It’s time to haul out the Christmas lights and stockings, Advent calendars, and odd shaped Santa pillows from grandparents.

Every year I sort of dread dragging all the chaos out of the basement. I wince at how large the bins have become and am afraid that I may find candy or some other randomly gross food item in the bin from last year. This year I found a melted chocolate Santa in the bottom of a stocking. Delicious.

As I groan and grunt, wondering if this might be the year we do not decorate for Christmas, I find all the anxiety dissipates as I lift the lid on the first bin of Christmas decorations. My children, who just moments ago moaned and whined at the mere suggestion we haul all the Christmas stuff out, are now standing around the bin with wide eyes.

“Whoa” they say. “I remember that!”

Now my kids have short memories. At ages 2, 3 and 6, there is not much they can remember.

But still, the magic of dragging dusty angels and ornaments that predate their own mother out of boxes is awe-inspiring nonetheless.

So we pull out half-melted candles, home made ornaments, dented cookie tins, and strands of lights that may or may not work. It’s all a pile of junk to someone else. But to us, it is our Christmas treasure. A stuffed snowman and dog decoration that barks jingle bells when you push the snow man’s mitten. Ornaments that rest all year in yellowed boxes from now-defunct department stores, only to rise up and greet us for the month of December.

My own mom still hangs the stocking on her mantle that I received when I was just one year old. I was born on Christmas Day so it was a birthday present I am told. It is a slender red stocking with a puff of white trim on the top. Each side is decorated with sequins. A snowman face, a santa claus, and a Christmas tree.

For 30+ years my mother has stuffed this stocking with odd accoutrements like gum, chap stick, and jewelry. And every year I see it and find myself captivated by Christmas. Not because of the items my mother stuffed into it over the years, but because of the memories it recalls. Christmases that were filled with joy. Others that were more downcast. Those that boasted family members from near and far and others that reminded us of those no longer with us.

That sequin stocking almost moves me to tears every December.

As a mom with my own traditions at hand, I realize that what I pull out of that bin each year will represent great joy and will be reminders of family, love, life, pain, sorrow, and peace for my kids in the years to come. And each Christmas our bins of decorations swell a bit. A new ornament from a friend. A new stocking for the baby. But one place I refuse to allow these bins swell too big is by purchasing new items every year.

For me, Christmas is supposed to be crusty. I mean that in a good way. It is supposed to be all yellow, damp from the basement, and smelling like candles and old pine needles. There is tradition dripping from every one of the items I pull out of our bins. Sure, we buy things on occasion. This year we got new stockings for my kids. Ones they will keep for their lives, that I will hang forever and ever. Their first “real” ones, with their names and all.

But mostly, I cannot possibly imagine buying new Christmas decorations. New things do not have the same memories as the old. And I know that not all memories are good. And that sometimes you have to start over. But if you are blessed enough with some good memories, what a joy to pull them out each year.

My grandmother knitted my husband and I matching stockings when we were first married. They are crocheted. They are baggy and they sag to the ground when filled. I love these. My grandmother passed away almost 10 years ago. This year I pulled them out and as I considered hanging them, my 3 year old said “hey look, socks.” And I apparently did not hear him.

So he pulled them on and began skating around the wood floor. He had them stretched beyond recognition and pulled up to his chest. I was angry for a second until I realized that he had just added another layer to the memory. One more piece of the puzzle. Of course now I cannot hang them since they are limp and misshaped, but once they regain consciousness, up they will go.

And if I raced out to buy new stuff, I know that someday it would get old and it would hold memories someday. But there is something special about preserving these memories. For if we dash off to buy a bunch of new stuff, we do the things I rant against on a regular basis. We buy, we create packaging and waste, we waste fuel on shipping things around and we add to our impact on the world.

Which, ends up stealing little bits of our children’s future. Which, ironically, is the whole reason we want to preserve these traditions in the first place! So for nostalgia and for the sake of the future I am trying to preserve, this Christmas and beyond, I am dedicated to hauling out the past.

Ever heard this one? “Tis better to give than to receive?”

Or how about this “Friends are more important than money?”

Maybe, “Remember the real reason for the season?”

Whenever someone starts yammering away on the moral attributes of the Christmas season, like a bored middle school student I start to doze off.

I’ve heard them all before. Much to my chagrin, I choose on many occasions to ignore them shame on me.

At my church the other day we spent an hour discussing what to do during Advent. And while we came up with some fabulous ideas, none of them were entirely new.

Consume less. Love more. Give more.

This holiday mantra is everywhere. Even in some very ironic places, like commercials inviting you to purchase something. Everyone all gathered around the table, giving gifts, fake laughter in the background. Making it look like no one cares about themselves, all are invested in the lives of others. Then they slap a logo across the screen and tell you that you are somehow incomplete without whatever they are selling.

Tonight I watched a holiday show with my children. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet but we watched a 30 minute program with Santa, presents, and the same message about the true meaning of Christmas. It is better to give than to receive.

So why, then, if I hear this all the time, don’t I live it out?

Why do I shrug off the message, flipping the channel as if the most ill-contrived, uncreative commercial in the world just threatened to suck off 30 seconds of my life?

Why, in my meeting at church, did we need to spend a full hour trying to savvy up this already brilliant and life-changing message, taking a few creative angles and doing everything possible to catch the heart of a congregation? Why did I already receive catalogues from Heifer International, World Vision and others in the mail? If we all “got it” they would be happily out of business. Some of the few people who would love to work themselves out of jobs.

If we’ve all heard the message, shouldn’t we have acted on it by now? Giving abundantly everywhere?

Sociologists, economists, theologians and more often agree that the world is filled with more than enough food to fill empty stomachs. Ghandi was once quoted as saying that “the earth has enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”

I am no different than most. Sure, I muse about these ironies in a blog, and do my best to limit myself as often as I possibly can. But I consume, I shop, my kids have Christmas lists. I wish I had great holiday decor. So I hear the invitation to move differently though this consumer-driven world. I hear the call to be wisdom with my stuff. I know the real reason for the season.

But I also shop. I buy. I wrap. I give. I get. I get caught up.

Doing these things are not necessarily wrong, but when we consistently blot out the voice that says there is a different way to do them, it comes time eventually to act on it. To give differently. To wrap less. To buy for those who do not have. To get caught up in helping people live better lives.

So even though I hear the real meaning of this Christmas season all the time. Even though I try to dress it up and pass it out like candy, even though I get a little bit bored by it at times, I still need to hear it. For I have much to give and there is great need in this world.

If you find yourself like me, wanting to trim it down rather than dress it up. Here are a few GREAT ways to start this season:

1. Don’t shop on the day after Thanksgiving. Just pass it by. You do not need a $30 microwave or a free DVD. you don’t.

2. Check out the Advent Conspiracy http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

3. Download this resource from the Center for a New American Dream “Simplify the Holidays Booklet” http://www.newdream.org/holiday/brochure.php

4. Check out the story of your stuff http://www.storyofstuff.com/

And remember, if you are anything like me, more than a little set in her ways, just because you heard it all before does not mean you actually know it. If I truly knew I suspect I’d live different than I do.

Peace.

“Mom, see what happens when you are not watching!”

My six year old, with one hand on his hip and lungs pushing out an irritated sigh came into the kitchen the other day, along with an audacious little smirk, and alerted me that my ability to parent his two year old sister was apparently lacking.

He then dragged me by the hand into the play room where his sister had dismantled every matchbox car and truck that she could. Pulling tires off this, ladders off fire trucks, and removing the top of an army tank from the body. She, of course, looked up at us like this was the most natural activity she might engage in that afternoon.

My son then said “See mom, you are not watching and now look what she’s gone and done.”

I was not watching because our middle child had just finished sassing me and landed himself in a time out that might have lasted until he was 18 if it was not illegal to do so. That child pushes every button I have and then some I did not even know I had. So I was off timing him out. Thus, no one was around to monitor the health of the matchbox collection.

I could not help but smile. My oldest was so grown up, so aware, and so right, I was not watching and things happen when mama is not looking.

This particular time I clearly had a good reason, and any mom with multiple children can tell you that disciplining one opens the door for the others to take matters in their own hands. So I felt I had an excuse this time.

But so often, I don’t pay the attention to this life, to their lives that I need to pay.

And this is not because I am purposefully neglectful or irrational in my parenting. I love my children and while they are likely to lament my quirks to a therapist when they are older, I am really doing a decent job. They are fed and happy, they are learning to read, they say please and love others. So we are doing okay.

But I “don’t watch” lots of times. And not in the ways you might think. I miss little moments of conversation in the car because I am on my cell phone or trying to catch the traffic report on the radio because we are late for something. I miss little smiles and silly moments because “mommy just has to send one more e-mail.”

I don’t “see what happens” because I freak out when people jump into a pile of fresh laundry for fun or when they dare to eat cookies on the rug I just vacuumed. I miss lots of moments each day because I need to be off the the next thing as quickly as possible.

Like last week when we were a block from home on a walk home from the morning school drop off. The youngest two were still with me. I had exactly 10 minutes to get home, hand the kids off to my mother, collect my life and head out the door for a meeting. I was in a rush.

My little ones wanted to get out of the stroller and walk. Wanted to crunch the leaves. I kept saying “no, no, no.” Finally, just three houses from ours I let them out. Set free from the seat belts of the stroller they dashed off down the sidewalk. My daughter then picked up a gorgeous red and golden leaf. Perfectly colored and capturing the full sense of autumn in every fold and vein on that leaf.

“Look mama.” “Leaf.” “Pretty.”

“Slow down” I told myself then. I did not know she could string together such a lovely sentence about autumn. She clutched that little leaf all the way up the driveway and into the house. “Pretty leaf.” She was elated. Big accomplishment for a little peanut.

Little moments like this. Every single day. One more e-mail. One more phone call. We are going to be late. Look mama, a leaf.

“See what happens when you are not watching!” They grow up and you will miss the leaves. “Now look what she’s gone and done.”

A few weeks ago my husband and I hauled our kids up to the summer camp where he and I met some 15 years ago. Something about summer camp memories insists that you relive them every chance you get. Maybe it is the beach, the waterskiing, all the hot boys or flirty girls. Maybe the lifeguards, the weeks away from mom and dad. Maybe the trees, the sunsets, the lake, maybe keychain lanyards and Sweetarts.

Whatever the reason, we still talk about camp as if we were there last summer. As if, in the intervening 15 years we have not packed on a few pounds and added a mortgage to the mix.

So when this camp announced a small reunion, we threw our kids into the car and headed North for the day. My kids loved it. They played carpet ball and threw rocks into the lake. Can’t beat that for a Saturday afternoon. After spending a bit of time on the beach it got even better, they hit the jackpot. They found, buried in the sand, two plastic army guys. The old school green version that does not move or bend. They just stand still with guns.

You would think they’d just run into Santa. Jumping and hollering they ran to me with their new treasure. They then proceeded to play with these two plastic army men for the rest of the day. We returned home where they stuffed them into pockets and carried them around for the next week. I kid you not.

We have plenty of other toys. Some are big and crazy and loud and they blink and make noise. And they were expensive. But all they wanted to play with were these two army guys. And so begins the childhood fantasy with army men. And lest anyone suspect this is “just a boy thing,” my daughter (just three weeks shy of age two) will lay on her stomach and play right alongside them. Complete with “shooting noises.”

Now I started out my parenting journey all “anti-gun.” For good reasons I shied away from toy weapons and even called squirt guns “shooters.” Then one afternoon my Dad takes my oldest to the store for milk. They come back with a metal cap gun that Grandpa claimed to have been “talked into” in the toy aisle of the grocery story. Oye Vay.

I held my ground. Drew boundaries around the cap gun and insisted it stay with Grandpa. But I have caved everywhere else. Our home has shifted from a demilitarized zone to a fully operational war zone. Nerf darts zip across the house, lightsabers are wielded at every turn. And if we are not firing weapons, my children are dressed in what they call “spy gear” and are spying on my every move.

“Spy gear” is a fishing cap from Yellowstone National Park, a neon green backpack, camouflage vest, set of binoculars and a plastic compass from a McDonald’s Happy Meal. The baby carries a flashlight and refuses to wear a hat but she is totally in on the game.

My oldest talks about “playing army” a lot lately. Last week he caught a glimpse of an Army commercial on TV and stopped in his tracks to watch every second of it.

In the car last week he said this “Hey mom, do you know what one thing everyone in the world knows about?” To which I said “what baby?” and naively thought he might say something like love or God. But what he said was “Armies. Everyone knows about armies because there are armies everywhere.”

His six year old mind thought this was a good thing.

My thirty-six year old heart sank. As I type the Obama administration is reviewing Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan. Rumors are anywhere from 25,000-40,000 additional troops.

This Wednesday is Veteran’s Day. My Father-in-Law earned 4 purple hearts in Vietnam. He is amazing. People who fight for our freedom and our lives are amazing. So this week I am thankful for them. I truly am. I will stand and applaud them every chance I get.

But as a mom with a son running around the house playing army, I get worried. You see, that child has just 12 years before he is draftable. Just 12 years before he might say to me “hey mom, I want to join the army.” And I am praying that this is just a fad for him. But war is not a fad. It is a reality. And someday he may (whether he wants to or not) find himself in real spy gear, running through the streets with a real “shooter.” And this may be a choice he makes for himself or a choice our government eventually makes for him. Either way, if it were to happen, I would cry a ton then pray like crazy.

So as we creep up on Veteran’s Day I am reminded that the men and women who are fighting for my kids this very moment are connected to a mom who used to watch them play army and spy in the back yard. Who worried that they may grow up and be in real danger on foreign soil fighting for freedom. And all moms know that some of these real army men and women will never come home to play again. They will be army men and women buried in the sand.

I’m not normally given to patriotic outbursts. But this week (and beyond) let’s remember our troops. Let’s give them our prayers. And let’s hope the desperate hearts of their mothers get to hug them once again.

Here in the Midwest where we live it is almost certainly winter. The ground is crunchy and brown with layers of leaves. The tree branches are bare. I can now see the intricate details of my neighbor’s back yards from our bedroom window. The decks and garages that are normally hidden by lush foliage all summer, are stripped of any protective canopy so I can now see all their deck chairs. This is actually more intriguing than it sounds, in a secret spy sort of way.

Last week we wore hats and gloves on the way to school. We’ve already had a hard frost. So yesterday, when the thermometer hit 70 degrees (which is 21 degrees celsius for all considerably cooler euro-types), I felt like my little soul came alive for one last flicker of summer.

If you live in a warm climate you are likely wondering what all this fuss is about. Easy for you, in February you can take your garbage out without your nose hairs freezing. You probably have no idea what it does to a person to be trapped inside because it is 20 below zero outside.

My warmer climate friends usually sigh this time of year and say “now it is really getting lovely here, this is why we moved here, for the winters. The balmy, mild winters.” No one ever says this about Chicago “now this is why I live here, February, the best 28 days of my year.”

Last winter, here in the windy city, we hit 22 below. We had over a week where it did not even reach zero.

So if you, like me, know that you are careening toward winter, and you are bracing myself for a miserable few months in quarantine, and then all of a sudden it is 70 degrees. You feel like you won the lottery. Or at lease the Showcase Showdown on the Price is Right.

So it was 70 yesterday. Indian Summer they call this. Over 70 after a frost.

And after having our house all closed up for weeks I ripped every window and door open that I could. I turned on some Jack Johnson while babies were napping. I started cleaning the house. It was Spring Cleaning in November.

And while I could have rejoiced in the fact that we played outside in short sleeves, walked places without jackets, and saw the sun, I was mostly excited to air out the house. This is how ridiculous my life has become.

The EPA reports that indoor air is some of the worst air that we can breathe. Worse than many of those smoggy days in the city. That right in our own, snug little houses we can be sucking down everything from formaldehyde, radon, carbon monoxide, dust mites, mold and mildew, gas, fumes from ammonia and bleach and a myriad of other little allergens. That indoor air quality can create health conditions from asthma, to endocrine disruption, to cancer. Our paint leaks chemicals from the walls. Our wood floors leak chemicals. Our carpets release chemicals.

Add to that the little H1N1 scare. The fact that when other kids come to my house to play they drool all over everything. They sneeze. They touch everything. They drop germs on the floor.

And of course, my own kids, spilling this, dropping that, making little smelly messes of their own.

After a few weeks of closed windows I start to panic.

So I ripped open all the windows yesterday. And for those of you who are able, I suggest you do the same. And while you are at it, consider making a few tweaks that will keep the air quality of your home stable once winter settles in. Ditch harmful cleaning products, make your own or look for natural, biodegradable products. A little vinegar smells pretty tart but saves your lungs in a way other products cannot.

Open the windows and doors as often as you are able. Be sure to have an adequate fan or ventilation system for your home. Check for mold and mildew. Think about every item you wash with or the packaging on what you purchase. Most contain chemicals that are after your lungs.

Hunkering down for winter, as cozy and hibernating-like as that sounds, can be one of the worst seasons for your lungs. As you hide away your shorts and t-shirts and pull out the elastic for holiday eating, make sure you take care of the unseen dangers that lurk as invisible clouds in your own home.

And as your last few leaves drop. Crack open those windows one last time. Breathe deep. Winter is coming.