We are probably not in the mood anymore to talk about Christmas card scoring, but I wanted to show you this card I got from one of my friends:

I think it’s the best Mary/baby card I have EVER SEEN. I find it so TOUCHING, and it seems so REAL. It makes me think of Mary as an ACTUAL PERSON who had an ACTUAL BABY and SNIFFED HIS NECK FOLDS.

I think I accidentally gave the impression on my Christmas card scoring posts that I was opposed to RELIGIOUS cards, but HEAVENS NO. It’s PREACHY cards that get huge deductions, and preachy letters, and an overuse of the word “blessings,” but RELIGIOUSNESS? No. Many people celebrate one of the holidays PRIMARILY AS a religious holiday, so receiving religious cards seems absolutely appropriate. (Preachy, though, there’s no excuse.)

I have a lot of fun card-shopping with my mom each year. She’s Christian, so she’s always on the lookout for good religious cards of the Christian variety, and she’s much pickier than I am about it. Very occasionally, I’ll weed out one she likes (this year there was one I thought was too pointed in its wish that the recipient have an “open heart”), but generally it’s more likely that she’s rejecting the ones I find as being too preachy or lofty or trite or theologically shaky. It’s a fun quest. There is laughing, and there is reading aloud.

ANYWAY, we’ve seen and rejected MANY a Mary-and-child card. This year we rejected one on which the poor baby Jesus was buck naked and chilly-looking, with nary a swaddling cloth in sight. Others make the scene look as if it took place within the shining golden gates instead of in a small grubby barn. Others show what my friend calls a “Mary with attitude,” where she appears to be SO OVER this whole thing.

This one looks as if it were pre-electrical lighting, and the baby is snuggled up in sufficient swaddling clothes. It’s great. It’s by Christian Inspirations, and I was going to link to their site (file under “Links You Did Not Expect to See on Swistle’s Blog), but their url leads to one of those “placeholder” sites that tries to sell you things it guesses are related to the site you were trying to find, when the site you were trying to find no longer exists. So, sorry, you’re stuck with Attitude Mary or Nakers Jesus.

The Hershey sweepstakes [blog deleted, so link deleted] ends on New Year’s Eve and I’ll be picking a winner for the $100 Visa giftcard. Cookies = yummy. Money in time for holiday bills = nice.

Sahara asked why I chose to come out at all, and although right at this minute my response is “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I DON’T KNOW, IT WAS THE STUPIDEST THING I’VE EVER DECIDED TO DOOOOOOOOO!!!!!,” my real response is that I was finding myself reluctant to post photos of myself or to meet any of you in person because I was worried the plus-size thing would come as an unpleasant surprise to you. When I realized this was causing me anxiety and preventing me from doing things I wanted to do, I decided OUT WITH IT.

For example, here’s the photo I wanted to use to illustrate the post about Rob teaching me to knit. I think it’s a super-cute picture but I couldn’t use it because then you’d knowwwwwwww:

Plus, then you’d see my unwise choice of hair dye. Sometimes trying to change nature doesn’t work out very well.

Now I have a question for you: how late should a child be allowed to sleep in on a day when there’s no particular reason to get up? How late did your parents let you sleep in? My eldest, who now qualifies as a “tween” I think, is still in bed at almost lunchtime. This is somehow more painful when the other children have been up since 5:30.

Last night was the kind of night where I lay awake making myself feel sad about how awful it would be if for some reason we lost all the photos we had of the children. Productive! Then I fell into a headcold kind of sleep and dreamed that I was arrested and put in jail because I saw a man in his underwear.

One of the best presents I got for Christmas was the gift of anticipation: my brother and sister-in-law gave me a gift certificate for airplane travel. A trip to see Niestle! …And my brother and sister-in-law and other sister-in-law.

Speaking of which: what relation is my sister-in-law’s sister to me? I think the official answer is “She’s your sister-in-law’s sister,” but I think that’s kind of BULKY. I suppose I could call her by her NAME. But I’d like to also call her my sister-in-law, as I did in the paragraph above. I don’t have any sisters, and it would please me greatly to have some lawfully-contracted sisters. I think “sister” is a very pretty word.

Elizabeth, age 4 and not privy to discussions about family planning, said to me out of the blue the other day, “If you want another girl, you should have one.” Me: “…!”

Rob, age 10, after seeing Niestle for the first time this Christmas, said, “I think we should have another baby. I forgot how cute they are.”

I think, though, that I have finally come to terms with the idea of not having more babies, to the point that I am looking forward to some aspects of it. It helps that Henry is such a stinker. He is the stinkeriest of all my children. With sparkling eyes and merry mouth he will fling a box of toys at the Christmas tree, climb on the counter and plug in the coffee pot so that it makes a terrible singed smell, step in the cat water, step on an open book so that the pages crinkle and rip out, color on the walls, stuff a handful of someone else’s candy into his mouth and run away, sneak into the bathroom and repeatedly flush the toilet, climb into his brother’s upper bunk and then fall out.

Sadly for his future character, we all think he’s hilarious and adorable.

Coming out as a plus-size person is a challenging and upsetting thing to do, with many unpleasant repercussions.

The main problem is that body size and shape are not yet widely considered to be something we’re born with. People who are born thin are given credit for it and take credit for it—even if what they consider to be their body-maintaining efforts wouldn’t have the same effect on others. People who eat enough to maintain their non-thin weights are considered to be overeating, and the overeating is considered to be why they’re non-thin. And because a small percentage of people who were born non-thin have managed with disproportionate and unceasing effort to make limited changes to limited aspects of their shapes, it’s widely thought that all people can be born thin if only they cared about their “health.” Next, perhaps, doctors will recommend that people who are too tall should have height-loss surgery. People who are too short will be advised to use heel supplementation devices to help them achieve a healthy height. Charts showing healthy height ranges will be posted prominently on doctor’s walls. Really we are just concerned about the non-ideally-heighted person’s HEALTH.

Another problem is that once a person is known to be plus-sized, his or her opinions about weight, diets, exercise, eating, appearance, etc., are forever and completely dismissed. Does a plus-sized person object to a friend’s self-loathing comments? The plus-size person is obviously jealous, and has Body Issues they’re projecting onto the friend. Does a plus-sized person think there are goals and achievements in life more worthwhile and laudable than being thin? The plus-sized person is just trying to feel better about herself and her failures to achieve thinness. Does a plus-sized person object to what she considers an offensive and disgusting cultural attitude toward body size? Well, of COURSE she does! Does a plus-sized person consider herself to have healthy eating/exercise habits? She is wrong. Does a plus-sized person feel sick when she sees articles praising people who are responding to social pressures by eating 1100 calories a day and exercising 2 hours a day? Body issues. Jealousy. FATNESS!

So I am painfully aware that by allowing you to know more information about the size and shape I am, I have potentially dramatically changed your feelings about me and the things I have to say. Now when I talk about baking, the baking is why I’m so PLUS-SIZED—even though if I were thin and liked to bake, no one would link the baking with my body size. Now if I complain about cultural problems, I’m jealous/fat/issued. Now if I worry about a friend’s exercise and eating habits, I’m jealous/fat/issued. My opinions on such subjects, which would be listened to if my body were a different shape and size, will be used to attack me, my “health,” and my mental condition. Only thin people are mentally healthy.

I’m tall. I’m Dutch. I’m light-skinned. I’m straight. I’m female. I’m narrow-shouldered and long-torsoed. I’m plus-sized. These are all characteristics on my DNA. It’s upsetting and disturbing that certain characteristics on the DNA, such as sex, sexual orientation, and skin color, have, over time, been used for discriminatory purposes—and that there’s very little reason to hope that anything will ever change about weight attitudes.

The upside of coming out as a plus-sized person is that a person’s nearest and dearest are not surprised or affected by the news.

[Clarification: I put this in the comment section, too, but it’s not likely to be seen there. I’m DEFINITELY NOT saying EITHER that change is not possible OR that lifestyle doesn’t contribute to body size—I thought both those things were clear, but clearly not. However, I do think that DNA affects what you start with, what it is possible to end up with, and how much effort it takes to get there. The amount of time and effort it takes me to be non-plus-sized costs me more than it’s worth. For another person, the price might be lower, or worth it; this is a way in which we are different.]

Pseudostoops is doing her annual charity series: she brings attention to lesser-known charities, and then she makes a donation to that charity of $25, plus an additional 50 cents for each comment received on that post. Normally comments are accepted only on the day of the post, but as you may have noticed the internet is sleeping/shopping/baking this week, so comments are lower than usual and she’s still taking comments on Monday’s and Tuesday’s posts. If you have a few minutes, you could give to some very nice charities for a few clicks and a few comments.

I really like her idea, and I’ll do a half-match: I’ll send the charities another 25 cents per comment received on her posts. So for each comment you leave, 75 cents goes to charity, and you can do that three times.

Click here to learn about (and get Pseudostoops and me to donate to) to The Women’s Treatment Center.

Click here to learn about (and get Pseudostoops and me to donate to) Sweet Miss Giving’s.

Click here to learn about (and get Pseudostoops and me to donate to) The Night Ministry.

Tomorrow, she’ll be choosing five charities nominated by commenters, and letting us vote which of the five should get a donation of $50.

It’s a fun idea and a great way to give money without having to, um, give any money.

My new no-gap-waistband jeans from Target? GAPPING CONSIDERABLY. Also, they cause me to have to keep hitching up my unders. You know what I need, is those button-elastic waist-adjusters they put in children’s jeans. My waist is slimmer than the manufacturers expect, given my hip size. (Isn’t that a much nicer way to say my hips are larger than they expect?) And yet I really like the jeans and have worn them three days in a row and I’m going to look for another pair so I’ll be able to launder these.

Do you know what I learned from my recent Party Shopping Expedition? Camis are super-cute. I’d been avoiding them because my shoulders are narrow and rounded and my upper arms are plump (this, I think, tends to go with the leetle waist), but a cami under a flannel shirt is cuter than a t-shirt under a flannel shirt, and no shoulders or upper arms need be exposed if they’d rather not.

I’d bought a black cami to go under the pink shirt I wore, and then I got a dark red (almost burgundy) cami that came as an underlayer to a shirt I wore yesterday and probably never again (it’s the tunic/maternity style and I felt kind of dumb in it), and after I took off the shirt in frustration I wore the cami with a flannel shirt and I felt kind of SASSY exposing so much CHESTAL REGION. It reminded me of those extremely persuasive Charlie perfume ads from the eighties, comparing Charlie to wearing slinky unders with a grey tailored business suit. …I’m not sure, now that I think of it, why that would be, but I still do wear Charlie twenty years later so SCORE, marketers!

And also I bought another cami, a white one. Target has camis in a whole bunch of pretty colors in the misses department, but in plus sizes they have only black and white. Listen, I may be DUTCH and a BAKER but that doesn’t mean I don’t like PRETTY COLORS. And now I am tired of saying cami, so let’s think of something else to talk about.

We’ve been trying various plans for teaching the children that Christmas is a holiday of EXCHANGING gifts, not just RECEIVING them. When I had fewer children, I took them to the store and had them choose something for their grandma, their grandpa, their aunt, their uncle, and their daddy. We did a lot of talking about Thinking About What The Other Person Would Like, but then I let them choose even if I knew it wasn’t a good idea—we’re talking about a $2 gift from a child, so it’s not going to ruin anyone’s Christmas if it doesn’t hit the mark.

But now there are FIVE children. Five $2 gifts for grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, mother, father—ACK. It’s not just the expense, it’s the TIME it takes to wrap and unwrap and exclaim over all those gifts, and it’s the mountain of small and not-particularly-wanted gifts purchased only to make a point to the child. And that’s with no sibling gifts!

So this year I took the kids out and had them pool their resources, buying ONE present for grandma, grandpa, aunt, and uncle, and using the person’s wish list to help decide on something in the $10 range. It might miss the mark, but it’s ONE thing instead of five. They did still each choose something for their daddy, though, since that seems different.

We’ll see if this works better.

I took this from Girl in a Boy House:

Eggnog or hot chocolate? I like both, but I don’t drink either one very often.

Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Since we don’t believe, we don’t receive. We try to make up for it so the kids don’t miss out on Christmas, so the only difference is we have to pay for the presents ourselves instead of getting them free from Santa, and the kids thank us for them instead of thanking Santa.

Colored lights on a tree or white? Colored, but I like white ones too.

Do you hang mistletoe? No.

When do you put your decorations up? We don’t have a set day for it, but it’s between Thanksgiving and, say, the end of the first week of December.

What is your favorite holiday dish? Wurstebroodjes (pigs-in-blankets).

Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? ALL of them: we celebrate on Christmas Eve night. I always say it’s a holdover from a family tree of ministers and farmers, plus Dutch/German ancestry, but I don’t actually know that that’s the case.

How do you decorate your Christmas tree? As many ornaments as will fit, none of them matching. A total melee, if that’s the word I want. The kids have been doing it the last few years—first because I was pregnant and too tired/queasy to manage it, and now because they like to. I’d rather have everything evenly spaced, but have grown fond of their “dripping with ornaments, especially on the lower half of the tree” effect. I have an aqua-metallic bead garland. No tinsel or tinsel garland. Candy canes. Colored lights.

Snow: love it or hate it? I like it while it’s falling, and I like it lying prettily on the ground (but not the roads) for Christmas, but basically I hate it.

Can you ice skate? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA no.

What is your favorite holiday dessert? Spiked sherbet floats.

What is your favorite holiday tradition? Driving around looking at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve night, right before opening presents.

Candy canes: yum or yuck? I don’t eat them, but I like them on the tree, and I’ll stir a hot drink with one if I think of it.

Favorite Christmas show? Scrooged, and the tape I made of a bunch of holiday-themed episodes of kids’ programs one year.

This was, as Nicole promised, surprisingly fun to do, and you should copy if you want to.

Also, I am home from the Christmas party, and I had a shot of vodka beforehand and two large glasses of wine during, and I felt JUST FINE. Still anxious, but able to fake it, and also still able to focus my eyes, so it was a happy medium is what I’m saying.

Also, I realized my clothes were a MAJOR STRESSER, and it seemed like “having nothing but jeans, t-shirts, and a funeral outfit” was a situation that it was okay to remedy, so I went out this morning and bought some clothes, and I was dressed PERFECTLY for what everyone else was wearing, which was like a major psychic triumph. I wore dark, slightly flared jeans, dark grey and silver flats, a black cami, and a so-pink-it-was-almost-red button-down shirt with only a few buttons in the middle buttoned and the sleeves rolled up. I also wore sparkly earrings and my (men’s department) belt bracelet and my grandma’s cocktail ring.

And I brought wine, and thank you to everyone who suggested it because it was the perfect thing and roughly half the other people who came also brought wine. Then I had some of THEIR wine, and I ate many yummy little foods, and I talked with wallflowers, and now I am thinking we should go to parties every night! Or never again—either way.

As usual I thought I’d try to get ahead on Christmas stuff this year, and instead what I accidentally did was get an early start on the Post-Holiday Funk. I feel like, here we are a week until Christmas and I’m not even excited yet. Maybe the whole thing is a bust.

Paul, who has been my faithful and patient companion for fifteen Christmasses, said kindly, “Yes, I know. This is your favorite Christmas carol.” My friend Kara Marie, who is getting accustomed to shoring up my teetering psyche, said, “Dude, what’s the worst that can happen if you don’t feel jolly? You know? The sun will still come up the next day.” My mother, whose psyche resembles my own, says, “IS IT TIME TO PANIC??? SHOULD WE CANCEL CHRISTMAS???”

But look! Niestle is here! She is at my parents’ house AS I TYPE!

And perhaps I will bake a Christmassy treat today. And I have some Starbucks Winter Blend coffee I found earlier this week at Target on clearance. And Elizabeth just said perkily, “This would be a perfect day for an outing!” so maybe it would be. And there will almost certainly be more cards in the mail.

But oh dear: we have been invited to a holiday party tomorrow, and I don’t know if you know this about me but I am NON-SOCIAL. I don’t socialize with people unless they are related to me by blood or marriage and are therefore contractually obligated to like me, or else we’ve known each other so long that I feel like it’s their own fault if they didn’t know what they were getting into by choosing to be friends with me.

And I WANT to go to this party, because it is hosted by the parents of William’s best friend Clarissa and their friendship is such a nice one it’s led me to have little pleasant fantasies about Clarissa eventually being the mother of some of my grandchildren, and also I’m so relieved to see that not ALL my children have been afflicted with my non-social genes. But I am all fretful because…well, because I AM. It’s the way I AM. And a thousand people could reassure me that it is no big deal and no one is going to bite me and everything is going to be fine and no one cares how I act GEEZ GET A GRIP, and I could even get it in writing from a deity that everything would go well and I would STILL be fretful, and afterward I would still spend hours/days/years feeling like I arrived/left at the wrong time, that I hogged/ignored the hostess and other guests, that I was too loud/quiet, that I neglected some element of etiquette, that I said something dumb, that my children behaved badly, that I took up too much air and space, whatevs.