The Story of the Candy Cane Donkey

It was Sunday, the 16th of December.  The children were practicing for the Christmas Eve service - we had only one more rehearsal to go before the big event.  And alas, things were not going quite as well as anticipated...

None of the younger children were paying very close attention, most were not singing, and most often totally missed their cues (after all, there are so many other things to look at and think about, right 😉).

One boy who was standing right behind his little sister suddenly decided that his sister would make a brilliant arm-rest/leaning post 😕  Another decided that he needed to try to match the size of the very littlest 2-year old angels by hunching his shoulders and making himself appear shorter.  Hilarious yes, but not so promising for day of the program.

After we finished the rehearsal, I was talking to the program leader and she told me her little boy wouldn't even practicing singing at home because he didn't "know how to sing" (his words).

So I decided we needed a way to inspire the smallest children to sing and participate (loudly enough for everyone to hear).  Sometimes small children need something more concrete than "make sure you speak and sing loudly enough so that everyone in the back can hear you."  And quite honestly, a bit of bribery helps sometimes too 😁

So I started brainstorming.  Candy canes are always fun, but I would have to make them more attractive - EVERYONE has candy canes at Christmas.  Once when we were children, we were all given candy cane reindeer (candy canes with wiggle eyes and chenille wire antlers) - and that was my original intent... but somehow reindeer didn't quite seem to fit.  And then I had an epiphany!  Candy Cane Donkeys!  And these Candy Cane Donkeys would have a story to help the children focus. 😀

So I began working on the donkeys (Daphne and Danny aren't fully complete in these images; I added eyes after the photos were taken).  And the next Sunday I told the children the following story: 

This is Daphne the Donkey:

Daphne will come to the service with me - and she will sit with me where can see her; she'll help remind you to watch me so you know when to sing.  And every time you see Daphne, you will remember about her friend Danny.

Danny the Donkey is a very old donkey (Look! His mane is gray and even his ears and nose are white) and poor Danny can't hear very well at all.
 

Danny will sit in the back of the church and he wants to learn about Jesus too.  So you will need to sing and speak loud enough for him to hear even way in the back 😀  And if Danny can hear you really good so he can learn about Jesus, when the service is over, you can all have your very own candy cane donkey to take home (or eat immediately as the case may be 😋).

I was rather tired of donkeys by the time I finished:

Zillions of donkeys in a basket.

While I cannot say for sure if the donkeys helped a LOT or if it was just that the old superstition of dreadful dress rehearsal = brilliant show, the Christmas Eve service went very well - even with a runaway angel and shepherds who haven't mastered the art of quiet walking (on an echoey and mic'd stage) 😊  And I do know they helped the little boy who didn't know how to sing -- he suddenly discovered that singing was fun after all 😆

So, if you find yourself in need of inspiring young children to participate at Christmas-time, Candy Cane Donkeys might be just the thing 😀

The Romanticism of Christmas

As I sit here on this night before the day before the eve of Christmas (I looked at a calendar as I was typing that and I am still not sure I got it right….) and am contemplating everything I have yet to accomplish, I pause momentarily amidst the busyness to reflect. It is so easy to get lost in the planning and the programming; the baking and the gifting; the shopping and the creating; the wrapping and the crafting. And then there are the late nights – because I am perpetually behind in all things Christmas; as I always tell my sister, “it just wouldn’t be Christmas without a really late package from Aunt Jessica.” :)

And while every year we hear diatribes against the commercialism of Christmas from Charlie Brown to friends on Facebook, even to random shoppers in the store objecting to Christmas displays arriving in October, this year a new facet of the current perception of Christmas has been brought to my attention. Not actually “new,” this perspective of the season has been building for years; I have noticed it in a somewhat vague fashion in the past, but this year for a variety of reasons I am noticing it much more definitively. I shall call it the “romanticism of Christmas.” 

I don’t know precisely when it began, but I suspect it was a subtle shifting as the times, economy, and culture changed. Perhaps it began with the advent of moving pictures when such concepts could be easily popularized. And as the economy grew and more persons had both time and pocket change to spend in going to the pictures, or purchasing books, or albums. It was definitely aided by the aforementioned commercialization of Christmas – after all, the notion helps retailers sell diamonds and jewelry and chocolates, Hollywood to sell movies, theatres to sell tickets, etc.

In many ways, this is not a bad thing. Everyone loves a happy ending and happy endings can make our hearts happy (there are reasons romanticism sells). Love is beautiful and marriage (when done God’s way) is a magnificent thing – for it is a picture of something so much greater than any of us. And while a case could be made for the efficacy of remembering all year ‘round, if one is to set aside once per year as a reminder of the beauty, hopefulness, joyfulness, and selflessness in love, Christmas is an excellent time to choose – for the love we show to others is merely a faint shadow of the love shown to us so many years ago at Christmas.

“He was born to set all people free; born to die upon a tree...”

“It was for me He came; for me His shame...”

The trouble lies in the fact that this perception of Christmas as a time for romance has so fully permeated our culture that the reason for Christmas is as much in danger from this as from any other reason. Utilizing devices such as commercialism, atheism, or busyness to diminish something good are obvious tricks; utilizing something good to mask something better is much more subtle, less obvious, and therefore, more successful.

I went to visit my sister and her family for Thanksgiving this year; while I was there, we watched a couple of Christmas movies on Netflix. And last year and this I borrowed some Hallmark movies from my parents’. I noticed a trend in these recently produced movies: it seems that movie producers now are going for quantity instead of quality. The lines are so obviously scripted, actors often appear stiff and unnatural, and (if I am being quite honest) the stories which the movies are created to tell are poor and underdeveloped – it is almost as though they pick one character to fall in love with another character and that is pretty much all that matters – obviously they need a bit of scenery and a few scenes, but those all feel like afterthoughts. And yet, even so, the movies sell – and so next year will find even more of these 2^nd rate movies on the market.

I suppose it is possible that I am being overly critical of these movies; perhaps my mind is remembering the older Hallmark and other Christmas movies through a rose-colored lens – or at least from the perspective of a child. Perhaps the ache in my heart has something to do with my somewhat jaded perspective. But whether or not you agree with me regarding the movies in question, the fact remains: people in America have fallen hard for this trend.

I don’t really have a solution; I don’t foresee our culture shifting away from this trend any time soon and while it would be ideal to have a culture more in-tune with the truth, it remains an incontrovertible certainty that each one of us is responsible for our own attitudes, actions, and perceptions.  So once I have concluded this post, I will pick myself up again and get back to work on my Candy Cane Donkeys (post coming soon) and remind myself once more that Hollywood, Hallmark, and Netflix do not get to define Christmas.  Joy, fulfillment, and love are not dictated by whether or not one has a boyfriend, fiance, husband, children, etc.; they are the result of true relationship with Jesus and walking in His way.

Yet I will exult in the Lord, 

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. 

The Lord God is my strength

And it is the season of the heart

A special time of caring

The ways of love made clear

It is the season of the spirit

The message if we hear it

Is makee it last all year.