December 25, 2008
Toblerone and a Twenty
Anyone who has spent Christmas with us within the last four or five years knows the story about the Toblerones and the Twenty Dollar Bills. Tonight I'll share it with you -- my photo friends -- as a way of saying how blessed I am to consider you a part of my second family . . . here goes . . .
For people with blended families or with other baggage in their lives, Christmas is not alway an easy time. Sometimes our most fervent prayer is just to get through the holiday and into a new year. We worry about meeting expectations, honoring traditions we may not quite understand, keeping everyone happy, juggling visitation schedules with other parents and with twice as many sets of grandparents as traditional families have, and more.
Simply buying gifts for five kids can be very hard -- treating everyone fairly, trying to find each one something they'll appreciate.
Then there are the stocking stuffers -- those fun little items that should coax smiles out of jaded young teens but instead just get ignored, tossed aside, or trashed. It really became a pointless tradition, robbing the joy from a day that should be sublime.
So . . . one year we decided to rein in the frivolous gift giving, focus on a few carefully-chosen items and spend the day playing games and enjoying each other's company. The kids, after all, were nearly grown. None believed in Santa anymore, and sometimes it seemed like torture making them sit together in one room to open stockings and gifts together.
On that Christmas Eve as we laid out our few carefully selected goodies, I had a BIG meltdown. My practical back to basics plan had backfired . . . There simply wasn't enough "STUFF," and I felt like I had failed the family. Whether they wanted the silly little stocking gifts or not, I knew that they would expect them. Between sobs, I tried to explain my emotions to Mike, but he was already ahead of me.
"Put on your shoes," he said. "We're going to buy useless plastic items."
We got into his truck and headed toward the nearest 24 hour Walmart to find that it had closed five minutes earlier at midnight. Across the street,though, we found a 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy.
To our shock, that place was so busy we nearly didn't find a parking place. The folks in the aisles were not the people we had seen cramming the malls and shopping centers, buying the latest and greatest overpriced electronics and jewelry by the bag-full for the past six weeks.
They were manual laborers coming off their late shift, stopping to add a gift for the surprise visiting relative. They were medical technicians, picking up hairbrushes and hand lotion for the patients who had no visitors. They were young fathers, thankful to find an open store for a bottle of baby Tylenol. There was a drunken Santa with his beard askew and coat unbuttoned, scanning the racks of paperback novels. They were young men with their latest paychecks, looking for perfume and bath salts for their brides. They were young couples on their way home from parties, but looking for snacks to take the edge off their first Christmases without their families.
These were people for whom an all night pharmacy may have been their only opportunity to provide Christmas gifts for their families. They were people we didn't know, but people who touched our hearts deeply.
We walked up and down every aisle, people watching but of course we never found the elusive gift item that would restore our naively-sought Christmas magic.
On the way out of the store, we found five Toblerone bars -- one for each son and a favorite of everyone. That was our ticket. After a quick stop at the ATM machine on the way home we wrapped $20 bills around each one.
On Christmas morning when the lamest of stocking loot had been explored and our gifts unwrapped, Mike told the kids about our midnight trip and why we had taken it. He told them how we wanted to give them each a magical Christmas that would fill them with sweet memories for years to come -- but that the best we could do was to let each one know that we loved him very much and we were just happy to have them with us to celebrate the birth of our Savior. He told them that our celebration was not one of presents and toys, but a celebration of our family -- battered, patched, and scarred as it was. It was a celebration of redemption, gratitude and grace.
Every year we repeat the Toblerone tale and pass out a similar bar to every young person who joins us as we celebrate Christmas.
We think about the "midnight masses" at all-night drugstores across the country and we count our many many blessings.
Toblerone and a Twenty
Anyone who has spent Christmas with us within the last four or five years knows the story about the Toblerones and the Twenty Dollar Bills. Tonight I'll share it with you -- my photo friends -- as a way of saying how blessed I am to consider you a part of my second family . . . here goes . . .
For people with blended families or with other baggage in their lives, Christmas is not alway an easy time. Sometimes our most fervent prayer is just to get through the holiday and into a new year. We worry about meeting expectations, honoring traditions we may not quite understand, keeping everyone happy, juggling visitation schedules with other parents and with twice as many sets of grandparents as traditional families have, and more.
Simply buying gifts for five kids can be very hard -- treating everyone fairly, trying to find each one something they'll appreciate.
Then there are the stocking stuffers -- those fun little items that should coax smiles out of jaded young teens but instead just get ignored, tossed aside, or trashed. It really became a pointless tradition, robbing the joy from a day that should be sublime.
So . . . one year we decided to rein in the frivolous gift giving, focus on a few carefully-chosen items and spend the day playing games and enjoying each other's company. The kids, after all, were nearly grown. None believed in Santa anymore, and sometimes it seemed like torture making them sit together in one room to open stockings and gifts together.
On that Christmas Eve as we laid out our few carefully selected goodies, I had a BIG meltdown. My practical back to basics plan had backfired . . . There simply wasn't enough "STUFF," and I felt like I had failed the family. Whether they wanted the silly little stocking gifts or not, I knew that they would expect them. Between sobs, I tried to explain my emotions to Mike, but he was already ahead of me.
"Put on your shoes," he said. "We're going to buy useless plastic items."
We got into his truck and headed toward the nearest 24 hour Walmart to find that it had closed five minutes earlier at midnight. Across the street,though, we found a 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy.
To our shock, that place was so busy we nearly didn't find a parking place. The folks in the aisles were not the people we had seen cramming the malls and shopping centers, buying the latest and greatest overpriced electronics and jewelry by the bag-full for the past six weeks.
They were manual laborers coming off their late shift, stopping to add a gift for the surprise visiting relative. They were medical technicians, picking up hairbrushes and hand lotion for the patients who had no visitors. They were young fathers, thankful to find an open store for a bottle of baby Tylenol. There was a drunken Santa with his beard askew and coat unbuttoned, scanning the racks of paperback novels. They were young men with their latest paychecks, looking for perfume and bath salts for their brides. They were young couples on their way home from parties, but looking for snacks to take the edge off their first Christmases without their families.
These were people for whom an all night pharmacy may have been their only opportunity to provide Christmas gifts for their families. They were people we didn't know, but people who touched our hearts deeply.
We walked up and down every aisle, people watching but of course we never found the elusive gift item that would restore our naively-sought Christmas magic.
On the way out of the store, we found five Toblerone bars -- one for each son and a favorite of everyone. That was our ticket. After a quick stop at the ATM machine on the way home we wrapped $20 bills around each one.
On Christmas morning when the lamest of stocking loot had been explored and our gifts unwrapped, Mike told the kids about our midnight trip and why we had taken it. He told them how we wanted to give them each a magical Christmas that would fill them with sweet memories for years to come -- but that the best we could do was to let each one know that we loved him very much and we were just happy to have them with us to celebrate the birth of our Savior. He told them that our celebration was not one of presents and toys, but a celebration of our family -- battered, patched, and scarred as it was. It was a celebration of redemption, gratitude and grace.
Every year we repeat the Toblerone tale and pass out a similar bar to every young person who joins us as we celebrate Christmas.
We think about the "midnight masses" at all-night drugstores across the country and we count our many many blessings.
December 25, 2008
Toblerone and a Twenty
Anyone who has spent Christmas with us within the last four or five years knows the story about the Toblerones and the Twenty Dollar Bills. Tonight I'll share it with you -- my photo friends -- as a way of saying how blessed I am to consider you a part of my second family . . . here goes . . .
For people with blended families or with other baggage in their lives, Christmas is not alway an easy time. Sometimes our most fervent prayer is just to get through the holiday and into a new year. We worry about meeting expectations, honoring traditions we may not quite understand, keeping everyone happy, juggling visitation schedules with other parents and with twice as many sets of grandparents as traditional families have, and more.
Simply buying gifts for five kids can be very hard -- treating everyone fairly, trying to find each one something they'll appreciate.
Then there are the stocking stuffers -- those fun little items that should coax smiles out of jaded young teens but instead just get ignored, tossed aside, or trashed. It really became a pointless tradition, robbing the joy from a day that should be sublime.
So . . . one year we decided to rein in the frivolous gift giving, focus on a few carefully-chosen items and spend the day playing games and enjoying each other's company. The kids, after all, were nearly grown. None believed in Santa anymore, and sometimes it seemed like torture making them sit together in one room to open stockings and gifts together.
On that Christmas Eve as we laid out our few carefully selected goodies, I had a BIG meltdown. My practical back to basics plan had backfired . . . There simply wasn't enough "STUFF," and I felt like I had failed the family. Whether they wanted the silly little stocking gifts or not, I knew that they would expect them. Between sobs, I tried to explain my emotions to Mike, but he was already ahead of me.
"Put on your shoes," he said. "We're going to buy useless plastic items."
We got into his truck and headed toward the nearest 24 hour Walmart to find that it had closed five minutes earlier at midnight. Across the street,though, we found a 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy.
To our shock, that place was so busy we nearly didn't find a parking place. The folks in the aisles were not the people we had seen cramming the malls and shopping centers, buying the latest and greatest overpriced electronics and jewelry by the bag-full for the past six weeks.
They were manual laborers coming off their late shift, stopping to add a gift for the surprise visiting relative. They were medical technicians, picking up hairbrushes and hand lotion for the patients who had no visitors. They were young fathers, thankful to find an open store for a bottle of baby Tylenol. There was a drunken Santa with his beard askew and coat unbuttoned, scanning the racks of paperback novels. They were young men with their latest paychecks, looking for perfume and bath salts for their brides. They were young couples on their way home from parties, but looking for snacks to take the edge off their first Christmases without their families.
These were people for whom an all night pharmacy may have been their only opportunity to provide Christmas gifts for their families. They were people we didn't know, but people who touched our hearts deeply.
We walked up and down every aisle, people watching but of course we never found the elusive gift item that would restore our naively-sought Christmas magic.
On the way out of the store, we found five Toblerone bars -- one for each son and a favorite of everyone. That was our ticket. After a quick stop at the ATM machine on the way home we wrapped $20 bills around each one.
On Christmas morning when the lamest of stocking loot had been explored and our gifts unwrapped, Mike told the kids about our midnight trip and why we had taken it. He told them how we wanted to give them each a magical Christmas that would fill them with sweet memories for years to come -- but that the best we could do was to let each one know that we loved him very much and we were just happy to have them with us to celebrate the birth of our Savior. He told them that our celebration was not one of presents and toys, but a celebration of our family -- battered, patched, and scarred as it was. It was a celebration of redemption, gratitude and grace.
Every year we repeat the Toblerone tale and pass out a similar bar to every young person who joins us as we celebrate Christmas.
We think about the "midnight masses" at all-night drugstores across the country and we count our many many blessings.
Toblerone and a Twenty
Anyone who has spent Christmas with us within the last four or five years knows the story about the Toblerones and the Twenty Dollar Bills. Tonight I'll share it with you -- my photo friends -- as a way of saying how blessed I am to consider you a part of my second family . . . here goes . . .
For people with blended families or with other baggage in their lives, Christmas is not alway an easy time. Sometimes our most fervent prayer is just to get through the holiday and into a new year. We worry about meeting expectations, honoring traditions we may not quite understand, keeping everyone happy, juggling visitation schedules with other parents and with twice as many sets of grandparents as traditional families have, and more.
Simply buying gifts for five kids can be very hard -- treating everyone fairly, trying to find each one something they'll appreciate.
Then there are the stocking stuffers -- those fun little items that should coax smiles out of jaded young teens but instead just get ignored, tossed aside, or trashed. It really became a pointless tradition, robbing the joy from a day that should be sublime.
So . . . one year we decided to rein in the frivolous gift giving, focus on a few carefully-chosen items and spend the day playing games and enjoying each other's company. The kids, after all, were nearly grown. None believed in Santa anymore, and sometimes it seemed like torture making them sit together in one room to open stockings and gifts together.
On that Christmas Eve as we laid out our few carefully selected goodies, I had a BIG meltdown. My practical back to basics plan had backfired . . . There simply wasn't enough "STUFF," and I felt like I had failed the family. Whether they wanted the silly little stocking gifts or not, I knew that they would expect them. Between sobs, I tried to explain my emotions to Mike, but he was already ahead of me.
"Put on your shoes," he said. "We're going to buy useless plastic items."
We got into his truck and headed toward the nearest 24 hour Walmart to find that it had closed five minutes earlier at midnight. Across the street,though, we found a 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy.
To our shock, that place was so busy we nearly didn't find a parking place. The folks in the aisles were not the people we had seen cramming the malls and shopping centers, buying the latest and greatest overpriced electronics and jewelry by the bag-full for the past six weeks.
They were manual laborers coming off their late shift, stopping to add a gift for the surprise visiting relative. They were medical technicians, picking up hairbrushes and hand lotion for the patients who had no visitors. They were young fathers, thankful to find an open store for a bottle of baby Tylenol. There was a drunken Santa with his beard askew and coat unbuttoned, scanning the racks of paperback novels. They were young men with their latest paychecks, looking for perfume and bath salts for their brides. They were young couples on their way home from parties, but looking for snacks to take the edge off their first Christmases without their families.
These were people for whom an all night pharmacy may have been their only opportunity to provide Christmas gifts for their families. They were people we didn't know, but people who touched our hearts deeply.
We walked up and down every aisle, people watching but of course we never found the elusive gift item that would restore our naively-sought Christmas magic.
On the way out of the store, we found five Toblerone bars -- one for each son and a favorite of everyone. That was our ticket. After a quick stop at the ATM machine on the way home we wrapped $20 bills around each one.
On Christmas morning when the lamest of stocking loot had been explored and our gifts unwrapped, Mike told the kids about our midnight trip and why we had taken it. He told them how we wanted to give them each a magical Christmas that would fill them with sweet memories for years to come -- but that the best we could do was to let each one know that we loved him very much and we were just happy to have them with us to celebrate the birth of our Savior. He told them that our celebration was not one of presents and toys, but a celebration of our family -- battered, patched, and scarred as it was. It was a celebration of redemption, gratitude and grace.
Every year we repeat the Toblerone tale and pass out a similar bar to every young person who joins us as we celebrate Christmas.
We think about the "midnight masses" at all-night drugstores across the country and we count our many many blessings.
See photo in gallery
