5 Quick Things #346 🎄
green velvet chairs, garden-y families, greater to come, & swamps
Hey there,
I hope your Advent has started with whatever it is you need in your household… As for us, it’s both fully here and feels a bit distant, if I’m honest. We hit the ground running when we came home from Thanksgiving, which means we haven’t fully gotten our act together yet (yep, even after all these years). We didn’t make our beeswax candles until day two, and there’s a chance we may have wrapped presents under the tree before we pull down any ornaments from the attic. I still love this season of anticipation, though, and I’m grateful for our warm house as the temps drop outside. And I’m grateful there’s plenty more Advent to come!
This weekend we’ll add lights to the outside of our house, and we’ll probably bring out the stockings. The Nutcracker’s been on repeat on our speakers, and tonight we’re going to Blue Water Highway’s holiday show... Nonetheless, we like to celebrate Advent by easing into Christmas — this means we’re happy to still ring those sleigh bells all the way through January 5 on Christmastide’s twelfth day.
Next week I’m driving up to Ohio to get my favorite (only) daughter from college, who’s moving out of her dorm to study abroad (!) in the spring. We may hit up a stop or two along the way home, looking for some holiday cheer… Any suggestions of things to see or do in Columbus, Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, or Dallas? Do tell.
5 Quick Things ☕️
1. New episode of A Drink With a Friend! I’m chatting with Jonathan Rogers, author and host of the podcast The Habit. It’s the twentieth anniversary of Jonathan’s first middle-grade fiction series, The Wilderking Trilogy, so we talk about what makes good children’s literature, why we all love stories, and how our native homelands affect our perspective of stories… He loves swamps.
2. As much as I enjoyed our time in Oregon last week, it’s been so good to be back home. I really am half-Took, half-Baggins because I love donning my backpack and wandering, but then I genuinely love hanging up that backpack in my closet and settling into my green velvet chair. This week’s highlights were my quiet dark mornings with only the Christmas tree lights on, coffee in hand and stack of books in front of me.
3. I’m still enjoying the ongoing back-and-forth father-son exchange between
and . The elder’s contribution this week is no exception: “I couldn’t help but ponder: what makes the difference between a family in which the members can blossom into themselves and a family from which one has to break away in order to become what he was made to be?“4. Lately I’ve been thinking about how crossing the threshold from immaturity to maturity happens when you shift your thinking from ‘what does the world owe me?’ to ‘what can I give back to the world?’ It also looks like understanding that the paradoxical shock isn’t that evil happens to good people, but that any beautiful things happen at all. And it also looks like walking into a room with a posture no longer of ‘here I am!’ but instead one of ‘there you are!’ …I guess the shorter way to say this is, it all looks like wisdom. Which I suppose people have been saying for millennia.
5. And finally — leave it to
to leave us a gem of an early Christmas present in his Holiday Gift Guide for the Christian Wife: “He just wants to feel alive / to feel like he’s cool / He wasn’t allowed to play the Tomb Raider games / because he was homeschooled.”
Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📻
My Classical Holidays playlist (good for background work music)
Quotable 💬
“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Advent is Here… 🕯️
It’s not too late: here’s your 101 primer on the liturgical season, whether this is your first time recognizing Advent or you’re an old pro. Join in on recognizing Advent in your home whenever you’re ready.
Here’s my simple, open-and-go devotional to lead you through the season:
Which type of Christmas tree do you prefer?🎄
The wording on this is intentional; it’s not what tree do you have… Because if you’re like me, you prefer real trees, but for economic, mess, and other various reasons, you have artificial. We did wait to buy a really good tree that looked exactly how we wanted and when it was on sale (because holy $$$), but at the end of the day, I do prefer real. I have such fond memories of going to various tree lots to pick out THE tree with the family when I was a kid, and you can’t beat the smell wafting through the house. …You can, however, beat the vacuuming.
Real: 67%
Artificial: 33%
Find next week’s poll here.
2024 Commonplace Gift Guide 🎁
Don’t forget to peruse this year’s Commonplace Gift Guide for ideas timeless and new… So far the popular items seem to be the wicked good clogs, C.S. Lewis’ Little Book of Wisdom, I’m From the 1900s tee, milk frother, The Word is Murder, neck light, and well, First Light and Eventide. Solid choices all around.
Quick Links 🔗
Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔
How are the holidays hard for you? Is there anything you can do to make them a little easier?
Have a great weekend,
- Tsh
This week's poll is a STRUGGLE! You should have had us rank them worst-to-most-worst! With no offense intended towards those who love one of these songs, I ask: oh, how to choose just one?
"I really am half-Took, half-Baggins." This is well said! I was very Took as a teen and young adult, and then became a total Baggins. Now I'm feeling Tookish again for the first time in quite a long time. I wonder at all of this!