My 54 New Year's Eve Celebrations

New Year’s Eve, 2013. What to do? As someone who has endured 54 of these babies, I feel I speak for many when I say…enough already. I am so over this most contrived, ridiculous holiday ever. First, a little history.

1958-1964

I remember nothing. Since I was the youngest child in a household of six which had very little discretionary income, I imagine that Mom and Dad drugged us all with Benadryl hoping to knock us out by 7 so they could get a decent night’s sleep.

1965-1968

The New Orleans/Nicholsville years were equally blurry. With Dad in school and Mom working in the campus print shop, we never saw much of them. However, we did have our first television. I have a vague half-formed memory of watching some sort of ball drop in glorious black and white.

1969-1975

In these years I was introduced to the “watch night service”, a Baptist staple for people who wanted to be in the world but not OF the world. A bunch of families with young children along with stout-hearted blue hairs would all gather at the church around 8 in the evening. A ginormous spread of Baptist cuisine would be laid upon long rows of wooden tables with paper table cloths. There would be hot rolls, fried chicken, potato salad, chicken salad, macaroni salad, macaroni and cheese, green bean casseroles galore, pies and cakes of every description, enough cheese balls to feed an army and enough sweet tea to float a battleship, with nary a drop of alcohol in sight. Board games would be played, lots of family friendly group activities would be planned. There would be a hotly contested bible trivia contest, which my mother would always win. Then, around 15 minutes before midnight everyone would gather in the sanctuary for a big prayer service. By the time the prayers were all said it would be past midnight and the deal was done.

1976-1983

Then I entered my young, single college years when my New Year’s Eve celebrations involved prodigious quantities of adult beverages. This too remains a blur of half-formed memories, most of which I would prefer stayed that way.

1984-1991

Once married, New Year’s Eve began to cost serious money. Before the kids arrived it would involve dressing up nice and going to some pretentiously expensive restaurant with limited menu choices and horrible service.

1992

This magical year found us with a 5 year old and a 3 year old and not coincidently, very little discretionary income. Pam and I plotted a scheme full of deception and trickery whereby we convinced the kids that they would be allowed to stay up to welcome in the New Year. Lies, all lies. We cleverly turned all the house clocks up to eleven o’clock, then allowed them to parade around the house banging pots and pans with wooden spoons. Party favors were handed out to add to the cascade of sounds. The kids had that wide-eyed look that kids get when they think that they are getting away with something. Then we had the fake count down, threw confetti, hugged and kissed each other, then whisked them off to bed where they collapsed into a deep exhausted sleep…all by 8:15.  Bruhahahahahaha!!!

1994-2000

Thus began the era of the Dunnevant New Year’s Eve extravaganza. We would invite 6 or 7 couples who also had young children to our house for a night of games, crafts, food, movies, noise parades and watching the ball actually drop with no clock fixing chicanery. Pam was at her teacher/organizer best. I remember these years clearly as they were easily the most fun I’ve ever had on New Years Eve. The guest list would include people like the Baldwins, the Keslers, the Mcmaths, the Thomason’s and the Stroups. Great times.

2001-2007

These were the youth group years, the years consumed by the locust. Our house would be filled with 30-40 teenagers complete with gangly arms and legs, huge appetites, lots of zits and plenty of drama. Very fun times, but costly both in terms of money and wear and tear on the furniture. At the dropping of the ball, all 40 would be stuffed into our family room armed with handfuls of handmade confetti. The out of control boys,(Tyler Pegues and Matt Watson, I’m talking to YOU), would begin jumping up and down in rhythm to the point where the entire house would shake. Then the confetti would fly. Exhausting though it was, I always remember the fond memories that would fill out house the first hot day of the summer when we would turn on the ceiling fan for the first time, showering us with left over confetti. I still miss those kids, every one.

2008-Present

No little ones, no teenagers, no watch night services, but plenty of discretionary income. Now the goal is always avoiding the crowds, dodging drunk drivers and finding a decent meal. Maybe we should return to the days of clock manipulation, pretend that we’ve had a spectacular evening of crazed celebration, then collapse into bed by 11 o’clock!

I’m open to suggestions.

My Patient First Doctor

2013 is going out like with a pathetic whimper, as I have managed to develop pink eye in both eyes. A couple of days ago I woke up to discover that my eyes had crusted over during the night. This lovely condition was joined by an intolerable itch and uncontrollable tearing. Two days later I look like an emotionally unstable single woman who just spent a weekend binge watching the Hallmark Channel.

Sunday morning I drove the family through a driving rainstorm over to a YMCA in south side to hear Gordon Fort preach, despite the itching watery eyes. This should tell you something about the lengths I will go nowadays to hear a decent sermon. Anyway, I sat there the entire time, tissues in hand, dobbing my eyes every few minutes. Although Gordon’s message was terrific, I feel it necessary to point out for his sake as well as mine that it wasn’t that terrific. It wasn’t his soaring rhetoric that drove me to tears, in other words. More infection than inflection.

When I got back home, Pam insisted that I go to Patient First. I obeyed and sat in the packed lobby for two hours before finally seeing the no nonsense Indian doctor, who instantly upbraided me for wearing my contacts. Didn’t I know that wearing contacts while suffering from conjunctivitis was the worst possible thing to do?

Me: Well, er..I suppose I…

Doctor: Now you’ve gone and made it much worse! I feel certain that you have most likely scratched your retinas!!

She then began spitting out orders to an assistant and me.

Doctor: Nurse!! Get me the eye bucket. You, lay down!

She then proceeded to take charge of my case with militaristic glee, ordering people around, peering into my eyes with bright lights, poking my eyeballs with all sorts of swabs and probes, explaining nothing as she went.

Doctor: Just as I suspected!! You have a scratch on your right cornea. You are not to wear contacts again for 7 days, do you understand?!

Me: (timidly) Yes Ma’am.  

She then began feverishly writing out notes and typing up the paperwork, all the while mumbling to herself, clearly still quite upset with me for my contact wearing ignorance. Then suddenly, she took in a big cleansing breath and turned to stare directly into my bloodshot eyes. For the first time, she managed a faint, Mona Lisa smile.

Doctor: Now, you listen to me, Mr. Dunnevant. You are to go home and begin putting two drops into each eye every 4 hours for the next two days. Then you will come back here to see me again. You understand what I am saying?

Me: Yes Ma’am.

Doctor: Under no circumstances are you to put contacts in your eyes. When eyes start to puff up, place hot compresses on them. Do not scratch them or rub them. You have already done too much damage with this foolish wearing of the contact lenses.

She then smiled brightly and patted me on the shoulder. “I see you back here in two days, ok?”

I must say, as bad as having pink eye is, it was quite refreshing to encounter a decisive, straight talking doctor for a change. If all doctors were like this woman, maybe I’d go more often. She didn’t care one bit for my feelings. All she cared about was making me well again, and keeping me, the idiot, from doing any more harm to myself. Or maybe I liked her because she reminded me of what I would be like if I were a doctor. Direct, confrontational and borderline rude people tend to appreciate direct, confrontational rudeness in others, I suppose.

Pajama Boy

 

 

 I can pretty much guarantee you that the Dunnevant family won’t be doing this over Christmas. I mean, we will definitely be sporting pajamas at some point, but none of us will be caught dead wearing onesies. Chances are also rather high that hot chocolate will be consumed. However, at no point in the proceedings will we lapse into a full throated discussion about purchasing health insurance, despite this latest encouragement from the good people over at Organizing for America.

 Sometimes I think the Obamacare people are deliberately trying to sabotage their own plan. How else can one explain this nerdy millennial? Who could possibly have thought that this look would have encouraged anything other than howls of mocking laughter and derision? There he sits, wearing footy pajamas in his twenties, that “I’m soooo much smarter than any of you”, self-satisfied ironic grin on his face. When first seeing this ad, Chris Christie tweeted a picture of himself at a soup kitchen with the hilarious line, “get out of your pj’s, put on an apron and #GetVolunteering.”

 

Poor kid. Overnight he has become the symbol of what happens when you kick all the grownups out of the room and let the kids handle marketing. Here’s the thing, when you grow up being taught to hate capitalism, when your dream job is either with a non-profit think tank or working for government, you wind up being part of a generation who has forgotten how to…sell. Note to the hipsters over at Organizing For America, Pajama-Boy ain’t it.

 

 

 

 

 

Tales of Christmas Past

The Dunnevant family will be breaking new ground for Christmas this year. For the first time in our 30 year marriage, we have nowhere to be. We will be spending the entire day at home. Well, not the actual day, since we will be celebrating Christmas on the 26^th instead of the 25^th and…wait. Let me start at the beginning.

When Pam and I got married Christmas celebrating became a three-fold event. We would wake up in our quiet, empty little apartment and have our little present exchange. Then we would get dressed and head over to my parents house to have Christmas lunch and open presents with the Dunnevant clan. Six hours later, we would hop in the car and head over to Pam’s parents house for Christmas dinner and another bout of presents with her family. If this sounds rather hectic and tiring, imagine how it was four years later when we did it with a two year old and a newborn. Christmas with two children that require car seats gives new meaning to the term “chaos.” Back then Christmas day started at 6 am and ended around 11 pm when we dropped the kids in their cribs still wearing their winter coats, and crawled into our bedroom on our hands and knees too weak to walk.

Eventually some semblance of sanity was restored when we went to the alternating families plan of the early 90’s. This was a scheme by which each side of the family was assigned one of the two “end of year holidays”. For example, in 1992 it was determined that we would be celebrating Thanksgiving at the Whites and Christmas at the Dunnevants, so the following year it got reversed, and so on down through the years. This proved to be only marginally more efficient since on the off years, we still ended up going to the other family’s house for dessert or some such thing anyway. Since we are lucky enough to live within 20 minutes of each of our families, there’s just no avoiding the fact that Thanksgiving and Christmas are the two longest and most hectic days of the year. Making merry, at the end of the day, is hard work.

Fast forward to 2013. This year we must accommodate a fiancée and my Son’s annoying job as a paid singer in an Episcopal church choir in Newark, New Jersey. What kind of church hauls it’s parishioners out at 10 am on Christmas morning for church? I’ll tell you what kind of church…a church full of old farts with no kids, THAT”S who. Nevertheless, Patrick is contractually obligated to perform at this ridiculous gathering so will be spending the 25^th driving down 95. 2013 is the latest year of the White’s, so he will arrive at their house somewhere around 5 or 6 Christmas afternoon/evening just in time for dinner and the first bout of gift giving. We will celebrate Christmas with my family on Saturday the 28^th, leaving the day after Christmas, the 26^th as our family Christmas. How Santa is to be expected to keep this all straight is another story all together.

It will be so weird not to have anyplace to run off to on Christmas. We can sleep late. We can take our sweet time opening our presents. We can eat the famous Christmas breakfast feast slowly, savoring each bite. Then we can lie around in our pajamas all day playing with our toys and drinking hot cocoa just like Pajama Boy in that new Obamcare ad!

Reading back over this, I have made the holidays sound like the Bataan Death March, which was not my intent. As terribly hectic as it has all been these thirty years, it has gone by in a flash. If I had it to do all over again, I would. Part of me would give anything to be able to look in the rear view mirror of my old Dodge Caravan and see the beautiful faces of my sleeping toddlers. But then the other part of me that contains my BRAIN takes over, slaps me around a little and shouts, “What, are you nuts??!!”

Decision Time

Difficult decision to make this morning. It’s the Sunday before Christmas. Storm clouds hang ominously low in the sky. Despite the calendar’s insistence that today is the second day of winter, it’s an absurd 72 degrees at 6:55 in the morning. We got a robo-call from the Pastor of our church last night reminding us that Steve Green will be in concert today, and consequently, the doors to the sanctuary will be closed until 10:15 sharp to better handle the crowds. Essentially this means that the place will be packed with Steve Green groupies from churches far and wide, so prepare to be gracious when that group of hat wearing ladies from the First Baptist Church of Paducah, Kentucky are crammed into your favorite pew.

This is one of those rare days when attending a church with a television ministry offers tantalizing possibilities. A very viable option presents itself to me on this balmy December morning. I could enjoy a lovely brunch with my family, then get a head start on my Christmas present wrapping while enjoying the Gospel stylings of Mr. Green in beautiful HD from the comfort of my den. Of course, by making this choice, some would accuse me of forsaking the assembly, the gathering together of believers. I might counter with the observation that in less than 60 hours my family and I will be in church for the Christmas Eve service.

Then there’s the parking issue. Every time Steve Green shows up, my favorite parking spot,(on the lower level right across from the wooden steps), gets absconded by some church van from the Northern Neck. I have to fight against resentment, not a proper battle to be waging just before worship. So, one could argue that by staying home today, I will be avoiding potential resentful thoughts.

It is now 8:18. A decision must be made in the next 42 minutes. There’s no way the girls hair will be dry in time if we go any longer than that. If we do go, we will have to get there by 10 at the latest, or we’ll be sitting in the nosebleed section, and my car will be in a lot at Regency Square.

Whose bright idea was it to have Green come the Sunday before Christmas anyway? Probably Ken Van Cura. Great kid…baaaaaaad sense of timing. Now that I think about it, this thing has Sherri Matthews’ fingerprints all over it! I’m surprised she hasn’t called me to ask me to man a clipboard in the aisles when they throw open the doors!

I suppose I’ll have to make this a matter of prayer. But honestly, I’m feeling the  strong draw and tug of hearth and home. We’ll see.

Was Jesus White?

Lately there seems to have been an outbreak of truly sand pounding ignorance on the internet. You might say, “Dunnevant, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a little bit more specific.” Fair point. Ok, over the past week or so, we have become embroiled in raging debates over the 1^st Amendment rights of a millionaire Louisiana reality television star. Petitions of support and threats of boycotts are flying around Facebook faster than a Kim Kardashian sex tape. The victim in this case, meanwhile, will sell more duck calls, camouflage pants, “happy happy happy” t-shirts and coffee mugs than anyone in the 2000 year history of  Christmas retail. Such is the grave state of Christian oppression in 2013 America.

But the Duck Dynasty kerfuffle pales in comparison to the most embarrassing, infantile internet debate ever unleashed. I am speaking of course about the burning question upon which the future of civilization hangs …Was Jesus Christ a white man?

Fox news info-babe, Megyn Kelly opened Pandora’s Box when in a particularly hard hitting interview with two people who agreed with her, she flatly denied the fledgling theory that Santa Claus might have been black. Of course, any discussion of Santa’s race inevitably leads to speculation about the racial makeup of our Lord and Savior. This is where it gets tricky. Initially, Ms. Kelly seemed quite sure that Jesus was white and said so in no uncertain terms. But later, after time for reflection, offered the view that she might have jumped the gun since Jesus’ race is “far from settled.” Well…thanks for clearing THAT up.

I’m no anthropologist. I can’t even spell anthropologist. However, when I look at news footage of Palestinian kids throwing rocks at Jewish policemen on the West Bank, I see dark black hair, heavy eyes and very brown skin, exactly the sort of person who one would never see at the Commonwealth Club unless they were serving drinks. My gut tells me that if in 2013 we are debating Jesus' race, we are missing something profoundly more important about him. But, we have no pictures of the Lamb of God, so I guess Megyn is right, it’s far from settled.

So, as we enter the final Christmas shopping rush, I offer the following answer to this burning question, provided by Alfred Burt from 1951 in his beautiful Carol, Some Children See Him.

Some children see Him lily white,
The baby Jesus born this night.
Some children see Him lily white,
With tresses soft and fair.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heav'n to earth come down.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
With dark and heavy hair.

Some children see Him almond-eyed,
This Savior whom we kneel beside.
Some children see Him almond-eyed,
With skin of yellow hue.
Some children see Him dark as they,
Sweet Mary's Son to whom we pray.
Some children see him dark as they,
And, ah! they love Him, too!

The children in each different place
Will see the baby Jesus' face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
And filled with holy light.
O lay aside each earthly thing
And with thy heart as offering,
Come worship now the infant King.
'Tis love that's born tonight!

A Word About My Kids

Yesterday, while eating my lunch, I brought up Facebook on my cell phone to discover that my kids had become embroiled in two of the most contentious debates in all of Christendom, Phil Robertson’s comments on homosexuality, and homeschooling. In both instances the wounds were self inflicted. Kaitlin had offered a dissenting opinion to a pro-homeschooling screed posted by a friend, while Patrick had voluntarily weighed in on the Duck Dynasty controversy by offering his own take on the subject. Neither of their opinions are the kind that will get them invited to the Focus on the Family Christmas party.

First, a disclaimer. I didn’t agree with everything either of them wrote. I registered my disagreements with my son behind the private message screen where only he, I and the NSA could see. Having said that, seldom have I felt more proud as a parent than yesterday, reading the words of my children. Pam and I have somehow managed to raise and unleash upon the world two critical thinkers, unafraid to voice a deeply held opinion, even if that opinion might not be universally admired. Their arguments were intelligent, well reasoned, and free of accusation or venom, and most gratifying to me, well written!

As a parent, it’s asking way too much to have your children agree with you about everything. The best we can do is give them the tools that help them come to their own conclusions. We hope that when the dust of their education settles, they will embrace their faith, and become fully functioning, caring human beings who will become a blessing to others and make a difference in this world.

It is true that we not only taught them how to think, but on many occasions, what to think. I make no apologies for such indoctrination. There comes a time in life, for example, when kids must know without doubt or nuance that placing their hand on a hot stove is for all of eternity a terrible idea. For me, an equally important truth is the reality of God, the fact of his Son, and the existence of transcendent truth. These lessons are more difficult to teach, and there are no guarantees that they will learn. Each one of us has to come to these beliefs ourselves through personal discovery. As a parent, you can lead them to water, but you can’t make them drink. So, you expose them to spiritual things, you try to live out an example of a Godly life the best you can, then you turn them loose into the world and hope for the best.

If you’re lucky, you even learn a few things about transcendent truth from your kids. After all, learning and personal growth didn’t stop when I graduated from college. I have learned a few things from them about tolerance, forbearance, and letting go of a few knuckleheaded ideas. They have learned on their own that some of the eternally true things I warned them about back in middle school are in fact eternally true.

Having children to raise is a beautiful thing, never more beautiful than when you pull up Facebook on your cell phone and discover that your little ones are now…adults!