Christmas with The Goos

At this moment, I'm listening to my Riffs playlist filled with the lovely sounds of The White Stripes, 12 Stones, Muse, Vampire Weekend, Linkin Park, Sixpence None The Richer, Queen, Santana, POD, GS Megaphone and U2.

Papa Goo got back this morning from an 8 day location shoot and is still unpacking.

The Goo is running laps around the couch, watching TV and yelling commentary at us.

We have a tree and those shiny, ruffly, spangly Christmas equivalents of feather boas on our walls and 4 sets of Christmas lights. They are all on.

Because The Goo requested it.

It is Christmas Eve and I'm chilling, bracing myself for the last bit of work before Christmas Day proper. The last bit of ironing and folding; the last bit of sorting out the parlour and dining table; the last bit of cooking.

This is the first Christmas where it's just the 3 of us - me and my two Goos. I'm doing the traditional (Ghomorai) Christmas breakfast, and that's the best part of the day for me. After that, anything goes.

Merry Christmas!

The Meaning of Christmas

I don't know why, but I feel like I should start with a warning. I am a religious person. I am a born again Christian. I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, born of a Virgin, sent to the world as a gift and a sacrifice for our salvation. I also believe Jesus Christ is God.

How can he be God, and God's Son? It is a mystery (as our Catholic brethren would say), and Scripture also tells us "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", and that "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us".

What did that all mean? Jesus is The Word, who was with God in the beginning. The Word is God, therefore, Jesus is God. QED.

But this is not a theological argument, or my attempt to bash you on the head with my beliefs. It all boils down to what Christmas means to me. It's the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. It's a big deal because Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection made it possible for a sinner like me to be rescued from a life without God.

Christmas is a big deal for me. So I celebrate it with my family. I celebrate with cake. I celebrate with good food. I celebrate in church, then at home.

I put together all the things I am thankful for - my family, friends, loved ones, good food, and good times, and I enjoy them, offering them to My Father in celebration and thanksgiving. It's my way of saying "For all these things You have given me, for all these things I enjoy, I say thank you because my pleasure and enjoyment of them would have been hollow without the gift of your only begotten Son".

That's what Christmas means to me. On that note, I wish you a Christmas filled with God's love, every good and perfect gift, and the enjoyment of loved ones, good food, and good times.

Merry Christmas!

Blast from The Past Thursday: The Little Hamster

Hey you!

How are you enjoying this season to be jolly?

The Goo attended her first school Christmas party today, and met Father Christmas. I was informed by her teachers that she cried and tried to escape the clutches of the red suited, white bearded stranger who tried to foist a dollhouse on her.

Yup. She's her mother's daughter.

Anyway, Blast from The Past Thursday ended an hour ago, but I'm up so you get to read something I wrote in 2006 (I think). I called it The Little Hamster, and I wrote it when I was having angst filled debates with myself over quitting my job in stockbroking.

Enjoy!

THE LITTLE HAMSTER

One day, the little hamster stepped off his wheel.

Sure, there were food pellets and water jugs that were refilled every day, but he didn’t want to live in a cage anymore.

This made the older hamsters angry. They asked the little hamster if he had eaten a bad pellet or something. They told him the cage was a safe place and that the wheel of purpose was every hamster’s destiny.
He said the wheel of purpose felt like a ball and chain and that the cage was more prison than safe house.

They asked him scornfully, “what will you do now?”

He answered, “I’ll burrow”.

So he stepped off the wheel and it slowed down and stopped, but the world kept spinning and the sun still shined. He broke the lock with an old milk tooth that had fallen off and stepped out of his cage/ safe house/ prison. When he stepped out of his cage and onto the ground, he realized, “I don’t know how to burrow”. Then he thought, ‘how hard can it be? I’m a hamster and that’s what hamsters are supposed to do! It will be as easy as running the wheel of drudgery’. So he put his nose to the ground, then his paws, then dug, wriggling his little hamster body into the ground.

There was something scary, but soothing about the soft, dark earth. It was as comforting as coming home but not knowing if he would survive this was freaking him out. It occurred to him that he could turn around and go back to the security of the cage with its food pellets and daily water refills. Sure, the other hamsters would never let him hear the end of it, but wasn’t life more important than fearing what other hamsters would say? But wasn’t life more important than fear? So he decided right there to stop worrying and keep burrowing.

The other hamsters never saw him again. Once in a while, word reached them that the little hamster had found an underground cave, and had met a little hamster girl. They heard rumours of his little hamster family, of his five little hamsters, and they still kept muttering, “He must have eaten some bad pellets.”

THE END

(PS. Do hamsters burrow?)