It seems to me that there's an unspoken cultural code in the American Midwest, which subtly discourages the celebration of one's own birthday.  One can celebrate a friend's birthday, whole-heartedly and unashamedly; but to celebrate one's own birthday by throwing oneself a party -- or even by simply informing other people, "Today is my birthday" -- is considered selfish and uncouth.  Back in college, a friend of mine coined the term "Birthday Announcer" to describe the type of person who goes around proudly telling people that it's his birthday; and I knew exactly what he meant.  There's just a certain perception about these things, back where I come from.  Perhaps I'm overstating the American cultural position here, but it definitely seems like birthdays are meant to be held as some kind of loosely-kept secret.

The Dutch, on the other hand, are almost categorically "Birthday Announcers."  Birthday parties are usually organized by the birthday celebrant himself (or herself), and it's even common for someone to bake or buy their own birthday treats to share with friends at work or in school.  There's no shame in celebrating one's own birthday.  And while it's taken me awhile to get used to the cultural shift, I have to say that there's something nice about the Dutch way of doing things.  It makes sense, actually -- and it helps to alleviate any potential feelings of self-pity or disillusionment.  Quite awhile ago, I started admiring the Dutch tradition of unashamedly serving as one's own "Birthday Announcer."  But I've still had a hard time crossing that cultural barrier for myself...

Until this year.

I feel like it's a sign of my cultural integration that I'm finally going so far as step across the divide and become a "Birthday Announcer" myself.  Indeed, I'm not only announcing my birthday (coming up on the 26th of February) -- but I'm also throwing my own party, together with two other friends who happen to share birthdays within a week of my own.  This week, I sent out the following birthday invitation by e-mail...

Dear friends,

Once upon a time, there were three friends living in Amsterdam.  They were different in many ways:  one coming from the mountains of Colorado; one coming from the farmlands of Ohio; and one coming from the flatlands of Zuid Holland.  But in other ways, they were the same:  enjoying good food, good music, good stories, and good time together with friends.  As fate would have it, their birthdays all fell within nine days of each other.  So one day, they decided to celebrate their birthdays together, with a big party.  They prepared all kinds of good food, good music, and good stories, and they invited their friends to celebrate with them in the heart of Old Amsterdam.  And they lived happily ever after.  The End.

OK.  So that may not be the best story ever -- but it does get the point across that a very special Storytelling Triple-Birthday Extravaganza is being organized for Saturday, the 27th of February, starting at 19:00 at the [e-mail me or send me an e-mail if you really want to know the address, so I don't have to post it here as a matter of public record]… And you are hereby cordially invited to join us for the celebration!  Patricia Flynn, Ariënne van Leussen, and Eric Asp are the hosts / birthday celebrants, and we are really looking forward to a great party.  Like most parties, there will be time for simply chatting while sharing in drinks and snacks and birthday cake (remember:  this is a party involving the baking talents of both Ariënne van Leussen and Marci Asp!).  But in addition to this, we will also share in several rounds of storytelling.  Not readings, like you might find at a typical open microphone event, but oral storytelling.  Thus: no pre-arranged, carefully worded, written accounts, but rather spontaneous, random storytelling, like you might have heard around the fire 1000 years ago.  The idea came from the Mezrab Cultural Café here in Amsterdam -- where people regularly gather to share myths, fables, legends, remembrances, and personal anecdotes -- and it seemed like a fun idea for a birthday party.  Yes, of course, you could choose to share stories that involve the birthday celebrants (i.e. stories about Patricia, Ariënne, and/or Eric).  But this is by no means the only type of story allowed.  You could share an amusing story about something that happened to you on your way to the supermarket… or make up a legend about how the leopard got his spots… or tell a stylized version of a Bible story… or pass on a treasured family story about how your grandparents got married… The possibilities are nearly endless!  The specific form of the evening will be determined by those of you who come to celebrate with us.  We just want to spend time enjoying the company of good friends enjoying good stories.

So all that to say this:  please mark your calendar for Saturday, the 27th of February, starting at 19:00 and going until late (towards the end of the festivities, there may even be some dancing!).  If you wanted to bring a nice card or gift or bottle of something to drink, that would certainly be welcome.  But more than anything, we hope that you will be able to come with your stories and be a part of the fun.  We're looking forward to celebrating with you at the end of the month…

Patricia
Ariënne
Eric

And to show just how Dutch (and "Birthday Announcerish") I've become, I thought I might even go so far as to post the invitation (with the exception of the location information, to protect my friends' privacy) here on my blog, just to make sure that I haven't forgotten anyone.  If you'd like to come and celebrate with us, please let me know and I'll supply you with the rest of the information.  Forgive me, my Midwestern friends, if it seems that I've gone astray.  I promise that, on this particular point, it's only one day of the year. :-)

Today I have the privilege of officiating a wedding for two dear friends from our church here in Amsterdam.  It's going to be a lot of fun.  In addition to the special joy of taking part in a beautiful ceremony to join two beautiful people, the occasion is also special because it affords me the opportunity to preach in one of the oldest, most storied ministry venues in old Amsterdam:  The English Reformed Church in the Begijnhof.

The church building dates back over 500 years.  English Pilgrims worshipped in the same sanctuary in the early 1600s, just prior to sailing for the New World aboard the Mayflower and settling at Plymouth Colony.  And today, I will get to perform a wedding in the same space!

[P.S. - 7 February 2010 - I thought it might be cool to also include a picture from the actual occasion.  Thanks to my friend Sergei Tserasiuk for this really cool photo of the action!]

I've had a number of people ask me what I did for New Year's Eve this year, and the truth is that I have absolutely no idea what I was doing at the moment the calendar changed from 2009 to 2010.  This is not, however, because I was asleep or drunk or anything like that.  It's because I was in an airplane racing across seven time zones to meet the dawn of the new day, the new year, and the new decade.  And though we left just before seven o'clock in the evening (Central Standard Time) and arrived in Europe at 10:35 the following morning (Central European Time), it was never announced when the hour struck -- because time is a very fluid concept in trans-Atlantic aviation... So I don't really know where I was, what I was doing, or precisely when 2010 began.  I suspect it was somewhere between Newfoundland and Greenland, while I was watching some crappy movie on the in-flight entertainment... but I guess we'll never really know.

What I do know is that we had a great couple of weeks in Ohio at Christmastime.  It didn't feel like we had nearly enough time -- but then again, it never does.  And as much as I could bemoan the shortness of the vacation, I have to admit that we actually managed to fit quite a bit into the time period.

We rode an antique train to the North Pole (surprisingly accessible from Connersville, Indiana!).

We enjoyed snowball fights and sledding and lots and lots of Christmas lights.

We baked cookies and went carrolling from house to house in the country.

My brothers and I made lefse (traditional Norwegian potato-based flatbread).

We played basketball and American football, and we watched basketball and American football on television.  My Dad, my son, and I got to go to our first professional basketball game together -- watching LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers trounce the Houston Rockets.

We re-enacted the biblical account of Jesus's birth on Christmas Day.

And we just spent a lot of good quality time together with family who don't often have the privilege of gathering together any more.

It was really everything we could have hoped for.  Of course, it wasn't without its stresses either -- driving in heavy snowfall, coordinating schedules with a lot of families who each have their own priorities, sharing one bathroom with 16 people (when the water heater went out for a couple of days!), and traveling through busy airports... But so is life.  We made the most of the experience, and for that I am very grateful.

Time passes so quickly, doesn't it?  Some of the family we only get to see in parking lots and every five Christmases.  Some members of the family are quite advanced in age (Marci's grandpa, for example, turns 93 later this month).  It's difficult to project life's trajectory.   And even with all other things being equal, there's nothing to say that someone won't get cancer or some other sickness (over the holidays, I happened to hear about two particularly tragic discoveries of cancer, plus a suicide and a teenage car crash).  It can be terrifying to think of all the possibilities that a new year could hold.

But we can only take it one day at a time.  One city at a time.  One conversation at a time.  There are a lot of anxieties for the coming year, but there is a lot of hope and opportunity as well.  It'll be interesting to see what 2010 will hold.  Happy New Year to all of you...

I got this from my friend?Brooke, who got it from her sister, who got it from?George Ella Lyon. ?But since I'm spending some time back in Ohio for the holidays, together with our families, I figured this might be a good time to try it for myself. ?It's a poem -- adapted from Lyon's original poem, then made into a first-grade writing exercise called "I am from..."

These are the instructions for the exercise that I got from?Brooke's blog:?

Here's the idea:

1. Write down sensory memories from childhood/life. ?smell, touch, sight, hearing, taste

2. Think about sayings you heard often / lyrics from songs, like... "don't let the bed bugs bite"... "safely in his bosom gather"

3. Think about things you smelled, food, mom's perfume, or the feeling of a family blanket

4. Write the senses down, don't explain them, but be detailed. Don't just say, "I am from dad saying " I love you more than the stars" say instead "I am from "I love you more than the stars."

5. Put "I am from" before your memories (or, in our case, we did "We are from"). List some together.?

So see what you think of my own work-in-progress here below:

We are from spontaneous four-part harmony.

We are from It's Soooooooooouuuup!

We are from full, soft, feathery-needled white pine Christmas trees.

We are from basketball with sprained ankles and broken noses.

We are from coffee with dessert while Dad abstains (insisting that he doesn't even drink whiskey).?

We are from Ya sure ya betcha.

We are from duck-colored Carhartt jackets and sports caps.?

We are from Wonderful the Matchless Grace of Jesus.?

We are from porridgey grip on Saturday afternoons and blueberry muffins on Sunday mornings.

We are from dinner table theology, ecclesiology, and homiletical analysis.?

We are from stacks of Readers Digest on the shelf next to the toilet.?

We are from Big Ten football on Saturday afternoons.

We are from big bowls of buttered popcorn on the couch at the end of the day.?

It's still a work in progress. ?In fact, I'm hoping to round out the poem over the Christmas holiday, together with other family members who could contribute memories to the mix. ?Maybe you'd want to try something similar for your family, too.

At any rate, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!?

Christmas is approaching very quickly, and our family's travels to Ohio are approaching even more quickly!  My thoughts and emotions have been very scattered, leading up to the holidays.  I'm feeling extremely enthusiastic -- almost euphoric at times -- about the prospect of being back with family for this special time of the year.  But then at the same time, in considering the realities of all of my family being back together for the first time in several years (with some of the cousins just meeting each other for the first time, even) and trying to blend our disparate lives again for a couple of weeks, I've had little foreshadowings of the stresses which are also somewhat inevitable.  Holidays are a funny thing in this way.

In a sense, we find ourselves driven by the tension between two
truisms:  "There's no place like home," and "You can't go home again."

Our celebrations of the winter holidays seem to have an awful lot to do with sentimentality.  This became clear to me as I thought about the Dutch cultural phenomenon of Sinterklaas -- wondering how parents could go to the lengths they do, to make the holiday special for their children (and really, my Dutch friends, I don't know if you can fully understand the extent of these lengths unless you have young children here yourself).  I was having a hard time understanding how parents would put up with the whole charade, when it suddenly dawned on me that it all comes down to sentimentality.  I don't have much in the way of childhood sentimentality for Sinterklaas (since I didn't grow up in the Netherlands), so I don't have the fuel needed to power myself through the annual re-enactment of that particular holiday.  I do, however, have my own special memories of Christmas in America, and that's what I'm trying to get back to during the holidays -- along with my fellow Americans who tend to make a lot of movies and write a lot of songs about this particular holiday (while to Dutch people, who didn't grow up with American Christmas, the whole hype seems ridiculous).  So when I think about it like this, it all makes a lot more sense.

The whole pageantry of Sinterklaas and Santa Lucia and Christmas and is fueled by nostalgia and a hope to recapture some of the child-like wonder of the season -- or at least to allow the next generation to capture such an experience in our stead.  I'm not necessarily saying that this is bad or wrong.  I'm just saying that there's something powerful there that drives the engines of the American Christmas Machine (or the Dutch Sinterklaas Machine).  And I honestly think that it comes down to sentimentality, more than the Dutch quest for low-key gezelligheid, more than the American quest for meaning and purpose, more than any sense of materialism or mythology...

Does this explanation make sense to anyone else?  Does anyone else feel the tension of living between those truisms?  In any event, I wish you all a happy Christmas -- celebrating whatever it means to you right now!  Enjoy the nostalgia, enjoy the sentimentality... but don't forget to enjoy it for what it is this year, too.