I’d suggest an Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card. Yes, if you click on the Amazon graphic and then proceed to buy something, I get a miniscule associate’s fee. No, I don’t get anything from B&N. Either gift card would be a perfectly delightful Christmas gift as far as I’m concerned. I love bookstores!
Archive | 12/18/2009
Christmas Poem by G.K. Chesterton
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost—how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.
This world is wild as an old wife’s tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
The $10 Challenge
I read about the $10 Challenge and then linked to it here. Then, I thought my family should do this: take $10 and find someone in need to whom to give the money. Then, I had an expensive thought. What if I gave ten dollars to each of my eight children, ages 24 down to 8, and asked them to give away their ten dollar bill before Christmas to someone who could use a Christmas blessing? Ummm, 8 x 10 is more than ten dollars. Everything ends up costing a lot more than it seems it will at first when you multiply by eight—or even ten (including Engineer Husband and me, too). Oh, well, it would be a good Christmas experiment.
I kept waiting and waiting until I could get everyone together at the same time. This feat is difficult when you have three twenty-somethings, two teens, and a twelve year old, all with active social and work lives. I ended up having six out of the eight here when I told them about the $10 Challenge. The other two would just have to hear about it later. I gave out the tens, and everyone’s eyes lit up. Then, I told them that the deal was that they had to give it away. First, some of them tried trading ten dollar bills: “You give me yours, and I’ll give you mine.” I told them that there were no rules, but that trading money was against the rules. I also suggested that they pray and ask God to show them the person or group to whom they should give their money.
So, now each of my children (except the two missing links) has a ten dollar bill to give away. We’ll see what they do with it.
I told them they had to report back on Christmas morning.