In the end, it was me.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t not do Christmas the way we’ve always done.

The kids, oddly, would have been fine.

When we told them we’d be cutting back from 18 presents to two — not so much because of our own economic status, but because we wanted to focus on what’s important and because we wanted to honor those who have less –they were surprisingly acquiescent.

“I don’t need that much stuff anyway, Mom,” said the eldest and the trend-setter for the rest of the crew.

It sounded so good on paper. Instead of starting my shopping in August, I would spend a couple of easy days picking out for each of my three children a few clothing items and maybe a few books. I would not worry about each child having a spread from Santa and 17 gifts under the tree, an electro-techno gadget of some kind, six stocking stuffers, a game each, a DVD, a Yo-Yo, Silly Putty and a Slinky.

On Christmas Day, instead of the usual four, we would spend half an hour opening gifts. The rest of the day would be spent engaged in family activities, playing the one new game somebody got. Maybe even later we would go to a community center to serve food.

Somewhere around Dec. 18 then, I lost it.

I reverted to old behavior, which I learned from my own mother: Mama couldn’t afford to buy me and my three sisters much stuff the rest of the year. Ah, but she used Christmas as an excuse to lavish.

Presents wouldn’t even be that big or that expensive. But they would be plentiful and evenly divided. No child would get more than the other. But each would get a lot, 15 or 20 under the tree. As each gift was opened, the rest of the family would look on, celebrating the giver and the receiver. We went to Midnight Mass and visited Grandma and sang carols and ate pralines and chocolates. But just as all those things were Christmas, so was opening presents.

Christmas presents was ritual.

And tradition.

And in the end, I couldn’t give it up.

In the end, I rushed around getting calendars for each kid and techno gidgets. I got the right number of books and the fleece hoodies. I got 6.5 stocking stuffers and a Slinky for each child. I got lots and lots of tiny presents, mostly things they needed like socks and ink pens, and yes, one big luxury for each child — an iHome for my daughter, a digital camera and Rock Band for my sons. It didn’t matter the size or the expense of the presents, though, I found joy watching ever so happily as each candy cane was unwrapped, each pair of socks tried on.

I used the opportunity to lavish my family, who just like my family of origin, doesn’t get much the rest of the year. They don’t get a lot. But they give: My 20-year-old son started United Way on his college campus last year. This past spring, all five of us gave up our spring break and traveled on a bus for 20 hours to New Orleans, where we worked on a school that had been destroyed by Katrina. We give on a regular basis to family members less fortunate than us.

I don’t say this for praise, but more, I suppose, out of guilt – and an attempt at understanding the fullness of our humanity at Christmas time. Sometimes we give. And sometime we get. On Christmastime, in particular, we in this culture have a tradition of giving presents. To others. And to ourselves. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

- Debra-Lynn

P.S. Photo above is my 11-year-old son opening a snow globe.

A friend once told me that every now and then she wakes up in the night, startled.

She thinks she’s heard one of her children crying.

And then she wakes more fully. And she remembers she’s in her 70s, and her children haven’t lived at home for years.

“Enjoy them while they’re young,” she said.

I recall a similar admonition from another woman who walked with a cane and looked to be in her 80s, who sat next to me and my squirming little ones as we waited for our church’s Christmas pageant one year.

The woman knelt to pray, and when she lifted her face, there were tears.

She told me she was remembering the year when all three of her children were in the pageant at the same time.

“Enjoy them while they’re still with you,” she whispered to me even as I struggled to keep my babies still.

“Enjoy” them while they’re young.

“Enjoy” them while they’re with you.

You’ll have regrets later if you don’t “enjoy” them now, the wistful grandmothers tell me.

There are times, of course, when I did, when I do, focus solely on my children.

I remember, in particular, the very early years with my youngest child, who is 11 now.

Every morning after everybody else left for school and work, time would still as he and I sat together for an undetermined amount of time on the couch in the living room.

Sometimes we would just talk.

“I love you bigger than all the trees, Mommy,” Benjie would say.

“I love you bigger than the sun,” I would say back.

“I love you bigger than this whole house,” he said, his eyes huge with the possibility.

“I love you more than all the snowflakes in the world.”

“I love you bigger than a giant, the whole neighborhood and Clifford!”

Other times we watched the birds out the big picture window. Or we played a game.

But then I would remember the dishes in the sink or the laundry in the dryer. And I would be called back, while my mind raced on to what’s for dinner, who’s driving to Cub Scouts that night and whether there are clean socks for school the next day.

Motherhood is like this.

And I imagine if I choose to see the imbalance between busy-ness and stillness, I’ll feel only guilty now and remorseful later that I didn’t spend enough time “enjoying.”

Or I can choose to reframe my understanding.

I can choose to embrace the teachings of the great Eastern philosophers, who when deliberating the path to a rich life, don’t so much use the word, “enjoy,” but “live.” “Live consciously in the moment,” these Easterners advocate to us scattered Westerners. Even dish-washing can embody conscious living, says Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author of “The Miracle of Mindfulness.”

“Am I washing the dishes mindfully?” the dishwasher should ask herself. “Or am I rushing through with little thought of what I’m doing? Am I taking the opportunity to feel the warm, soapy water against my hands? Or am I hurrying through the pots and pans so I can move on to the next thing?”

So, I suppose, these same questions, this same philosophy, can be applied to motherhood.

Sure, it’s important that I let the housework go every now and then and focus squarely on my children — even as, at 20, 16 and 11, they don’t always look like they want to focus on me.

But given the realities of family life, it may be just as important that I see the whole of our family experience as opportunities for conscious living.

I imagine no matter what I do now I’ll cry my own tears when my children are gone.

I look at them as the poignancy of Christmas Eve and the Day itself approaches, as we slow down the whirrings of the Christmas machine and begin to move into the special experiences of our Christmas traditions together.

I look into their eyes. I watch them experience the excitement of Christmas, even as they are 20, 16 and 11, and I know this may be the last Christmas we are all living in this house together.

My only hope as they leave, one by one, is that my tears are tears of longing, that they are not tears of regret, that it will be enough to know I was privileged to live very close to three little sunflowers as they lifted their faces to the sun.

Merry Christmas to all.

- Debra-Lynn

To say that my husband and I gently debate clashing Christmas traditions every year is like saying the Grinch was kind of rude.

Take the annual Christmas photo.

I say it’s not our children people really want to see in the picture we enclose with the Christmas photo card; it’s me and my husband, and how much we’ve grayed, wrinkled and sagged during the past year.

He says children are the meaning of Christmas. If we get in the picture, we look narcissistic.

There’s the Christmas tree.

I say we should spend the day after Thanksgiving rearranging several pieces of heavy furniture so as to accommodate as large tree for as long possible so we can enjoy an entire season with every ornament weʼve ever collected, including the paper snowflakes our 20-year-old made when he was 3.

He wants a small tree as late in the season as possible so that a) it won’t dry out and set the house on fire; b) we can’t fit every ornament on it, nor the 200 lights he is responsible for stringing; c)when it falls over because it’s cockeyed in the tree stand, it won’t kill anybody.

There is the timing of Christmas shopping.

Every year, I do mine early, telling him if he needs something for his secretaries in his office while I’m out to let me know by Dec. 1.

Every year, around 4 p.m. on Dec. 24th, he comes asking for “one of your little homemade somethings” for the secretaries.

The way I see it, marriage is like a see saw. Sometimes, I’m the one at the top. Sometimes, he is.

Occasionally, when our weight is evenly distributed, we level out — although this is rare during the holiday season, when childhood tradition, not to mention cultural and gender differences, compels one of us to watch every minute of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and the other to pop in and out making cynical remarks about what the cast of Grease has to do with the Pilgrims.

Southern born and bred, I want cold ham and biscuits.

A dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner, he wants hot turkey and mashed potatoes.

I like candles in the windows. He likes strings of lights in the bushes.

I want to take hundreds of pictures on Christmas morning. He wants to live in the stillness of the morning without a flash going off in his face every time he eats a chocolate bell.

We have, after 20 Christmases together, begun to agree on a thing or two.

He used to lobby to get the kids dressed and out to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, while I would rather take a beating with a plywood board covered in metal studs.

Last year, we discovered a beautiful service at 7:30 p.m. Voila.

He gets the solemnity of a Christmas Eve service.

I don’t have to deal with exhausted children and getting started on Santa at 2 a.m.

This year, we even managed to compromise on the Christmas photo.

We all got in the picture.

Fresh from trimming the tree, I didn’t brush anybody’s hair or don any Burtʼs Bees or even a nice shirt. The youngest is wearing a shirt with a stain on the right shoulder.

Not a lick of narcissism in sight.

- Debra-Lynn

Over the years, I have experimented with letting go of the various “shoulds” and “have-tos” of Christmas.

There was year I tried to cut back on baking and making, when I decided not to spend hours in the kitchen making 300 of my signature Southern pecan pralines , half of which never manage to harden into candy but end up sliding off the counter onto the floor.

Only thing, when the mailman came around, I felt bad that I had nothing to give besides a weak, “Can I help you with that 35-pound package?”

There was the Christmas when I decided to forego the Christmas photo for the annual Christmas card. This decision came, mind you, the year after the Christmas tree fell on the baby while the photo was in progress.

Only thing, no Christmas cards means I slip out of the card-exchange loop: Don’t send any Christmas cards. Don’t get any Christmas cards the following year.

There were the various and many de-stressing shopping experiments, to include the Christmas I bought everything by Sept. 1; the Christmas when I bought nothing by Dec. 1; and the Christmas when I shopped online for almost everything.

The problem with early buying, of course, is that kids change their minds. The problem with late buying includes not being able to find a single, solitary winter hat with those little tassels hanging down, not to mention standing in line with really mean people. The problem with online buying is that shipping and handling costs as much as the item, sometimes more. Some day, I’d like to find out how much it really costs to send a two-ounce CD in the mail.

My conclusion after all these experiments: Managing Christmas is a job, added to whatever other jobs you already have. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, if you are the reigning Christmas Manager in your house, and most women are, there will be stress at Christmas.

There are, however, things you can do to ease the intermittent agony that creeps Grinch-like into the joy:

1. Strive to be reasoned and measured. This goes for everything from the amount of presents you buy to the number of pralines that make it to your mouth while you are making them. It makes infinitely more sense to say you will only eat a certain number of pralines, say a pound daily, and stop at that.

2. Don’t rub in your status as manager of all things Christmas in your house. “Just how many people is it that you shop for?” I one year asked the husband of a friend who was sweating as he peered into the jewelry counter where I was also shopping. “My wife,” he said. “Hm,” I said. “I shop for several cousins, aunts and uncles, my three children, my husband, his family, several secretaries and teachers, and I make and package 12 boxes of pralines to send to out-of-towners,” I said. He dropped his head and left the store.

3. Expect to be dissed and ignored by store clerks, especially as the clerks become younger and apparently, wiser. At one store, where a cashier tried to sell me one of those irritating warranties for the video product, I tried to engage him in a conversation about the days when you didn’t have to buy a warranty, when warranties actually came with the purchase. He just looked at me. “Merry Christmas, lady,” he said.

4. Expect a mess. “I have given up on trying to scrape the glitter/glue combo and a multitude of paint globs off of my table and sweep beads up off of the floor, at least until it’s all done,” says SnappyMom.

5. Look for concrete ways to keep the enchantment alive. Drink Bailey’s. Walk up to somebody who looks like they could use it, and put a $5 bill in their hand. If you know your husband will not remember to buy stocking stuffers for you, buy Oil of Olay and calligraphy markers and stuff your own.

6. Never speak your theory about Santa, that his sleigh makes perfect landings on snowy roofs because the runners have special Velcro on the bottom. As long as nobody says it out loud, everyone will still believe it’s magic.

7. Finally: Do not wear clogs while making pralines. You will get sugar in your shoes.

- Debra-Lynn

This year we picked out our Christmas tree on a bitterly cold winter morning. The van thermostat read 22 degrees when we pulled into the “cut your own Christmas tree farm” in the middle of nowhere (actually, Mantua, OH). By the time we had scouted the field of potential picks and evaluated the merits of each, we were all in severe pain. Our noses and toes felt like they were going to freeze off. It was perfect…just as it should be.

We lived in Southern California for many years and while there I just couldn’t get used to picking out our Christmas tree. We used to go to this place right next to a busy road. Imagine cars going “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh” as they drove by at 70 miles per hour. The Christmas tree place tried to cover up the traffic noise with piped in holiday music, but that really just added to the cheesiness. We’d often be wearing shorts and certainly never anything warmer than a sweatshirt. A Mexican gentleman who didn’t speak English sold the precut trees. As we walked on the scorched, dry ground we’d see little lizards darting around. The kids would try to catch one while my husband and I picked a tree and tried to figure out how much money Cincuenta is in Spanish. Eventually, we’d hand over mucho, mucho, dinero just to be done with the whole anti-Bing Crosby, winter wonderland, sugar plum experience.

If you grew up in the Southwest, this probably feels perfectly normal and festive but for my husband and I who were transplanted from the NE, it felt like a page out of Dante’s Inferno. Slight exaggeration, but you have to understand that I love Christmas. The traditional kind.

When we moved to Ohio 4 years ago, my husband and I were thrilled to be able to experience Christmas as we had growing up. We really wanted our children to enjoy some of the same joys that we did as children. Building snowmen, sledding, tromping through a field hunting for the perfect tree, and losing feeling in our extremities.

At the Christmas tree farm we found a tree we could all agree upon and snapped a picture of the kids standing in front of it to share on Photoworks. The kids were doing their best to look happy but I’d have to say the smiles turned out more like grimaces. Then, my husband lay down in the snow to cut it down. It was one of those moments when I’m glad I’m the female. We all helped drag it back to our van where he tossed it on top and secured it while we girls attempted to regain the use of our frozen fingers inside of the toasty van. Again, glad I’m female.

When we arrived home, the kids anxiously waited (translate into moaned and groaned) while their father put up our tree and strung the lights. Then, the kids and I draped the beaded garland and placed the ornaments on the tree. I love my ornaments. If my house caught on fire, my ornaments would be near the top of my list of things to save. Many are old. My mother has always bought each of her children an ornament each year so some of mine date back to the 1960’s. As grandchildren have been born, she has added them to the list of ornament recipients each year, so my children look for theirs when decorating. In their minds, those dating back to the 1990’s are ancient. My favorite ornaments would have to be the ones made for “Mommy” by my children. My kids mock their own young attempts at art, but I notice they look for them each year as we decorate.

I loved the whole Christmas tree experience this year, even the extreme cold. I think it’s unifying for our family. There’s a reason those hardy people who live in frigid climates are so tight knit. It’s a bonding experience to get frostbite together. Plus, when we got home we warmed up with hot chocolate and cookies. That alone made it all worth it.

When our tree was all decorated, we turned out all of the lights except for those on the tree and were awed by the serene, beauty of our tree. There’s really nothing else like it. As I gazed at my children in the glow of the lights, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of peace and thankfulness. No wonder I love Christmas so much. What other time during the year has the same sense of magic and wonder?

Peace be with you.

-Kay

My friend, Lisa, has become generosity personified.

But first she was angry.

She was mad because in the last few months, my husband and I lost a third of what we had set aside for our retirement and a third of our three children’s college savings.

She was mad for people like my friend, Bob. At 51, he is the father of five, and the sole wage earner in his family. Two of his kids are in college. He had just finished putting an expensive extension on his house. Last month, he was told that his company could no longer afford him.

My husband’s brother likewise lost his job in November, just after he turned 50. Bill worked for the same company for 25 years. He has three kids in college. Luckily, his wife works as a bank teller. But nobody knows how long her job, or even her bank, will last.

The list goes on: My 40-year-old friend from Asia, whose husband was recently disabled, whose daughter is 8, was told this past Monday – just 17 days before Christmas – that her job as an architect is no longer there.

My friend, Brian, a woodworker and a much-respected contractor in our town, can find no work. Earlier this week, he told me he just spent his last dollar. The good news about his low income is that he finally qualifies for Medicaid, which is especially good because he has cancer. He also has two young children. He is 42.

At first, Lisa, who is 51 and the single mother of a 15-year-old daughter named Zoe, could be nothing but livid about the corrupt economy that is forcing layoffs all over the country. A former academic advisor and college counselor at Akron University, she always loved making sense of the human condition. But this recession bordering on depression bordering on destroying family’ss lives – this she cannot spin. “I am honestly having a hard time wrapping my head around how bad this thing has gotten.”

But then, like the Grinch whose heart “grew three sizes that day,” something flipped inside Lisa. She started asking people: What do you need? Do you need gas money? Do you need child care?

And then Lisa started giving away her money – not just $5 here and there, but $900 to one friend to buy a month’s worth of health insurance to pay for her jobless husband’s cancer treatments. She started driving friends to doctor appointments and offering her daughter’s free babysitting services to anybody who needed child care for any reason.

No need went unnoticed: When her friend was crying that she couldn’t even afford to do Christmas crafts with her young daughter this year, Lisa opened up her own box of felt and stickers and markers and said, “Come on over!” She has begun opening her modest home every Sunday from 2-6, telling her friends for soup and to play music or do crafts with Zoe or just plain talk and hug and be together.

Lisa is not rich in the traditional sense of the word. Although she once was a counselor, the demands of motherhood and the richness of it called for something simpler: Today, divorced from her dentist husband, she works in a warehouse as a packer and lives in a small frame house in a middle-class neighborhood in tiny Kent, Ohio. While she lives an unassuming life, she says she also was blessed recently by the sale of a condo she once owned. It is the cash from that sale that she freely gives away.

“The way I look at it, I have this extra income. And people just have to know: If they don’t take the money to pay their health insurance or to buy gas or groceries, it’s going to American Express. I’d rather they have it.”

Lisa’s world view constitutes a “new paradigm,” she says, one that embraces generosity and sharing, one that decries the shame and embarrassment of expressing need, one that says nobody should ever have to suffer alone, particularly at Christmas, when the losses are particularly acute, when electricity is expensive but the heat needs to be turned up anyway, when we’re all stuffed inside our individual houses in the bleak of wintry days, reflecting on what’s going to happen tomorrow, who’s going to get hit next.

“I’m adamant. I won’t sit for this. All these things are coming up for people. I just won’t allow it. I want to tell people, “I won’t allow you to deny me. Because I care about you.’ ”

A couple of days ago, Lisa reached out with her benevolent calling, e-mailing 25 of her closest friends, asking them not only what they needed, but what they could give, not only where they had weaknesses in their systems, but where they had strengths.

She suggested that her friends look to bartering and trading with each other, that if they need a good or service, they first look to their community. Within a few hours, she had responses from several people who wanted to help where needed.

“I’m really kind of selfish, you know. I just know that things are getting bad and I don’t even think we’ve sent the depth and breadth of it yet. I just want to stay close to people. I just want to raise awareness of what we can do for each other.”

Please e-mail Lisa at: lcrankshaw@neo.rr.com.

- Debra-Lynn

On an overcast wintry Saturday recently, I pulled on a pair of jeans and a cozy sweater. I threw a suitcase, a bunch of CDs and a map in the gassed-up minivan.

And I hit the road.

I had no idea where I was going.

No matter.

I was running away.

OK, so I’m being dramatic. So I wasn’t really “running away” — not in the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton sense, which typically involves a) adolescent tendencies; b) a vow never to return; and c) cops.

My family knew I was going and, perhaps more importantly, that I was returning.

All my friends and family knew I’d been threatening a getaway for a long time – though not the family kind when you still have to remember the sunscreen and the asthma medicine and cook all the meals and be the mother even though you’re on vacation.

Nor was it going to be like one of those “ momomcations,” popularized by groups like the Girls Getaway Group. These women meticulously plan two-to-three-day excursions with other mothers as they escape from “screaming infants, frustrating adolescents and defiant teenagers,” according to one travel writer.

The most important piece of my particular plan is that there would be no plan.

Turning my CD player way up and my cell phone way down, I would simply get on my favorite road north and drive to the Lake Erie shoreline 50 miles away from our northeast Ohio Cape Cod on the cul-de-sac.

I wouldn’t stop until I landed at the front door of some yet-to-be-named bed and breakfast in some yet-to-be-named little town where the proprietor cares only enough to feed me homemade blueberry muffins in the morning.

All spontaneous. All impulsive. All just what a 24-7 responsible/overscheduled/overcommitted mother needs. (See this article.)

There was only one thing that I might should have planned for: winter on the Great Lakes. A tumbledown lakeside village that is a Pee-wee’s Playhouse of ice cream shops and hot dog stands in the summer is a Norman Bates Pscyho Town in the off-season.

“Help?” I said, phoning my Google-friendly sister two hours and 100 miles into my trip.

“There’s a B and B in a town called Painesville. You’re a few miles from Painesville.”

“I don’t especially like that name, but OK.”

I drove to Painesville as dusk descended, only to find a full sign on the B and B, and I refused to stay at a sterile hotel even if there was one.

“Go west to Sandusky.

“I don’t want to go to Sandusky. I think I already went to Sandusky,” I said.

“But Sandusky has B and Bs.”

“Sandusky’s too far away,” I said, not yet knowing just how far far is.

“So let’s go east. Here! Erie, Pennsylvania! How far are you from Erie, Pennsylvania?” she said.

“I don’t know. Wait! Here’s a sign. ‘Cleveland, 47 miles, Erie, Pa., 50 miles.’ If I go to Cleveland, I’m an hour away from home. If I go to Erie, I’m two hours away from home.”

“You can’t go that close to home! Google says there are lots of B and Bs in Erie. I’ll stay on the phone with you while you drive to Erie.”

I drove on to Erie like my shaman sister said, only to find that some major event had taken up every room within 20 miles of Erie, which the 1-800- accommodations guy told me after I got there.

“So drive the 100 miles back to Cleveland, and I’ll stay on the phone with you again,”my sister said.

My sister and I laughed hysterically as we traveled together, and yes, you shouldn’t talk and drive, but I think she kept me awake, and I know her companionship kept this leg of my “getaway” from being a total wash.

“I’m getting pretty close to Cleveland,”I said finally.

“Good because there are lots of B and Bs there. Here’s one with a dog dressed in a little plaid suit on the bed.”

“I am not going to a B and B with a dog on the bed. In fact, you know what? This doesn’t make sense. I’m an hour from home. Why should I spend $150 on a room when I’m 45 minutes from home?”

Seven hours and 268 miles later, I turned the car south.

“Pretend I’m not here,” I said, as I walked into the familiar Cape Cod on the cul-de-sac and went to bed.

Ah, but I was not to be defeated. The next day, I got up and left again – this time, with a prospective reservation in hand, which I canceled; I took one look at the To Kill a Mockingbird town where it was located and kept driving, not stopping until six hours and 219 miles later when I found a quiet resort on a peninsula I hardly knew existed.

It was not a B and B. But there were muffins waiting. Winter rates were one-third the summer rates. I had a Jacuzzi in my room next to a window overlooking Lake Erie. I had a king-sized bed with a down comforter.

But the destination was no longer the thing.

It apparently never really was.

A friend once told me that you can no longer be spontaneous once you become a mother.

Ha.

- Debra-Lynn

The set-up: It is snowing really hard this morning. We live just before a 90-degree turn on a street that gets busy during rush hour. There is, of course, a yellow street sign telling all the drivers “Hey, we told you to slow down before, now, we really mean it!” (read with humor).

The incident: As my kids and I waited (with the dog) for the bus to arrive in the slippery, slippery snow, a little red car could not make the turn and ran right into the sign. The road conditions were too treacherous to overcome. The car was stuck.

Polyanna’s immediate reaction: We have to help, we have to fix this! I put the dog inside. The kids and I walk over to the car (just sitting there, stuck). There is a man sitting in the car. Just sitting in the car. I walk to the front of the car and put up the international signal for “are you OK”? He responds with the international sign for “yes.”

Great, thinks Polyanna. The man is OK. The car is stuck, but no one is hurt. He tries to back out. His bumper is stuck. I signal him to come forward. He does. I signal him to go back. [Of course, traffic is backing up. People are beeping but I see NO one get out to assist the mother and two small children trying to push a car….lovely]. He shakes the car loose and off he goes.

The relationship to the PTA Meeting: I got my kids on the bus and walked inside to write this post. I wanted to write about the PTA meeting that I missed the other night (don’t think me a quitter, I had to see my Mom at the hospital; family first).

The PTA “issue” ( original post) ( follow up post) is like what happened this morning (stay with me).

• The PTA is like the traffic; they just want to keep moving (“beep, beep: Get out of our way! We need to keep moving”).

• The parents who want more information are like the stuck car: we’re broken down, need help and are in the way of traffic moving along (“I’m stuck here, could you help me?”).

• It doesn’t seem to matter to the traffic that assistance is needed on the road…traffic only wants to keep moving. No one got out of their car to help get the stuck car UN-stuck (which would benefit everyone)

Yucky, yucky feeling inside. I’m glad I tried to help. I’m sad no one else bothered.

The Meeting: I missed the meeting, yes. But I did not miss much. Despite the promise in the October meeting that this issue would be discussed at the November meeting, it was not on the agenda, it was not addressed whatsoever.

It feels like the Polyanna parents who want to make this change are jumping up and down screaming “there is a car stuck in the road, if we all work together, we can make the world a better place!!” And the PTA is sitting in their car beeping the horn for traffic to keep moving.

Losing Polyanna?: Today, I feel yucky at about the apathy I see with the PTA and the traffic. Today, I noticed that the man I tried to help didn’t wave or beep or say thanks or offer any acknowledgment that I tried to help (I didn’t try to help to get a thank you, by the way. I tried to help because I think that is what we’re supposed to do for each other in this world). But today, I don’t feel like Polyanna, I feel like a grouchy, old, negative, yucky, scrooge.

Lest the “yucky people” in the world get the best of me, I’m going to make hot chocolate and play in the snow until Polyanna returns to my heart….

Lisa

My husband and I could almost hear the collective uh-oh when we asked the kids to sit down for a family meeting.

“We’re going to have to cut back on Christmas this year,” my husband said, as the gasps went up.

“It’s only partly because of money,” I said. “It’s also because we think there are better ways to celebrate.” (See this article…)

A hush fell as the kids said not a word.

Then one by one, beginning with the eldest, and trickling down through the middle and to the youngest, the three of them began to nod their heads.

“All right,” said one, shrugging his shoulders.

“Fine with me,” said the other.

“OK,” said the youngest.

Huh?

In our family, Christmas is presents and presents is Christmas. The kids wake to Santa’s unwrapped presents and an overstuffed stocking. We have breakfast, and then begins the ritual gift exchange, as the five of us spend four hours opening at least a dozen modest presents from each other and another half dozen from extended family. Each gift-giving takes several minutes, as the small gift is given, then opened, then savored, while other family members look on.

My kids have always loved this ritual and tradition. They look forward to it all year. And now they’re telling me they’re OK with cutting back on it?

“I guess I just don’t need that much,” the eldest said. “Too many things complicate my life.”

“I can’t really think of anything I need that much either,” the middle child said.

I was stunned at the acquiescence.

And yet the more I think about it, the more I realize that the joy of presents might have nothing to do with the presents themselves.

It’s that for one short block of time, our family stops.

No cell phones, no computers or texting friends. It’s just us, connected, unencumbered and together in our PJs in a tiny corner of our living room. We put a fire in the fireplace and Christmas music on the stereo. We are comfortable, safe, healthy, warm, as we truly savor each other’s presence, one by one, one at a time, and what brings that person joy.

My husband and I are determining our next step in this recreation of Christmas. We are thinking that maybe we will ask each family member what activity they would like to lead on Christmas — whether it’s building a jigsaw puzzle like we always manage to do sometime during the season, going into the community to perform even a small miracle, or playing Rock Band together, which I just bet will be the 11-year-old’s choice. The idea is not to forego presents altogether. The idea is to pay attention to what’s important to each individual, to celebrate ourselves as individuals and collectively, to fold in together as a family on that one day when we allow it.

Stay tuned, as this is work in progress. I will keep you posted. Meanwhile, I hold in my heart this treasured commitment from the book, “ Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Warmth Back Into the Season”:

The Christmas Pledge:

- To remember those people who truly need my gifts.
- To express my love for family and friends in more direct ways.
- To rededicate myself to the spiritual growth of my family.
- To examine my holiday activities in light of the true spirit of Christmas.
- To initiate one act of peacemaking within my circle of family and friends.

- Debra-Lynn

Five days before Thanksgiving, a horde of women came marching into my house.

Like an Army they came, with rags and buckets and industrial strength vacuum cleaners.

On hands and knees, they scrubbed my floors and baseboards.

They stood on chairs and did my windows

They even cleaned the grill of my refrigerator and the gunk on my stove. Yuk.

Two hours later, my kitchen cupboards were free of catsup stains. The living room was dust- and cat hair-free. Every mirror was shiny, every floor, eat-off-of clean for the 25 guests I will have in my house come Turkey Day.

Such is the magic of the CCC. Not to be confused with Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, we are the Community Cleaning Chickadees, a group of eight friends who don’t really LIKE to clean but who like the EFFECTS of cleaning – kind of like my fellow blogger, Kay, who doesn’t like to cook but who likes to eat.

The CCC, or the Tri-C Club, started when one of us was getting married at her house. We friends didn’t want her worrying about her dirty kitchen floor even as she was saying “I do.” And so, instead of throwing a wedding shower for her the week before her wedding, we had Bloody Marys, snacks and Pine Sol. We had so much fun that we looked around the room after it was over and said, “Hey, who’s next?”

Next was Lisa, who was having surgery in three weeks, who, let’s just say, needed to come home to a more pristine environment for recovery. Then was Abby who wanted to paint her living room and dining room, but didn’t want to do the sanding required. Enter the Chickadees! Anne was supposed to be next; at this point we were so organized that we were going in alphabetical order.

But in the true spirit of a bunch of women who clean each other’s toilets, they let me jump ahead because I was having the most people on Thanksgiving.

The CCC is a wondrous creation. Once a month for two hours we take on the tasks that nobody likes to do by herself: Studies show that women not only like to work in community, but that they do better when they do. Everybody thus wins: My kids, cleaning their own rooms while the CCC was in action, get to see that cleaning really can be fun. We women get community, camaraderie and new lyrics to old songs: “We are the CCC! Get up everybody and clean!” (Think “We Are Family!” by Sister Sledge.) Or “Clean up! Clean up! All you women! With pretty hair!” (Recall Barney & Friends.)

Now all I need to know: Is there a Community COOKING Crew for Thanksgiving Day?

- Debra-Lynn