Tag Archives: spirituality

Christmas morning: cake for breakfast

It’s time to dredge up a post from a few years ago for two reasons:

1) Everyone deserves to have cake for breakfast at least once a year.

2) Making angel food cake is a Christmas tradition that I stubbornly adhere to, world without end, amen, amen. And I encourage everyone else to stubbornly adhere to it, too. It’s fluffity, it’s puffity. It will kick off your Christmas morning with a cloud of whipped cream happiness.

3) It has a Word document attached (click here to skip to it) that I think is a beautiful summary of Christmas readings.

So from the archives, here is Christmas cake!

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We spent this past Christmas with my in-laws in Indiana. It was such a relaxing time–we temporarily got to push the pause button on this whole ‘being adults’ thing and simply chill out. Be fed. Be taken care of. I love passing the adult baton when staying with parents. It’s so nice.

The manger scene had, as usual, been invaded.

If there weren’t little plastic army guys around, it just wouldn’t feel right. It’s tradition!

At least the Hulk didn’t make the cut this year. He was a little . . . distracting.

The other staple in my in-laws’ household is this Christmas tree. They swear it’s the last year for it–the tree is at least half a century old, and is held upright by a string attached to the corner cabinet.

And every year, it’s covered in ornaments. Plastered. Coated. This is necessary in order to cover the old and bare branches.

Another holiday tradition is this fruit salad.

It’s been in the family for years, and it’s always the guys’ responsibility to make it. Or so I gather. Or choose to gather.

A potential Christmas tradition in the making–playing games. My parents gave me both Dominion and Blokus for Christmas, and the fun-loving violence they generate is a holiday must. Have I mentioned that I’m competitive?

Oh, there’s my stick of Burt’s Bees! If you see some Burt’s hanging around, you can bet your bonnet I’m somewhere closeby.

However, my absolute favorite Christmas tradition is eating angel food cake for breakfast on Christmas morning. I make it Christmas Eve, and leave it to cool overnight, hanging upside down over a beer bottle.

It all started when we were young things. To get us little tykes to focus on Jesus’s birth instead of just the enticing pile of presents, my parents would make a birthday cake for Jesus, and we would sing him “happy birthday.”

In the words of my Mom, “Having a candle and singing Happy Birthday is something young children can relate to, and helps keep the ‘real meaning of Christmas’–Jesus’ birthday–in the picture for them even if they don’t get all the theology.”

The angel food cake is white to represent how God created us in his image, perfect beings in a beautiful garden.

Dad would read from Genesis:

God saw all that he had made and it was very good.  (Gen 1:31)

Then we smeared the cake with raspberry jam.

This represents sin entering the world and tarring humanity, so we would read about Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Genesis chapter 3. There’s probably a deep metaphor underlying it all about sin tasting delicious, but let’s leave that for future ponderings.

Finally, we top the whole thing off with generous poofs of freshly whipped cream. We put the metal bowl and mixer attachments in the freezer for maybe 20 minutes prior to the whipping process–I’m told it helps the cream poof better.

Slather on that cream! We have to cover every bit of that raspberry jam! This repesents Jesus coming to earth and making us righteous and pure through his perfect life and death.

We read from Isaiah:

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”  (Is 1:18)

And then we serve it up!

Over the years we have stopped singing happy birthday, but we continue to make the cake and read the Scriptures. If you’re interested, my diligent mother typed up a Word document with the complete passages we’ve read throughout the years. Thanks Mom! Now I don’t have to scratch my head every year and ask myself “Now what is it exactly we read?”

I leave you with a picture of my husband with his brother and dad. I just love Christmas, and I just love these guys!


No-Shopping December

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My mind was turning during November . . . contemplating how much of my thought life is caught up in consuming.

I used to think it was a shameful thing that I liked shopping.

Okay, this was back in the day when I thought it was embarrassing to admit that I liked a boy, secretly liked pink but dressed in black instead, and thought I had to cover my derriere with oversized clothing because I didn’t know what the heck was up with this “being a girl” and “having a butt” thing.

Now, I can unashamedly say: I enjoy shopping.

(And I’m not disturbed by having a butt either–I’ve really matured that way. Yep.)

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

(The butt or the shopping.)

But there comes a point when it (the shopping) takes up too much brain power. Too much emotion. Too much thought-time.

Whether I’m shopping for myself, shopping for Alice or my husband, buying Christmas presents (which I finished buying in October–my favorite way to reduce stress during the actual holidays), shopping for our home, for something that would make hosting easier, for a baby shower or pregnant friend–there’s a lot of shopping that can potentially happen.

And one day in mid-November I realized it was consuming too much of me. It was becoming . . . dare I say . . . an idol. Something that gave me good feelings, something that (for example) I did on a certain day I was super stressed in order to deal.

Instead of turning to the strength of God, I turned to shopping.

Ugh! Can you believe I even said that?

Hmm . . . I can.

Anyway.

I don’t want to be the person who does emotional shopping, or who thinks about physical goods so much of the time. And especially now that we’re immersed in the holiday season, I also don’t want to be the person who misses the real celebration of Christ’s birth because she’s all caught up in materialism. So I decided–from what I think was a prompting of the Spirit–to abstain from shopping during the month of December. Of course I’ll buy groceries and associated things (shampoo, dishwasher soap, and the like)–but that’s it. I’ve started a fast to create more space in my heart to celebrate God. Christ’s birth. Family–both our physical and spiritual family. My marriage. My beautiful, growing daughter.

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It’s not about the money–I’m not worried about that (and what a reason to be thankful!). It’s about my heart, my brain, my state of mind. My freedom. And I’m learning that to live freely there is a big amount of self control that comes in to play. And my self control is in need of a nice, month-long workout.

And because saying “I won’t do this” is only half the issue, instead, I want to turn December into a month of giving and actually do something to take the place of what I’m giving up. It might be baking cookies for someone. Finding a way to serve those in need. I’ll give up something superficial in order to be able to give something more profound. Maybe this can be a thing every December–I’m already looking forward to engaging Alice in this project when she’s old enough. We’ll see. For now, here’s to a month of joyful giving rather than selfish consuming.

I still love ThredUP and will return there sometime in 2014. I don’t think shopping is the devil–I will probably always enjoy it. But, at the risk of sounding extreme, I do think it can be a tool of evil in our hearts. So I’m looking forward to this exercise. It will be a good stretch for the soul.

Love you guys!