... And Blessing Others (Traditions of the Past)

My mom called me this morning. She was talking about Christmas (of course) and happened to mention in the course of the conversation that they are really trying to use this season to bless others, instead of just blessing themselves. She was using the collective we that is her house, which includes 6 or 7 adults and 7 kids.

She mentioned that she had a regular customer who could not afford the $5 to cover the cost of the print for the santa photo taken at the shop where Mom works. (Mom told her to come pick up the pictures of her children with Santa.) She then talked to an uncle, who is a member of the Elks lodge out there and he hooked the woman up for a Breakfast With Santa event that the Elks put on for the needy each year. And my mom managed to find a way to get her children a few gifts and the Mom a gift card for groceries. My mom is a wizard with helping others.

Anyway... She also mentioned a tradition they had recently re-enacted to help another family with children, no job, and that are - essentially - losing their house before long. (There are so very many out there in this position this year.) They did a "Pounding" for the family last month, Mom said.

A pounding?

Silly visions of my family beating this other family up with stuffed socks flitted through my head.

"What is a 'pounding'?" I asked.

"Why has no one heard of this any more?!" was her rather exasperated reply. It turns out a Pounding was done for families with new babies, in new homes, or who were under extreme hardship to help them out. Other families - neighbors, friends, church families - got together to bring pounds of food for the family to help them out. Sometimes they brought food, sometimes other things to help out - but essentially, communities got together to help those in need.

Mom talked about my sister-in-law going to get a name from the giving tree, and finding them all taken. Blessings. They are all around us - being given and received. But that is a question that stuck with me.

Why has no one heard of this any more? Well, my guess is that we haven't heard of it because we don't do it as much any more. I think part of that stems from so many government groups who have stepped in where churches and communities used to help out. I suspect that as we move further into government debt, these sorts of community outreach ideas will see a resurgence - and, frankly, I am hopeful that it will. I would love to see communities draw back together in times of hardship and support one another - I think it will help us all to remember/realize that we all need help sometimes and that needing help, asking for help and receiving help are not shameful. Giving help is a blessing to all as well.

God bless us - and help us to bless others - as we are on our final few days before Christmas Day of 2010!

Santa Clause - A Lingering Belief in a Real Man

I've mentioned once before that I occasionally post answers to questions on a site called "CafeMom," and draw inspiration for blog posts from those answers. Today's post is one of those times. The CafeMom question was what to do about children who attend her daughter's school and "enlighten" her by telling her that Santa Clause (the Tooth Fairy, etc) are not real. She wondered what others think of that and whether others are as bothered by it as she is. There were the typical mix of answers, including those that said that endorsing a belief in Santa is a lie, even if only a "white" lie. My answer, roughly, follows.

Santa Clause was a real man. Saint Nicholas comes from a combination of two languages, Santa being "Saint" in Spanish, and Clause comes from either German or Yiddish, I think. He is still actively remembered in the Christian Orthodox Church for his kind deeds while he was alive. He was a bishop/leader in the Orthodox Church in his town and so heard the stories and aches of each of the families he served, as well as knew the families well.

We get the gift-giving from a story in which he helped three maiden women to avoid a life of prostitution by giving them bags of gold coins. It is said that he secretly threw the bags into their window while they slept - giving us a Santa who comes down the chimney.

In many traditionally Orthodox countries (i.e.: Greece, etc.) he is remembered by putting the children's shoes out by the door on the eve of December 6th and in the morning the children find goodies and chocolate "coins" in their shoes (therein lies our tradition of putting socks on the mantle.)

Here is a Wikki link for him

And another link to a page that is all about St. Nicholas

We let our kids know about the real man (there are several really good kids books out there about him that are not necessarily "pushing" the Orthodoxy) but we also allow for the innocence of Santa Clause on Christmas morning. As an adult, I know that there is no one who drops down my chimney at night and puts things under the tree, but I don't see the harm in letting children believe in the magic of Christmas. They'll learn soon enough, and I never felt like my parents lied to me by encouraging a belief in something I can't see.

Is that not what Christianity - or most other religious beliefs in God - are? A belief in something we cannot physically see and cannot necessarily "empirically prove" is there? I remember feeling so special when I was old enough to get to wake up, late in the night, to help be Santa for my younger siblings. Those quiet nights with my parents are special memories for me - I got to have cocoa with them, and help wrap and place gifts... I cherish those times and enjoy passing them on to my own boys.

I get highly annoyed when other kids/adults/scrooges! try to burst my kids' bubbles. Leave them alone, Codger! They'll grow up in their time. When someone tries to do that to them, I explain that some people don't believe what we do and that faith is an important thing to have in life. The Tooth Fairy, for which I have no historical basis (fairies in the old Norse and Celtic stories were NOT the kind, cutesy types that we tell stories about today!) also comes to visit our home. I'm pretty sure that Maestro, now 11, "knows," but he does it still - there is money involved, after all! But I personally don't see the harm in it.