Merry Christmas From the Dunnevant’s

It is early morning, Christmas Day. The house is as silent as the tombs. Pam is asleep, curled up snug with Lucy. Kaitlin and Jon are sound asleep somehow despite sharing a Queen sized bed with Jacko. Patrick and Sarah just left Nashville for the 10 hour drive home with Frisco in the back seat. Soon this place will be buzzing with activity as we prepare for a house full of Pam’s family for dinner and presents late this afternoon and evening. Tomorrow, it will be a casual dinner and presents from my family at my sister Linda’s house. Last night there was a steak dinner at my sister Paula’s house. Not until Monday, the 27th will Christmas arrive here. These are the happy accommodations you make when you are fortunate enough to be a part of a large and far flung family who all want to be together for Christmas.

When I sat down at my morning spot to drink my coffee and catch up on the news, this is what greeted me…

Meet Giraffe Fren, Jacko’s toy de’jour. Not sure how he ended upright on my coffee table, but at least he had the good sense to blend in with the decor. As I look around the family room, the decorations tell the story of my family. There are six of us…

Along with three retrievers…

On Pam’s side of the family, there are eleven more. My extended family adds another twenty-one. There are newlyweds among us, a couple out in California, along with Fred the cat who somehow survived ten minutes inside a running dryer. One of us lives in New York City. We have someone from Scotland, another from the Philippines. There are conservatives and liberals. We have baseball fans and football fans. There are Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, and none of the above. We have southerners and yankees, republicans, democrats and a couple stubborn libertarians. We have nurses, teachers, and business owners. We have some who work for the government, some for non-profits and others who work in the corporate world. There are musicians everywhere. But everyone, all of us have a place. In this way we aren’t any different than any of your families, or the hundreds of millions of families gathering together to celebrate Christmas from all around the world.

But maybe we are different. Sometimes when I see us all together I can’t help feeling that there is something unique about us. What makes us so is where we came from. Emmett and Betty Dunnevant were different, by practically any measure—not perfect by any means—but different. The magical combination of their DNA running through all of our veins bequeathed to us something rare, I think. There is a devotion we feel for each other. Although we are all so different, the things that bind us together are so much more powerful than the things that would divide us. There are the strong opinions, the loud and boisterous talking at dinner which might seem to outsiders like arguing but to us is totally normal conversation. There are the conflicting memories from our childhoods where we have airbrushed the awful away. Just last night when I reminded my older sister Linda of what it was like to share an apartment in New Orleans with a hundred roaches, she claimed not to remember any of it. Then when I reminded her of how whenever we cut on the kitchen light first thing in the morning they would all scurry away across the walls, floor and ceiling—she hesitated, then closed her eyes in recognition of the long-suppressed horror! Then, of course, there are the noses, that inescapable physical trait that identifies us, setting us apart from the rest of the world. We got it from Mom, the prominent Dixon Nose.

But, despite the occasional horror show, most of our childhood memories consist of the certain and sure…that we were loved by our parents. And, if we knew what was good for us we better love each other or our Mother would wipe the floor up with us. Even now, nearly a decade after her passing, whenever I am uncharitable, rude or dismissive of someone, I am reminded of Mom and what she would say to me if she knew. Whenever I am too busy to be kind to someone, I think of my Dad and immediately am ashamed of myself. Their presence in my life is still very real. They have lived rent free in my head ever since they went to be with The Lord.

So, over the next few days as we gather and eat together, as the volume around the table begins to rise, I will think of them, the two people who started it all. I can only hope that my children will feel the same way about us when it is their turn to carry this torch.

Start With the Kids

According to a new poll 53% of my fellow Americans feel that 2021 has been the worst year of their lives. This negative view exceeds the previous winner, 2020, by a remarkably wide margin. I don’t quite know what to make of this. The results varied by age group with the most negative attitudes towards 2021 coming from the youngest responders, and the most positive from the oldest. Perhaps this is the result of the fact that the older you are the more bad years you have endured and therefore the greater perspective you have. Or maybe the older you are the more financially and emotionally secure you are. Who knows? Regardless, it’s troubling news to learn that so many people seem to be struggling.

Much of it centers around the ongoing pandemic. Our lives have all been changed by COVID. It has altered our daily routines in ways large and small. We are divided over the best way to fight it. We disagree about masks, vaccines, lockdowns, quarantines. We all have different ideas about what government’s role should be. Most of us are confused over what the rules are for social gatherings. With Christmas just a couple days away, every Omicron headline brings with it even more confusion. “IT’S RAMPANT, SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE!! OMICRON SYMPTOMS MUCH MILDER THAN EXPECTED!! SOUTH AFRICAN OUTBREAK DISAPPEARING AS FAST AS IT ARRIVED!!”  It’s practically impossible to know what to think. So, I guess the poll results aren’t really surprising, when you think about it.

But, I would like to make the case for optimism. Yes, there are many reasons to despair, but there have always been. Living conditions on this planet 100 years ago make today’s world feel like heaven. Compared to the physical hardships endured by America’s Pilgrims, 2021 would be the Garden of Eden. Of course, advances in living standards courtesy of 400 years of technological, scientific, and medical progress isn’t the only measure of the quality of life. Human behavior changes over time, crime rates wax and wane, public manners and civic virtue rise and fall, and most of us would have to admit that in our lifetimes, most of these measures have fallen. But even so, if you are willing to look, the exceptions are abundant and everywhere. For example:

Have you heard about the 15 year old kid working the drive thru at a McDonald’s in Minnesota? Seems that a woman in the car at the window was choking on a chicken nugget. This kid, yells to her manager to call 911, then jumps out of the drive thru window, drags the woman out of her car and starts doing the Heimlich maneuver, which she had learned how to do by taking a babysitter’s class put on by the local Red Cross. When she realizes that she isn’t strong enough to successful perform the Heimlich, she recruits another customer in the drive thru line who is, and soon the nugget was expelled and the woman’s life saved. This heroism from a 15 year old, minimum wage earning kid. 

When the cops arrived and realized what Sydney Raley had done, they handed her two $50 bills as part of the local police policy of awarding $50 to people for personal acts of heroism during the holidays.

While there has always been and will always be reasons for despair, I firmly believe that negative is always trumped by positive. It’s a matter of what you’re looking for. I chose to seek out heroes. They are everywhere. The best place to look? Start with the kids. Always start with the kids. The next time you hear someone prattling on and on about how the “new generation” is deficient in this or that…walk away. Mister Rogers’ advice is still the best advice—“Look for the helpers”

Start with the kids.

Christmas Lights

In Richmond, we’re very into our tacky Christmas lights. We work for hours, stringing colorful bulbs in elaborate displays, both inside our homes and out, and then we drive around gawking at the work of our neighbors.

            In the annual battle I fight to overcome my resistance to the runaway commercialization of Christmas, I used to be very anti-tacky lights. They were gaudy, unnecessary and represented everything wrong about the way we celebrate the birth of Jesus. 

            But God, with his typically quirky sense of humor, has done something he seems to make a habit of doing. He’s taken something I didn’t like one bit and used it to pretty radically change my thinking. Today, I am very pro-tacky lights, and could probably even be talked into taking one of those limo or bus tours.

            The change in attitude began when the close relationship between light and the one whose birth we’re celebrating dawned on me. Light and Jesus are inextricably linked, and always have been. Writing of the events of Christmas years before the first one happened, the Biblical prophet Isaiah said, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

            Christmas is, indeed, the coming of the Light.

            Light is intertwined in the accounts of Jesus’ birth. When the angels appeared to the shepherds tending their flocks in the fields that night, “the glory of the Lord shone around them.” When Joseph and Mary took their eight-day-old son to the temple, they were greeted by Simeon, a wise, respected and elderly man, who declared the infant “a light to reveal God to the nations.”

            Not long after, the Three Magi followed the light of “his star in the east” to find their way to Jesus.

            For the rest of his time on this planet, Jesus shares and spreads light. Perhaps his closest disciple, John, wrote of Jesus, “His life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it.” 

            Later, John added, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

            Jesus spoke of himself as “the light of the world,” and explained, “I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark.”

            The light that shone from that manger in Bethlehem some two thousand years ago continues to illuminate our path today, and will someday banish all that is dark, forever. As singer/songwriter Michael Card wrote, “Celebrate the child who is the light! Now the darkness is over.”

            So, let there be light! Even the tacky ones.

Tom Allen

                        

The Christmas Spirit

Pam does this every year. She prints out this festive sign, making sure she includes every major delivery service at the top, then fills the box with bottled waters, nabs, and lots of candy bars. Since we get several deliveries a day for weeks, the box has to be replenished often. Yesterday, around 5:30, I heard Lucy barking her head off, looked up and saw a guy walking up with several boxes in his hands. I can’t recall if he was FedEx or UPS, but it doesn’t really matter, I suppose. Anyway, As he placed the boxes on the porch I saw him look down at the box, then gently open it. I opened the front door to get the boxes and thanked him for his hard work. He looks up at me and says, “Wow, this is really nice. I haven’t had anything to eat since 10:30, I’m starved!!” Then, I told him to take however much he wanted since we were going to have to refill it anyway. “Aww man, thanks.”

Then he started to dig through and found a Snicker’s bar and a Reese’s Peanut butter cup. “I love these,” he says, “You sure?”

“Absolutely!” I answered.

He took two of each, then hustled back to his truck and floored it on to the next stop.

Look, I know its a job, like any other. We all work hard. Nobody hands out candy bars to their mechanic or the cashier at the grocery store. They work hard every day too. But, I don’t know—there’s something about these delivery guys and girls at Christmas. Every time I see one of them they are busting it, hustling all over the place. We sit on our comfortable sofas in our pajamas, drinking hot chocolate ordering this and that on our laptops. Meanwhile in a distribution center a thousand miles away workers are flying around the warehouse in response to all of our clicking. Then, in what feels an awful lot like magic, our heart’s desire gets delivered on our doorstep 24 hours later. 

But, its not magic. It’s the result of a logistics operation unheard of in the 4000 year history of commerce on this planet, whereby invisible orders sent through the internet halfway around the world wind up under our tree with speed and efficiency impossible a decade ago. At the heart of this vast, delivery system juggernaut are the men and women who lay it at your door, working 12 hour days, seven days a week during the holidays. Yes, they are getting paid overtime, making more money than they will any other time during the year. But, it sure feels good to show them how grateful you are that they do what they do.

So, as we get swept up in the hustle and bustle, lets look around at the frantic people serving us. Smile, tell them what a great job they are doing, and tip them generously. There’s no better way to get in the Christmas Spirit.

A Culinary Triumph

Like 90% of all husbands, I feel a fair amount of guilt around Christmas. I watch my wife running around like a chicken with her head cut off, shopping, baking, planning for the thousand details involved with the season. Meanwhile, all I have to do is get the Christmas lights to come on without burning the house down. I spent maybe two hours today finishing up my shopping. So, for the next 10 days I will drift through the house trying to make myself useful while Pam worries herself to death sweating Christmas logistics. 

But tonight, I actually was useful. My wife had plans to meet the ladies of her family for a birthday dinner for her niece. That meant that I was on my own for dinner. She said I could either get takeout or make the chili she had planned to make before the birthday plans. I decided on making the chili…

Frankly, it was a triumph. I felt quite proud of myself. And now we have leftovers!

The Next BIG THING

Pam and I are in a show hole, that thoroughly modern affliction whereby out of the 365,981 shows offered by Netflix, Prime Video et al, you can find nothing to watch. The last couple of nights we have auditioned two shows, neither of which captured our imagination. Practically everyone we know has been telling us to watch Yellowstone, but we watched the first three or four shows of season one and could not find even one redeeming character to root for. We aren’t terribly picky entertainment consumers, but we do prefer characters with at least something that passes for likability. The person doesn’t have to be Mother Theresa or anything, just someone who we can pull for. This is why we don’t watch reality television which is nothing more than an orgy of narcissism. I would rather endure a root canal without anesthesia than watch a single episode of the Housewives of—-anywhere.

But, thanks to the indispensable Gary Larson, I have stumbled upon an idea for a television show that I would actually pay to see…

Imagine an hour of commercials written, directed, produced and acted by…DOGS!! Listen, this has already been done on a smaller scale and found to be wildly successful and popular. The best Instagram accounts are all about dogs, mostly Golden Retrievers since…well, since they are the most adorable and classic hams. So, this idea already has been proven and tested. Somebody needs to take the entrepreneurial risk and make this happen. Commercials for everything from soup to nuts brought to you by man’s best friend would be must-see TV.

Let Me Tell You About…Jingle Jam

Today, Pam and I got absolutely nothing done. We didn’t do any shopping, and despite a growing pile of them in what used to be our dining room, wrapped not one single present. Instead, today was essentially Volunteer Day. The morning had us at our church’s big Christmas event put on by the Children’s department called Jingle Jam. We had heard about it over the past five years but had never gone. This year our niece Bernadette, one of the children’s pastors, roped us into working the event. We arrived a little after 9:00 and left three hours later. (More about this event later)

Then we grabbed some lunch and got back home in time to haul our solo stove out into the street and set up a s’mores making table in our culdesac for the neighborhood party which featured the official arrival of Santa…

Just about the time we got the fire good and hot we realized we were late for our afternoon shift at Hope Thrift. Friends promised to keep an eye on it so the entire neighborhood didn’t burn to the ground, and off we went to the store. By the time we got back home around 5:45, it was pouring down rain and we felt like we had both been run over by Santa’s reindeer. A crazy, wild, fun and joyful day.

But, lets get back to this Jingle Jam deal…

Pam took lots of pictures but none of them captured the magic of the thing. Every inch of the inside of our church looked like an explosion had gone off at the Christmas Mouse. I had never seen so many inflatables in one location in my life. The theme of this year’s Jingle Jam was the adventures of Bobby the Elf, the lessor known successor to this guy…

Did I mention the inflatables??

My favorite? This one, hands down!

Our job was to run a game called “Package Stackage”. The idea was to get kids/families to see who could stack a series of empty cardboard boxes up into the shape of a Christmas tree. That was fine. And it started out that way. But it didn’t take us long to realize that the kids were far more interested in seeing who could stack them all up in the highest tower and then send them all flying all over the place by crashing into them…sorta like life-sized JENGA. It was crazy fun, and we had the kids lined up to get in on the fun. When all of a sudden we looked up and these three beauties were standing there!!

These guys are our adorable next door neighbors and their sweet Mom had brought them to Jingle Jam. Later we all took a picture together…

Then it was time for the big show. We all went inside to where we normally have our worship services, only this time it had been transformed into the…

Lincoln Tunnel!! For the next hour, 600 people got to see the highest octane, most over the top energetic rendition of Bobby the Elf ever told. It featured an actual video trip to New York City, where we got to see our heroes visiting all the places that Buddy the Elf had been years earlier. It also featured a harrowing giant inflatable candy cane competition. But the highlight of the show was a 600 person recreation of the famous Buddy the Elf snowball fight in Central Park! Watching my sanctuary given over to this insanity of joyfullness did my heart so much good. At the end when Bobby learns the true meaning of Christmas, I was exhausted just having watched it. All the intrepid actors, singers and dancers had to do the same show two more times.

It’s hard to put into words how wonderful an experience it was. First of all, to everyone involved in the planning, organization and execution of Jingle Jam, I salute you all. I am told that it took over 175 volunteers to make it work. Pam and I feel lucky to have been among them. One more thing…I grew up in churches where sometimes the actual building was a thing held in high and reverent esteem. When entering the sanctuary, people talked in hushed tones. There isn’t anything wrong with that really. I mean, I get it. There certainly is a time for being reverent. But, one of the things I love about my church is that it doesn’t worship the building. It isn’t afraid to unleash a thousand cotton snowballs in the place and let kids and their parents have at it. And don’t think for a minute that I will soon forget which little kiddo from next door hit me right in the kisser with a fastball either!

So, hats off to everyone who worked and planned and worked some more to provide nearly 2000 people a wonderful way to get into the Christmas spirit by acknowledging the birth of our Lord and Savior. Can’t wait until next year!