Maxwell 34: Vest Management While Climbing a 14er

[Caroline]

2 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

When I first moved here, I had friends who did caroling, and I was roped into it a few times. It's fun. Most of the people either heard us singing and opened their doors to look, or knew we were coming. We also ended up at the senior home. Going door to door to sing to strangers sounds awkward, if you're neighbors aren't into the neighborhood thing. 

When my daughter was young we caroled every year with other moms (no dads, but not on purpose) and their kids.  Our circle only has 24 houses, and we all know each other.  We actually advertised the weekend we would be caroling, and everyone was happy to see us.  We have a mixed neighborhood of young couples with young children, 40 somethings with older kids, and retired people.  We even have neighbors who are two Gay men who always offered us hot chocolate when we got to their house.    One family is Jewish, and their son sometimes caroled with us  and we sang mostly secular songs (Rudolph, Frosty, etc.)  when he came along.   It was reminiscent of when I was young and we caroled in our own neighborhood where we knew everyone.  The difference between us and the Maxwells is that we weren't trying to save anyone - just having fun at night in the snow.  I am kind of a weirdo because I have always loved Christmas carols and looked forward to singing them at church and at public school (in the 60's and 70's).   Happy Holidays, Everyone!

[mango_fandango]

I’m not religious, but went to a C of E primary school and we always had a church service at Christmas whilst I was at secondary school (it wasn’t a religious school, but we had them anyway). I quite like Christmas carols. I always remember doing “We Three Kings” at primary school. They’d split us into sections for the three verses: children doing the gold verse, women doing the frankincense one and the men doing the myrrh one. The myrrh verse is so depressing  “sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, DYING”. And no one ever knew how to do the “heaven sings alleluia/alleluia the Earth replies” bit either. Ah, memories.  
I’ve never done carols door to door though, I don’t think. We don’t really get any carol singers round here. 

[Caroline]

4 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

I’m not religious, but went to a C of E primary school and we always had a church service at Christmas whilst I was at secondary school (it wasn’t a religious school, but we had them anyway). I quite like Christmas carols. I always remember doing “We Three Kings” at primary school. They’d split us into sections for the three verses: children doing the gold verse, women doing the frankincense one and the men doing the myrrh one. The myrrh verse is so depressing  “sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, DYING”. And no one ever knew how to do the “heaven sings alleluia/alleluia the Earth replies” bit either. Ah, memories.  
I’ve never done carols door to door though, I don’t think. We don’t really get any carol singers round here. 

When I was in public elementary school all through the 60's our music teacher, Miss Ireland, went from classroom to classroom (it was a very small 100 student school for grades K-6) with her AUTOHARP! and we sang all kinds of songs: folk, spirituals, and at Christmas, carols.  We all were affiliated with a church back then, half of us Catholic and the other half many varieties of Protestant, so the words were familiar to us.  I can still remember several verses of some of them.    My husband attended only Catholic schools straight through college.  He tells me he hardly ever sang Christmas songs in school during music class.   I guess they were spending more time at mass than I was!  I feel bad now when I think about the few Jewish students who were in our school.  All that singing must have been very awkward for them.  

[Jana814]

I’m Jewish and I remember sitting around a Christmas tree & singing Christmas carols in dance class. We had to snap our fingers & I couldn’t snap mine very well at the time. 

[Hane]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Maxhellions   lived in the kind of neighborhood @Caroline described above, and that many of their neighbors welcomed them. I get the feeling it’s kind of a conservative enclave, at least compared with my corner of the Northeast, with all its religious and ethnic diversity.

[Jana814]

Where I live (the suburbs of New Jersey) rarely do we have people going house to house caroling. Some church singing groups go to their members house to sing but it’s usually a scheduled afternoon and if the weather is bad out they usually cancel. 

[OhNoNike]

I love to do random acts of kindness because (perhaps selfishly?) it makes me feel better.  Like what @Hane said - if I’m feeling down, knowing something I did made a difference or helped someone else makes me feel better.  

I feel the need to share a recent experience. My 4 yo saw a necklace in a chain store and wanted it.  I told her Christmas was coming and we’d take a picture for santa.  I went back to get it and it wasn’t there anymore.  Of course this is the one thing this kid remembers she wants.  I googled. I checked amazon.  Nowhere.  I went to another one of their stores (“Second store”) and they didn’t have it, but called a third store who said they’d ship it over.  Cool. Well I got no phone calls so I dropped by the second store last week and the third store never shipped it.  They sold it.   The manager of the second store (That was to receive it) told me the name of the distributor.  I called the distributor and got someone immediately on the phone (no hold or waiting!).  I asked what other stores they sold to in our area, since I knew they didn’t sell to the public.  She googled and searched and you know what she did?  She said she would just put one in the mail for me.  For free.   She said she just wanted to do something nice for someone. 
 

It came today. Not only the necklace I was looking for, but another necklace for my older daughter, a pair of socks for the little one and a pair of socks for me.

She enclosed her work phone number so she’d know when it got here, and you bet she’ll be getting a thank you card.  But really it just made this Christmas that much better. 

[NancyDrewFan1989]

I saw the Maxwells went caroling once again this year. I remember doing caroling in a nursing home as a child for girl scouts. It was fun doing it as a child. But the only thing I couldn't help but notice was Mary playing the guitar in the snow with no gloves on. I'm sure she had some and put them on once the guitar was put away or handed off to Jesse or another Maxwell. But, come on, the guitar seemed a little excessive. 

[SPHASH]

If the Maxwells ever came to my door caroling I'd slam the door in their face.

[Lgirlrocks]

3 minutes ago, SPHASH said:

If the Maxwells ever came to my door caroling I'd slam the door in their face.

I wouldn’t. I would ask why their granddaughter aren’t properly dressed for walking around in the winter. I would also attempt to talk to them about god. If they talked to me it would be fine. If they didn’t even better. Not talking would probably mean they would never come back! 

[Eternalbluepearl]

1 hour ago, NancyDrewFan1989 said:

 But, come on, the guitar seemed a little excessive. 

Their whole lives are excessive. ?

[Ozlsn]

Where I worked the last couple of years had a choir which basically got together to rehearse before Christmas and then sang carols in the atrium (and did a joke song about the workplace for the end of year party). Didn't happen this year because most of the committed singers moved to other jobs. 

The one time I've carolled in the streets was when it came up as an idea at a party when possibly quite a few too many drinks had been consumed. At this time of year the sun sets after 9pm so we headed off in broad daylight to "sing" on nearby Christmas Street clutching candles that ranged from white emergency candles to birthday candles to really pretty candles that one of the people living in the house had in her room to cigarette lighters. As it turned out the only Christmas related song everyone knew all the words to was "Fairytale in New York", so we sang that. Loudly. Somewhere along the way it occurred to us that we looked less like a group of carollers and more like a rowdy drunken mob carrying fire so we headed back to where the party was (still singing!) before someone called the police. Fun times!

[raspberrymint]

11 hours ago, grammyj said:

Oh, they might just see the Menorah as a challenge. You'd probably get the full treatment including a mini-sermon. It could provide for some fun times if you were in the mood.

That's what I mean.  I would expect aggressive preaching.  I left the religion of my immediate family for basically secular humanism with some spiritualism, but I practice Hanukkah over Christmas.  Judaism was the religion of a number of my ancestors until more recent ancestors assimilated to local Christian norms.  I want to honor my survival and the survival of my ancestors, not forget about it.  Also a menorah is less expensive than a tree, by a lot, and not messy. 

I'm too much of a newbie to feel like having fun with aggressive Christians.  When my work schedule is calmer (when I can finally afford for it to calm down), I want to connect more with the humanistic Jewish community where I live and maybe more officially become part of something.  I definitely would like to run rings around aggressive Christians (as opposed to just avoiding them).

 

[petrushka]

If the Maxwells came caroling at my door, I'd gift them each with a rosary and a picture of Pope Francis.

[FloraKitty35]

"Mom was a whirlwind machine the day before making 48 loaves of Poppy Seed Bread (see recipe at end of the post). Mary and Anna created beautiful cards to go along with that."  Sarah, what in the hell is a whirlwind machine?    Also, it would have sounded less clunky to write, Mary & Anna created beautiful cards to accompany the loaves of bread.  

[fundiefan]

Wasn't one of the fist computers a Whilwind? That was a machine, I guess. So, was Teri being a computer making those loaves of bread? 

[thoughtful]

5 hours ago, FloraKitty35 said:

Sarah, what in the hell is a whirlwind machine?

Maybe Sarah had been listening to Donald Trump's word salad about wind turbines. If so, she's now expecting her mother to kill birds, cause cancer, and put out fumes that will reach through the stratosphere!

Edited December 24, 2019 by thoughtful
riffle

[Caroline]

20 hours ago, Hane said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Maxhellions   lived in the kind of neighborhood @Caroline described above, and that many of their neighbors welcomed them. I get the feeling it’s kind of a conservative enclave, at least compared with my corner of the Northeast, with all its religious and ethnic diversity.

I love my neighborhood and its (relative) diversity of ages and kinds of families .  Fortunately, there is not one religious fanatic on the whole street.  They're just a nice bunch of families of all kinds who help if you need them and mind their own business the rest of the time (the New England way!).  My impression of the Maxwell neighborhood is that it's full of way more people just like them.   

[PennySycamore]

@Jana814, I can snap the fingers on my left hand without any problems.  I basically can't snap my fingers on my right hand.  

I think I've been caroling twice.  What was most memorable about the experiences is how friggin' cold I was.  

I do love the old traditional carols even though I'm an atheist.  There is this one setting of a traditional English "The Wassail Song" which is not the usual one and I love it.  I've been looking for it for years.  it might just be the Yorkshire Wassail Song.  it's in the New Oxford Book of Carols.  I need to get myself a copy.  

Edited December 24, 2019 by PennySycamore

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

So you have to stand freezing in your open doorway and the furnace keeps running cause hot air is escaping.  And the Maxwells sing.  No thank you.

[Jana814]

3 hours ago, Caroline said:

I love my neighborhood and its (relative) diversity of ages and kinds of families .  Fortunately, there is not one religious fanatic on the whole street.  They're just a nice bunch of families of all kinds who help if you need them and mind their own business the rest of the time (the New England way!).  My impression of the Maxwell neighborhood is that it's full of way more people just like them.   

The street I was raised on is a very quiet one. No one really bothers anyone & I like it that way. Even as the town has grown our street continues to be quiet. 

[Howl]

I just had a wonderful memory from four or five years ago.  We were in Goliad, TX on Christmas Day and  visited the restored Fran­cis­can mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zuñiga (part of a state park).  When we entered the church, there was a woman with a remarkably beautiful voice singing "The Little Drummer Boy" for her mother, who was close by. It's a tradition that they do every year for the two of them.   The acoustics of the church are amazing and it was such a wonderful experience and we just happened upon it. 

Goliad State Park & Historic Site

[PennySycamore]

@Howl, I gave you a Love reaction even though I loathe The Little Drummer Boy.  A woman singing for her mom and that being a tradition is just lovely!

[OyHiOh]

Carols

If user name is not obvious, I'm Jewish.  However, I grew up in liberal Lutheran, and that fundamentalist Lutheran environments.  I adore traditional hymnal carols and can still pick out the alto harmonies even though it's been a solid 20+ years since I've sung them in a church or choir.  I actually have more issue with secular Christmas songs - "White Christmas" and the like - because they promote a sentimentalism about Christmas/tree/etc that's hard to explain or combat with elementary age kids.

I was at a holiday concert and tea last week that was about half intermediate violin solos (the sort of material a trained professional has played so many times they can grab music and go, without rehearsal time), and about half carols.  The lyrics, I completely blanked on, but hummed the alto harmonies for fun. 

[browngrl]

Maybe carolling is normal in the Maxwell neighbourhood, but in my neighbourhood, carollers would be decidedly odd. I would be very hesitant to open my door to a bunch of carolling strangers and I wouldn't eat any food the strangers brought me either.  How typical of fundies to assume that because they would welcome carollers - everyone would.