One to grow on

“Oh, you poor thing,” the Dillards clerk exclaimed as she copied numbers from my driver's license onto the check I’d just written. “Born on Christmas Day! You really got ripped off, huh?”
I glanced up from my checkbook, where I’d been trying to remember what I did with check #2642. Already that morning I had battled my way through Stein Mart’s customer service line to exchange a sweater, and I still had Toys R Us looming before me. For expediency’s sake, I stood ready to agree with her.
I couldn’t do it, though. Whenever anyone finds out I was born on Dec. 25, they always react with sympathy and attempt to comfort me about my bad luck. It makes as much sense as when grandmotherly strangers try to console me for having three boys and no girls, as if I could have -- or would have -- done anything about it.
The truth is, though, that I hadn’t thought much about my birthday falling on the biggest holiday of the year. Maybe it bothered me a bit when I was a kid. We were never in school on my birthday, so I didn’t get to see Mrs. Turner draw a birthday cake with my name on it in colored chalk on the blackboard. Since second grade, however, I’ve gotten over it.
A Christmas birthday does lend itself to interesting variations of the usual holiday practices. As a child, I left Santa a piece of my birthday cake instead of milk and cookies. And contrary to the apparent consensus of many Cool Springs store clerks, no one close to me has ever forgotten my birthday or tried to pass off one gift to cover both celebrations.
Of course, I do have to wait all year if there’s a gift I really would like to ask for, but that’s gotten easier to overcome with each birthday.
In fact, my family members have always gone out of their way to make the day special for me, from their cheery “Happy Birthday!” in response to my “Merry Christmas!” greeting to the specially designated birthday presents wrapped in paper that is any color but red or green.
Remembering those times, I realized right there at the cash register that being born on Christmas Day is anything but a rip-off. I know of no better day to come into the world than when peace and joy reign, when a child’s anticipation is almost unbearable, when people in every nation rejoice to commemorate a birth that changed history.
Sharing a birthday with Jesus Christ is a great blessing to me, and that store clerk inadvertently reminded me why. Christmastime can be hectic and stressful. But it’s also when most of us are intently focused on someone other than ourselves.
Every day, but especially on my birthday, I have the chance to thank God for gifts I’d never want to exchange.

Fake-tree huggers

This is the year we Burgins bought an artificial Christmas tree.
Our last enchanted experience selecting the perfect tree from the Home Depot outside garden center converted us into fake-tree people.
Nothing against The Home Depot, of course. It is what it is. I knew going in that taking my family there to buy our tree would not resemble that commercial where the Budweiser Clydesdales are pulling a sleigh full of smiling models with hatchets snuggling up to a hot beverage during a holiday tree-seeking expedition.
No, our escapade played more like an episode in the Dr. Phil house -- still with the hatchets, though.
Once Henry overcame his initial embarrassment over his dad’s cold-weather getup, he was surprisingly game. Mason, however, had a social studies deadline bearing down on him, Tim kept counting down the minutes until tip-off in the UT/Memphis basketball game, and Owen spent the entire time boycotting the buggy.
Toddlers can be ruthlessly critical shoppers, anyway. If it wasn’t their idea, nothing will please them. Of nearly every tree Tim picked up, Owen said, “Not that one. We don’t need that one. That one’s not good for us.” Never mind that we never asked him. We just needed a tree big enough for our immense collection of ornaments made from kid footprints.
Oh, how far Tim and I have sunk from those kidless days when we’d go out to dinner, then peruse the selection at what my friend Andrea calls World’s Most Expensive Christmas Trees, Santa’s Trees on Moores Lane. You get what you pay for, though. Each of their trees is fluffed out and spaced so you can walk around to evaluate its shape and fullness.
Back then, I thought nothing of plunking down $90 to $100 for something we’d throw out in less than a month.
We’ve always been staunch proponents of the “live” Christmas tree. “You can’t beat the smell!” we’d say. “Picking one out is a tradition.”
Well, scratch that last one. Somehow we forgot we live on the low-ceiling side of Brentwood and came home with a 9-foot tree we had to cram under our 8-foot ceiling like Will Ferrell in Elf.
While our tree tradition has degenerated into a blindfolded dart throw, recent advancements in fake trees are staggering. A Web site called Balsam Hill offers what they call True Needle technology so lifelike, I’ll have to convince my friends it’s fake! Their pre-lit trees are “thoughtfully strung” to guarantee no wires are showing.
Next year I’ll just be thoughtfully strung out.

Have yourself a military Christmas

I put this tiny Nativity scene on Owen's "desk" in the playroom and found it like this today.

I'll bet the wise men didn't expect to see snipers on the roof protecting the newborn baby Jesus. Joseph apparently keeps up with NFL stats as well.

Jesus rocks, too

While listening to a tobyMac song as we drove to his brother's basketball practice, Owen said, "He doesn't sound like he's singing about God."

List-ful thinking

My grandmother turns into a list bully around October.
She lives in the Land Between the Lakes, but she and I call back and forth quite often. Without fail, she springs the question on me each fall.
“So, you got your Christmas list ready?”
Say what?! Christmas? In October, I’m up to my jack-o-lanterns in homemade Halloween costumes. But my grandmother’s been contributing faithfully to her Christmas Club account at the bank, and after ten months of saving, it’s burning a hole in her bank book. She always wants a list from me, my husband and my kids. If I can’t produce, it’s Sears gift cards for us.
Of course, kids just write down anything they could ever want, regardless of how difficult it may be to acquire since, after all, Santa handles those logistics.
However, not everything on a grown-up Christmas list is easy for grandmothers to come by. I would never send her to the Paducah mall for a Bjork CD or ask her to fork over big bucks for my coveted 10-inch Wustof chef’s knife. That’s for husbands to do, not grandmas.
So, not meaning to patronize, I write some, let’s say, less coveted items I wouldn’t mind having, mainly to make my grandmother’s life easier. I tell her I need a new white turtleneck or a UT sweatshirt because mine is all pilled and, yes, I promise that’s all I really want for Christmas. Based on these lists, I’m sure she thinks I am the most boring person on earth.
For Christmas, I try to think of what my relatives enjoy, trust my own taste and hope they agree. I don’t ask for Christmas lists because I think shaking down a family member for a list reduces gift-giving to running errands for them, as in, “I picked up that white turtleneck you said you wanted. Oh, and Merry Christmas!”
Of course, that’s not what Nanaw’s doing. She’s just trying to get something she can be proud to send, something she’s confident we’ll enjoy. If she reads this, I’m confident I’ll get a coal-filled stocking upside the head.
I have been keeping a list of gifts I’ve already received this Christmas, such as my next-door neighbor’s kind attempt to help us light our luminaries with his propane torch. Watching the side of that first bag turning black and the sand melting will be a treasured memory.
The Loveless Café’s mail-order business has been a blessing, as are the Bakers Bridge Avenue shortcut home from the mall and cookie-baking with my boys. I do wish we didn’t end up with so many Cyclops snowman cookies from my little comedian cookie bakers.
Maybe I’ll put that on my list for next year.

Road weary

If you’re reading this on Monday, chances are it’s because you drove the entire state of Alabama and back to visit all the relatives for Thanksgiving.
With the holidays comes the insurmountable quest to visit every family member on the tree so no one’s feelings get hurt. Of course, this is as simple as finding the electric knife when the turkey’s ready.
Still, the urge to achieve family holiday harmony resurfaces annually like It’s a Wonderful Life. We want to please all the grandparents because once you become your own family, you realize how much goes into making the holidays happy.
This stress is why adult children lament that the holidays don’t have the same magic they did when they were little. Well, of course not. Right about the time you get married and get in on the holiday logistical planning, you realize why your mom always got that Thanksgiving headache and your dad’s eyes glazed over during dinner.
That childhood naiveté is part of the holiday magic. Remember when you were in college and your mom still signed your name with theirs on gift cards? In your postgraduate days when you and your siblings got together at your folks’ to eat and play board games into the wee hours on Thanksgiving night, your only care was whether you’re going to play Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit next. That’s grown-up holiday magic.
Now it’s a struggle to feel that magic when you’re trying to cram all the wrapped gifts into the car-top carrier, or when the crowd at the Louisville Cracker Barrel looks like…the crowd at the Franklin Cracker Barrel.
Your disillusionment begins when you have The First Grandchild. Suddenly you are responsible not only for your child’s holiday happiness but for that of your parents as well because you are bringing the most important gift of all: the baby.
Up till now it never occurred to you that your parents might have feelings, that they might not love eating at Waffle House on Christmas morning while you enjoy French toast at your in-laws’ place.
But marriage, divorce, in-laws and exes all claim a piece of your pumpkin pie, so the family tries to devise a system that won’t sacrifice anyone’s sanity.
For years, my family had what we considered the foolproof “home and away” plan. If Thanksgiving was at the three brothers’ parents’ house, it was called “home,” and that Christmas would be at the wives’ parents’ houses, or “away.” The following year, we’d switch.
When we were first married, Labor Day picnic conversations usually started with, “So, are we ‘home’ or ‘away’ for Thanksgiving this year?”
However, all it takes to destroy the system’s delicate balance is for one of the grown kids to opt out by moving across the country or having two or three more babies. If your family is facing this season without a plan, I hope you all won’t be sitting around the fire singing that new holiday classic:
“Over the river and through the woods to the therapist’s couch we go….”