Bourbon Spiced Cranberry Sauce

"If it doesn't have the ridges from the can, it's not cranberry sauce", was my late husband's point of view.  My son takes after him. 

So for Thanksgiving we have the jelled cranberry sauce out of the can.  AND we have the real stuff.  

I've made several versions.  Here is an adult version I really like.


Soak a 12 oz bag of cranberries in a cup of Bourbon for an hour.  (Take them out of the bag first)

Add 1 cup orange juice and a cup of sugar.  Personally I don't care for tart so I add another half cup of sugar.  Start with a cup and taste it. 

Add 1/2 tsp Penzeys applie pie spice  (which is a combinatio of cinnimon, nutmeg, mace & cloves) and 1/2 tsp ginger.

Cook it on low for about 15 minutes.  Then I take an emulsifier and blend it up a bit so it's still chunky but you don't bite into a whole cranberry. 

St. Lucy & St. Nick

So is it Advent or is it Christmas?  

Are we preparing for Christmas or are we celebrating Christmas?  It can be confusing.  The church who kind of inventing Christmas says it’s advent.  We are waiting.  We are preparing.  It is not Christmas.  

But the world where we spend most of our time is telling us something else.   The world is screaming CHRISTMAS at us full blast.  It’s confusing.

And the message of what we should be doing to prepare and celebrate Christmas is confusing as well.  The commercial world in the media, which we spend most of our time is screaming at us  BUY BUY BUY. Christmas is about STUFF. 

If you aren’t ready for Christmas it’s because you don’t have enough STUFF!  Here we have some stuff you can buy!

But there is a counter movement that is pushing back against that message.  

There’s a movement to recover advent from the commercialism of Christmas.  

But sometimes I think that message is a little legalistic and dare I say scroogeish?  It says don’t buy anything!  It’s not about present.  Don’t buy presents.  Give it all to charity. 

 Now I’m all for generous giving during the holidays or any days.  But no presents?  Don’t buy anything?  

Not even a few pretty decorations?  

That just doesn’t sound right to me. 

Surely there is another way.  

How can we find our way through the craziness of this season back to the real reason for the season?  Where can we look for the star which will lead us to Bethlehem and the child born to a poor couple in a stable?

Well today I’d like to suggest we can find our way with a couple of people who are the epitome of Christmas.  

Santa Lucia and Santa Clause.

I’m sure everyone knows about Santa Clause.  And those from Scandinavian backgrounds know about Santa Lucia.  

All the stories and traditions surrounding these two go back to real people.  Real people who were followers of Christ and who sacrificed a lot to celebrate and worship the babe in the manger. 

Santa Lucia or Lucy lived in Sicily in the late third century. She was a follower of this new strange sect called Christians. 

Christians were suspect because they did not worship the old gods of Rome.  

In fact sometimes they were called atheists because they did not believe in the gods and insisted there was only one God. 

Lucy lived in a time when it was dangerous to be a Christian. 

When Lucy went to the market nobody said “Merry Christmas”.  

Lucy was from a wealthy family and her family had arranged for her to marry a man from another wealthy family in order to solidify their fortunes.  But Lucy wanted to dedicate her life to Christ.  She did not want to marry.  

She wanted to live a life of prayer and care for the poor.  

Lucy was known and loved by the poor whom she would help.  She would often go out at night and walk through the dark Roman tunnels wearing a wreath of candles on her head to light her way to bring food to the poor in her city.   

When her mother fell very ill Lucy spent day and night praying for her recovery and when her mother recovered Lucy was so grateful she sold her dowry and gave all the money from that to feed the poor. 

Her fiancée was not happy about this.  

He’d had enough of this Christian nonsense and her putting off of the marriage.  He reported her to the officials as a Christian.  

Now what they would do back then if you were accused of being a Christian was to test your loyalty.  You would be asked to burn a sacrifice to gods for the sake of the Emperor who was thought to be a god.  

See the Romans didn’t care if you worshiped Christ, as long as you worshiped the gods who they thought protected the emperor.  

Not to sacrifice for the sake of the emperor was considered treason, punishable by death.  

But of course Christians would not sacrifice for any other gods and so Lucy refused.  She was sent to a house to entertain men.  

It was said this was the idea of her fiancée, who thought it would be a good punishment for a woman who did not want to marry.  Lucy went to the house but refused to have anything to do with the men who paid for her to be with them.  

They tried to torture her with fire to get her to give in but she refused and finally she was killed with the sword.   Some stories tell of her  eyes being put out and she is often shown in art holding her eyes on a platter.

She died on December 13.  

Lucia means light and her day fell on what was the shortest day in Northern Europe so people would remember her as they turned from the long dark of winter to shorter days and she became associated with Christmas and light in this way.  Also there is a story of a terrible famine in Sweden.  Just as it looked as though everyone would starve a ship appeared and Santa Lucia, adored in her wreath of candles and a white gown appeared to feed the people the way she would feed the poor in Rome.  

And that is why to this day little Scandinavian girls wear candles and sing of light and joy.  

But always remember behind this was a young woman whose love for the Christ Child motivated her to risk everything to help the poor and gave her courage to face down her persecutors.

A few years before Lucy was killed a young man’s wealthy parents died in an epidemic.  His name was Nicolas and he too was motivated by Christ to give away most of his fortune to care for the poor.  

This is the story told about him:

One day Nicolas heard about a poor man with three daughters.  In those days the only way a woman could marry was if she had a dowry to give the man’s family.  The man with the daughters was too poor to give his daughters and if they could not marry, they could only look forward to an unsavory future.  

When the eldest daughter was of an age to marry she woke up one morning to find a ball of gold insider her stockings that she had left over the fireplace to dry.  She didn’t know where it had come from but it provided a dowry for her to marry well.  

A few years later the same thing happened to the second daughter.  When the youngest daughter came of age her father stayed up at night to see who it was helping his daughter and was surprised to find it was Nicolas, who refused all thanks and told him only to thank God.

Nicolas was eventually elected bishop and he too was arrested for refusing to sacrifice to the roman gods and he spent many years in prison.

Behind Santa Clause there is St. Nicolas who protected children and helped the poor.  And who risked his life for his faith.

I think these two saints with their fun Christmas traditions can help us find our way through Advent, we don’t need to be scrooges but we don’t need to let the season make us crazy either.  

These two saints lived in a time when no one dared say Merry Christmas and it didn’t seem to ruin Christmas for them.   

They remind us that Christmas is about giving.  

It is about being a little on the outside of the rest of the world. We don’t show our faith by whether or not we say “Merry Christmas” but in our generosity and love and kindness to others.  Amen.

Pajamas in Church? Just Say No.

So apparently a number of churches had a "Wear Your Pajamas to Church" service on Christmas.  It was to "promote a sense of intimacy."

It seems people are just too darn lazy to put on some clothes when they get out of bed and if we promise them they don't need to make that effort maybe please God they'll come to church.

I'm sorry but I think the practice of people over the age of two putting on clean clothes and maybe even washing their face before they leave the house is a good one.  

I confess I already have a bad taste in my mouth about this public wearing of bed clothes from when my daughter was in high school and they had pajama days.  Really?  I'm already fighting the skimpy dress code and trying to keep the boys off my daughter and now they are ENCOURAGING them to dress like they all are going to one big  co-ed slumber party????

"Well we just want to encourage people to come as they are.  That everyone is welcome." 

Well then, why don't we just all come butt-naked?   I say for the same reason we don't come to church naked, we don't wear our bed clothes.  A little modesty.  To show that coming to church and worshiping God and being with fellow Christians IS worth the effort it takes to put on a clean pair of clothes?

Don't have a pair of clean clothes?  Well then let's buy you a washing machine and give some  nice clothes and work for a world wear you can have clean clothes.  Isn't that better than saying - "oh fine just wear whatever you sleep in." 

I hear some pastors even showed up at these things in bathrobes over their clothes.  That's just stupid.  They haven't come as they are, they've put on a costume.  So now bathrobes replace church vestments? 

Not to mention it takes the focus off of Christ and it becomes all about "Look how clever and funny we are - we are wearing PJs to church!"

"It's for children."  Well I still think teaching children that we put our clothes on when we get out of bed is a good habit to encourage.  Even on Christmas. 

Please.  Next year.  Just say no to Pajamas Sunday.

Why yes, I DO have an elephant in my nativity set

My husband and I bought a Fontanini Nativity Set for our first Christmas.  

I was already pregnant by then and mostly we liked it because the figures were unbreakable.  They were very popular at the time and you could find them in every Hallmark store.  

They are not as available anymore though you see them here and there.  What I grew to like about them was all the unusual characters you could buy.  Including women and girls.  And every character has a story.  And animals.  Every year we would buy one or two figures.  

As you can imagine, 24 years later, I have quite a collection.  I need two tables to set them all up

.

One year  we saw this elephant.  

I fell in love with the elephant.  It was $30.00.  This was when I got paid barely the salary of a seminary graduate and my husband took care of our young children.  $30 dollars for a nativity figure was out of the question.  I reluctantly put the elephant I had been longingly stroking back on the shelf.

No doubt you've figured out the end of the story.  That Christmas eve, that was the gift my husband had bought me.

It is surely my favorite.

The Real Miracle of Mary's Faith

 

I guess this is an offensive picture to some people.  St. Matthews in the City in New Zealand posted this on a billboard .  I  guess it shows Mary a little "too far from perfect".

They put the picture up to get people to think and it makes me think.

 It makes me think how Mary could have reacted in such a situation.  Even with single motherhood so common today, it's still a frightening prospect to consider having a child on your own.  I was raised by a single mom and swore I would not do that to my kids.  Some things just aren't in your control.

But this is in a part of the world where to this day, women are imprisoned for being raped, and stoned for adultery.  How interesting that God chose to challenge this obsession with the purity of women by coming into this world this way and the church ended up using Mary to reinforce that purity obsession.

Anyway this is where some of my thoughts about this picture took me for my sermon...

Mary is not particularly amazed or shocked at the news that she will bear the son of God.  She is more confused by the fact that she is going to have a child at all.  She may be young but she knows where babies come from and since this baby is apparently not coming the way most babies to, she wants to know how this is going to happen.  The angels accepts it and she accepts it.

She accepts it all.  She accepts that she is going to have a son that will not just be her baby but will belong to the world.  She accepts that God will use her to bring a Savior to the world.  She accepts that she will be unmarried and pregnant.  She accepts that God will take care of her and that this is all good news!

To me the miracle of Mary's faith is not that she believed she would conceive a child without a father.  

Faith is more than believing in miracles.  

In fact I think you can believe in miracles and not have real faith and I think you can doubt miracles and have faith.  

True faith is trusting God and believing that it will all work out for the good.  

And the true test of faith is believing that when it doesn't look as though things will turn out well at all.  If Mary was perfect it was in that complete trust.    She trusted that God would take care of her.

And God did.  Not that she had an easy life.  She had to give up her son.  She had to accept that he was not just her little boy, but that he belonged to the world.  

You hear about mothers having a hard time giving up their sons to their wives - imagine giving your son up to the world!  And kneeling at the cross watching the life you carried in your womb and nursed from your breasts, whose scraped knees you kissed dying before your eyes.  

And still we read of her in the upper room praying with the disciples after her baby boy rose from the dead.  If we had that kind of faith, we would not stress out over a picture of her with a pregnancy test, or get all upset that someone's blog claimed she was far from perfect.  We would know what God could do with someone who is far from perfect.

Legend of the Tabby

It was cold in the Manger and Baby Jesus was shivering and fussing.  

Mary asked the stable animals to move in closer to provide more warmth.  A tabby cat jumped into the manger and curled up beside the Baby Jesus who settled down and fell asleep.  

In gratitude Mary bestowed her initial M on the tabby's forehead.  

To this day every Tabby cat has a notable M on their forehead. 

This is a true story, I don't care what Father Anonymous says.

As if it were up to us to *keep* Christ in Christmas

I know it's not even Thanksgiving - but I love this Poster from The Fat pastor