los Angeles, it has a lot of professional music resources to draw from. As an outreach, it puts on a free Christmas concert every year--- five performances over the course of four days--- with a full orchestra, chorale, and loads of talented vocalists. In my opinion, it's better than the Rockettes, as long as you don't mind listening to a brief message from the pastor letting everyone know what Christmas is actually about. We usually manage to see it every year, and now it's available via live streaming on the Web. It may not be the same thing as being there, but it's still great, and it keeps us from taking up seats that could otherwise hold folks who haven't yet taken the good news of the Gospel to heart. 

Whenever people talk to me about the actual Christmas holiday, I've usually come off as sort of a Grinch. That's partly because I spent so many years in a retail environment where the perspective was constantly skewed to the superficial and commercial, and partly because of the dissonance that seems to come with our culture's celebration of the holiday. 

Christmas is arguably our biggest holiday, yet to a large extent it's celebrated by folks who either don't have a clear understanding of its significance, or misunderstand it altogether. I guess I understand that folks who otherwise don't buy into "religion" can like the idea of the trappings of Christmas --- getting together with family and friends, eating, giving gifts, being more charitable, understanding, and forgiving--- but if that's the case, for those folks it should be a holiday that has no more significance than Halloween or Arbor Day, or Mother's Day. It seems like the positive values espoused during Christmas are recognized as being tied to Jesus, and consequently Jesus is recognized as a credible inspiration for "good", yet His own claims of who He is and His purpose on Earth aren't given the same credibility. 

Don't get me wrong... I'm not trying to co-opt the holiday for just us Bible-thumpers, and I'm glad that Christmas is such a big deal, if for no other reason than the conversations it prompts about Jesus Christ. I guess I just want to ask for some understanding and openness from those that don't buy into the Bible's message that we human beings are ALL sinners, and that the only ones who won't be punished for that sin in the part of life that follows death will be those who accept Christ's act on the cross of receiving the punishment on their behalf. Like it or not, that's the reason Christmas has always been a big deal: because we're honoring a real guy, the one and only God who came to Earth, who is a real and perfect King, and there'll be a time when He'll be back. It seems that somehow, a significant part of our culture has remembered its' a big deal, but forgotten why. The fact that Christmas is a big deal should give some credibility to the "why." 

Believe me, I'm not fooling myself into thinking this is some eloquent plea that will turn some heads (I even had to look up the word "eloquent"--- Webster's entry is "what you're not, if you had to look up this word"). It's just that, when talking about Christmas, I've got to at least give my Lord a paragraph or two, and encourage anyone who isn't sure about Heaven or how to get there to listen--- really listen--- to the Gospel and give it consideration. There's great Gospel messages through Grace Church's website (the "testimony" link at the top of this page will eventually get you there), but of course, that's not the only source for the Gospel.  

That's right, you've entered the Chuck-zone, where I digress to the important stuff, then return to seriously addressing the inconsequential. So where was I? 

As Christmas draws nearer, we try to get out one night to see how other folks with more Christmas spirit than me have decorated the outside of their homes. Counting Sue's folks, there's six of us that make this annual outing, and the Thorntonmobile only hold five maximum unless we disguise my son Ben as a Christmas tree and strap him to the roof, so the four oldest members of the expedition get in one car, and Ben and Sam follow in another. Then we make our way over to the more affluent part of town to check out all the creative wattage. Every once in a while during the trip, I get a little nervous about being followed by two thugs before I remember Ben and Sam are trailing us. 

Like the timing of the Christmas tree, the question of outdoor Christmas decorations has long been a point of contention between Sam and I. Sam sees houses around town that look like this... 

 ... and wonders why our house looks like this: 

 Granted, my approach is a bit more minimalist, but it's served me well over the years, in the sense that I don't do any work.  I've told Sam that he's welcome to get the decorations and put them up, but he insists that it's a father-and-son bonding thing. So our house decoration continues to consist of whatever stray piece of tinsel happens to blow on our lawn. 

Our traditional Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner is something we call beef fondue, although I don't know if that's really the right terminology.  Basically, we all gather around the dinner table, where each place is set with a set of tiny skewers and a bowl full of cut-up meat. There's also a fondue pot full of oil on the table, and we all spear the meat, deep-fry it in the fondue pot, transfer it to a conventional fork, dip it in garlic butter, eat it up, rinse, and repeat. Of course, the lovely and talented Susan also provides some side dishes, and it's a delicious artery-clogging meal, but it has some challenges. One has to tinker with the temperature of the oil,  or else it starts popping when you put the meat in, and you end up looking like you washed your face in a deep fryer. And you have to assign compatible people to share the fondue pot...  a territorial dispute can soon degenerate into a skewer-version of The Mark of Zorro's climactic sword fight.

There's always enough food to make this both our Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner... we fill in the gaps with all the other goodies that have accumulated in the house over the past few days.

Alas, as good as Christmas is, the day after brings yet another controversy: When do we take down the tree? Again, Sam and his mom aren't on the same page. The lovely and talented Susan wants to pack it all up on the 26th; Sam wants to wait till Valentine's Day. A compromise is usually reached, and Sue takes it down on the 26th.  I remember one year when she took it down on Christmas afternoon... Sam tried to find an available judge and file some sort of emergency restraining order, but Sue was too quick for him.

And that's pretty much the end of the Thornton Family Christmas, except for the post-holiday decompression you're all familiar with. I've left out some stuff, like our annual get-together with our best friends Ken and Deborah, but what I would say about them might get my Grinch license revoked and would take up too much space. And I'd fill you in on our typical New Year celebration, but the high points are Diet Dr. Pepper and an 8 pm bedtime, so I'm betting most of you would rather leave it to the imagination or put it out of your mind entirely.

In fact, put all of this out of your mind, and I'll be one step closer to being able to recycle the same material next year. But remember that we send Christmas greetings to all of you from the Thornton household.

Merry Christmas, everybody, and our prayers for a great new year.