Letter from the Vineyard

Christmas Cards. Pandora. Christ Church. Hudson. Red Dot. Nick Dier. Christmas Quiche.  Democratic Debate.  Syrian Refugees.

It is Saturday night and I am at home.  Christmas carols are playing on Pandora and I am at the end of day in which I have been amazingly, perhaps disgustingly productive.

It is the pressure of the season.  Waking early, I did some weeding of my email inbox while sipping morning coffee.  I went to the gym then headed down to Christ Church to help serve coffee for the indoor Winter Market but there were enough people so I wasn’t needed.

Going to the Red Dot I had brunch, a wickedly delicious Eggs Benedict on potato latkes with a side of crisp American bacon.  I felt like a depraved man but it was so good.

Coming home, I went over to Lionel and Pierre’s because Nick was there.  I wanted to bawl him out.  He had surgery two days ago and was working, which he shouldn’t have been doing.  I was relieved to find his father with him, helping him.

Going home, I organized the making of quiches.  It’s my tradition to give neighbors and close friends a “Christmas Quiche.”  Today was the day to make them.   After leaving Lionel’s, Nick arrived and helped within the limits of a young man in a sling.

We made fourteen quiches.  I have wrapped my Christmas presents.  I have done my Christmas cards.

Though has anyone noticed how few Christmas cards we actually get these days?  I send back to everyone I get one from and this year that has been only seven cards.  Last year it was thirty some.  Paper cards are going out of fashion.

I remember the days of my youth in which my mother would spend what seemed like weeks getting out Christmas cards.  She had a basket in which she kept every Christmas card that came in and held it until the following year when she answered them all.

Must have been hundreds every year.

I bagged my presents this year.  Admit it, we all use bags now rather than the elaborate wrapping sessions of our youth.  I remember them well.  Intricate hours spent wrapping packages.  After enough of us had left home, my mother had a room devoted to wrapping.

Now I bag!  Don’t we all?

While I am writing this the Democrats are having a debate and I’m not watching.

I haven’t watched the Republican debates either.  They have been train wrecks from what I can assess.

And the Democratic ones have been on Saturday nights which, as I recall from my media days, may be the lowest ones for households using television.   Why are they doing them on Saturday nights?

I simply can’t believe all this is happening a year out from the election.  Have we turned politics into a reality TV show?

I am sitting in my lovely little cottage, listening to jazz Christmas music and am wondering about the world in which I am living.

And I am recognizing how lucky I am not to be a Syrian refugee or a refugee from anywhere.  There are sixty-million of them right now.  I think it is about to be worse than the refugee problem at the end of WWII.  And that is tragic.

I am wrapped in the coziness of my cottage.  It is where I want to be tonight, separated from the trials of the world though I will probably always be cognizant of them, wondering what I can do.