Aloha Advent
Advent, if you are unfamiliar, is a light penitential season; essentially, mini-Lent.
When I said to boo early on: “I always planned to wear blue at my wedding to honor my good Catholic grandma,” I was thinking of the grandparents who taught us about generosity.
They did this because they stopped giving us Christmas gifts and started giving us goats. Er, they started giving other people goats. Via some charity or other. So every Christmas the assembled aunts, uncles, and cousins would each unfold a card telling how many, and what kind, of livestock had been given in their name to a needy family in some far-off land.
And that is how I learned real generosity, I think.
Because Christmas, ultimately, is not about getting all the items on your list. And it’s important to teach your kids about generosity, because if you don’t, they become selfish little assholes. And then they don’t want have kids themselves (parenting requires self-sacrifice) and then you done shot yourself in the foot.
I’m not sure why my grandma chose blue for her wedding dress… maybe it was to thumb her nose at the British monarchy for its nasty habit of slaughtering Catholics and brown people (white wedding dresses are a trend spawned by Queen Victoria), or maybe it was just a necessity of the times, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I always thought it was rad.
Wait, wait, wait, back to generosity…
I never really “got” the Gospels as kid, if you know what I’m saying. They sounded something like fairy tales. But then I started meeting people who have been to the Holy Land, and then I started wondering how many times I’ve heard the Gospels read — cumulatively — from twentysome years of church attendance and then somewhere in there I read The Robe, and boy did that change everything.
So if you want something truly immersive and radically life-changing to read during these holidays, you must check out the The Robe. It’s a bit slow to start, but well worth it.
But I don’t know, maybe I’m the only person left on earth with an unhealthy love of ink on paper.
