Andy Dressed as a Gator, circa 1988

At the beginning of this football season, dismayed by the recent news about long-term brain deterioration as a result of concussions, angry about the ugly lockout and stories about racism at the NFL combine, and frustrated by the graft scandals in the NCAA, I decided to boycott football viewing this year. It was a general sentiment at first, and the details needed to be negotiated along the way, so I settled on not reading online articles about the NFL or NCAA, and not watching any football games unless they were integral parts of social events with friends and family. At the beginning of the year, I told everyone who was willing to listen that I was doing this boycott, not least because I was sure it would be a challenge for me, and I needed witnesses for my transgressions.

I grew up in a household that spent many a weekend afternoon watching football games on TV, and celebrating the values of teamwork, camaraderie, and no-excuses attitude that defines the sport. My father went to the University of Florida in the late 1960s, when the legendary Steve Spurrier played quarterback and won the Heisman Trophy. As a result, my father became a lifelong dedicate fan, passing this loyalty onto my brother and I. Spurrier, as luck would have it, became the head coach of the Gators when I was a boy, and took his “fun and gun” offense, outrageous comments to the press, and feisty sideline demeanor to national prominence in the years that I developed as a filterless sports junkie. I even attended a game at “The Swamp” (the name of the Gators’ football field) one year dressed head to toe as an alligator, which my mother fashioned out of a green sweatsuit appended by vinyl stomach scales and a tail. At the same time, the Denver Broncos, our professional team of choice after living for years in Colorado, played an exciting brand of football behind the gritty John Elway, known for his late game heroics, bullet passes (rumored to leave bruises on his receivers’ abdomens), and beaming smile. While football became only one of many rituals of competition to which we paid homage, it was an important one. My parents even retired to Gainesville, home of the University of Florida. To this day, attending a Florida Gators sporting event provides me with that warm, elevated sense of consciousness that I imagine other people feeling when they hear the national anthem or go to church.

For eight weeks, barring two exceptions to watch Gator games when my family was visiting San Diego, I did pretty well. I noticed that on weekends I was spending more time with my wife and kid (I even learned how to sew!), and I was somewhat less distracted from my schoolwork, which usually demands hours on the weekend that competes with football viewing time. I honestly didn’t know which teams were doing well or poorly, and I wasn’t too bothered. There were side effects, however. For the first time since my childhood baseball card collecting days I began to pay attention to developments in baseball. I also began checking, (for reasons I cannot entirely explain given my current financial situation), the ups and downs of particular stocks. The Yahoo news headlines more often seemed irresistibly compelling, even the ones about red carpet fashion. The temptation of these diversions became stronger in the moments when my workload became larger, or at at times when I felt more anxiety about it.

Then, in week 9 of the football season, the Denver Broncos benched their struggling quarterback Kyle Orton and replaced him with the controversial Tim Tebow, the Florida Gators’ most decorated quarterback who, now in his second year as a pro, had been something of a mystery. He was not a prototypical NFL quarterback. His horrible throwing mechanics, sloppy footwork, and an inclination to run through people rather than pass over them (he’s built more like a linebacker than a quarterback) gave ammunition to a chorus of critics, who proclaimed that Tebow was an experiment doomed to fail. Moreover, Tebow had always worn his evangelical religion on his sleeve, praying in the middle of games, writing scripture verses into his eyeblack, publicly proclaiming his virginity, and performing circumcisions at Christian hospitals in the Philippines, the country of his birth, in the off seasons. He was an icon of the religious right, and had one of the best selling jerseys in the NFL even as a third string quarterback on a lousy team. He was also known, in spite of his shortcomings, as a winner with a preternatural sense of calm in high-pressure situations, who never said an inappropriate word in press conferences. He exhibited a perfect public morality. For me, the chatter around his actions on and off the field provided a fascinating glimpse at American culture in the wane of its empire, suggesting an implicit glimmer of hope that the values tied to the ideology of American exceptionalism did still pencil out. In other words, Tebow’s entre into the league was the perfect storm to lure me out of my boycott.

Tebow has not disappointed, leading the Broncos to a string of ridiculous fourth quarter comebacks and inspiring a growing legion of commentators to hazard theories. His pastor claimed it was divine intervention. Bargoers in Los Angeles chanted his name in hilarious mock irony when his wobbly 30 yard completion to Eric Decker led to his first NFL victory over the Miami Dolphins. The Broncos defense miraculously seemed to improve overnight, holding opponents for weeks to just few enough points to compensate for Tebow’s awful first three quarter performances. Even Saturday Night Live spoofed the Tebow phenomenon, writing a skit in which Jesus rode a cloud into the Broncos locker room the week after Matt Prater’s last second, 59 yard field goal kept the team alive for another overtime win. Jesus let the team know that he wouldn’t be able to help them against the Patriots the next week because he had a birthday coming up (and the Broncos did end up losing that one). Paying attention to all of this has enabled me to connect with my family, which is significant when Carla, Oliver, and I live 3000 miles away and only see them a couple times a year.

But the Tebow thing has also led me to slip a bit more on the boycott. I pay attention to the other teams in the Broncos’ division, and see how they do. Then there are the teams the Broncos play, and my brother’s passion for fantasy football, which leads me to check in on his team’s players. Other stories start to seem interesting, too. Perhaps the Chargers will pull out a few victories, and then we’ll have playoff football in San Diego (not to be, though). Tebow, in other words, was something of a gateway drug for me.

All of this makes me wonder what it is that makes these stories of competition and games so appealing. Granted, I’m probably something more of a sporting nutcase than the average surfer of weekend television, but I imagine that I am not entirely alone. These respites from the difficult things we do are always welcome and alluring, and not without their consequences. When I was looking forward to a Thanksgiving of gluttony and a social event where I could watch football without breaking the boycott, I talked to someone who was going with family to volunteer with their church at an orphanage in Northern Mexico for the holiday. It’s the kind of thing Tebow endorses, but I’m not sure that this family paid any attention at all to football. There is some irony in this, that the time I spend watching Tebow use his public platform as a football player to advertise faith and good works, is probably the time I have in my life to enact good works and experience something like faith. It’s too simple to say that sports narratives substitute for real engagement with a community of care and support, as care and support can happen through shared engagement around such narratives, but it’s also pretty easy to slip back into the old habits of mindless consumption that doesn’t do much good for anybody. It’s the devil in the game, really.

Somehow in aiming for no gifts, the gifts that happened were just right… impromptu, gag gifts that made for a funny Christmas morning, and still let people know that you’d thought about what they would like (or what would make them laugh.) Our 3yr old’s favorite gift was probably a whoopee cushion, which provided us at least an hour of entertainment today. This, combined with the artifice of the Santa story helped make the day feel like Christmas. We also enjoyed some wild romping and chasing, which seems in keeping with some of the pagan core of the holiday—the only part, as agnostics, we can really claim investment in.

My mother-in-law made the holiday special by planning and facilitating visits with our kid’s Great Grandparents and great Aunts and Uncles. These visits are really the core of the holiday, along with the feasts and tv sporting events we’ve gathered around. I’m also fortunate that Oliver appears to enjoy ballet. I went with he and my mother-in-law to the Nutcracker last weekend, and we’ve been drawing ballerinas and re-watching the ballet on Netflix every day since.

My mother-in-law also had the very kind idea of giving us ‘splurge money ‘ in lieu of gifts, which we have used to go out to dinner and which I took shopping with my yesterday at what might be my current favorite store (it specializes in Swedish textiles.) We followed this up by shopping for Christmas dinner, and for desserts and chocolates to eat in celebration of the holiday. As much as I wish to get away from Christmas materialism, I must admit that there is something deeply satisfying about buying nice cuts of meat and colorful foil-wrapped chocolates at this time of year. I have to concede that a rather significant part of the pleasure of Christmas seems to come from the act of shopping. Scheming about what things others might enjoy, and then laying these things aside as a surprise is deeply satisfying. Perhaps it is more satisfying when there is no pressure to spend a certain amount, or to get the one perfect thing. The irony of our efforts to limit the commercialization of Christmas seems to be the fact that it made the process of shopping even more pleasurable.

I’m not sure how to replicate this balance that we seem to have found this year in future years. Rules certainly seem made to be broken. But it seems that the common denominator in the equation was the fact that the shopping and making and wrapping we did do brought us joy, and weren’t done out of a sense of obligation. It also didn’t inspire tremendous guilt or buyers remorse, because on the balance our financial investments were generally small. So perhaps those are the guides for next year? No presents, except for the ones that you feel you can afford, and that bring you joy to make, buy, and give.

And with that I’m pretty sure that I’ve done lots of digging and over-thinking and in the end have arrived at the place that those who haven’t done any worrying about this already inhabit. This type of holiday seems to be second nature to my husband’s family, and also is the holiday that my family has kept over the years. So I concede to those wiser than I, and I hope we will have many more Christmases in this vein for years to come.

According to some, the tradition of giving gifts at the time of the Winter Solstice has a practical subtext. Because winters were so grueling, sharing one’s wealth across the community in the form of gift-giving and potlach was a way to ensure community survival, and also a way to encourage reciprocal generosity in times of scarcity. In many traditions, gifts are not only given to the human community at this time, but also to the natural world, and specifically to birds.

I’ve always been concerned about feeding birds myself… both because I’m afraid of fellow-travelers (rats, roaches, etc.), and also because I’ve always assumed it was better for birds to be able to find what they needed out in the world, since their food source reciprocally aids plants in their pollination/ dissemination. My mother-in-law has converted me recently, though. She is a dedicated bird enthusiast, and has helped me conduct some inquiries into whether feeding birds is bad for the health of bird/plant symbiotic ecosystem. Wisdom of those who know birds seems to suggest that feeding birds is not especially problematic, since most will only use the freebies to supplement their standard foraging. Birds, apparently, do not overeat, nor will they suddenly starve if you forget to fill the bird feeder.

With these fears dispelled, I’ve also taken up the bird-feeding hobby. The symbolism of giving a gift to the birds at this time of year is particularly satisfying. So here is a solstice recipe for suet.

Suet is basically a bird granola bar, and the process of making it is not unlike the process of making a granola bar or oatmeal cookie. One of the benefits of the suet-making process is that you can throw in lots of expiring or not particularly fresh dried fruits and nuts, so it’s a good pantry cleaner. Another benefit is that suet sticks together, and is therefore less messy than a standard feeder where they seed flies everywhere. My thanks to my mother-in-law, Ginny Rice for the recipe and demonstration!

Making suet:

My mother-in-law has a little square cage that holds squares of suet. She makes the suet in a square shape by putting it in little paper molds that she has made of stapled paper. You can make suet in any shape by the same principle. You could also roll pinecones etc. in the suet if you don’t have a dispenser.

1) Prepare molds by lining with plastic wrap or other plastic.
2) Mix 1/2 pckage lard (manteca) and 1/2 an 18 oz jar of cheap peanut butter. Apparently, peanut butter is a big attractor of squirrels, so if you have a squirrel problem, best to use less.
3) Add in stale things you may have around the house. Good candidates include stale breakfast cereal, nuts and dried fruit.
4) Add in 1/2 cup oats and 1/2 cup cormeal. Mix well. Mixture should be like a dry cookie batter.
5) Spoon mixture into molds, and pat into shape using plastic wrap.
6) Freeze for half an hour to an hour. You can keep suet you will not use immediately in the freezer this way. After half an hour, you can remove the suet you want to use and place it in your suet dispenser.

In spite of the fact that the gifts are pretty humble, I’m afraid that I may have broken some of the trust we were able to build up last year by entering back into the arms race. I have to say that I didn’t think through the whole thing very logically. I just kept thinking about Christmas morning, and how giving everyone something that you made with them in mind, or thought they might especially like seems to round out the holiday. Maybe like the rest of the American public I wanted to flee back into the safety of indulgence… keeping up the traditions of the stockings, the tree with gifts under it as an act of re-affirmation. Or maybe, as I’ve been telling myself as I’ve been making these gifts (an buying a few also!), I just want to have some physical symbol of the gratitude I feel to all these people who help keep me, my husband and son balanced and joyful in spite of our many commitments.

The main problem is that I feel like I have betrayed my mother and mother-in-law, who I must say were both incredibly supportive and understanding of my no-gift ultimatum last year. My mom actually mentioned that not doing gifts made the holiday much happier for her, since it took away the stress of trying to buy gifts for people who already have everything they need. I hope that the fact that I got her a present (just one!) this year doesn’t make her feel like she has to get me one in return. My mother-in-law has been very understanding about not doing gifts, though gift giving is something she is very good at, and which seems to bring her joy. So I’m not really sure why I’m breaking the rules here…

The irony is that the no-gift Christmas went very well in 2010. The rules were very clear—gifts for grandchildren only. And for the most part, everyone followed the rules. Life was made easier for me because we traveled from CA to FL on Christmas Day, and so there was no temptation to do the traditional Christmas morning gift-opening extravaganza. I also worked up until two days before Christmas, so there was no time for me to make or buy anything anyway. Finally, because we had Christmas Eve with my family, and the day after Christmas with my husband’s family, it seemed like we crammed in lots of non-gift related celebrating with everyone. So basically it worked well because we sort-of skipped Christmas Day entirely by traveling instead.

So what this year’s violation of the no-gift pact seems to come down to for me is a failure of imagination. The traditionalist in me still wants to celebrate Christmas as I knew it when I was a kid, with gifts and Christmas breakfast and playing with gifts and then Christmas Dinner. Without the centerpiece of the gift-giving, some part of me isn’t really sure what I should do to make Christmas Day itself seem special. I don’t really want to indoctrinate my son into the “Night Before Christmas” Santa Claus fantasy, but I’m not really sure what other types of traditions to put in its place. As someone who isn’t particularly religious, or comfortable with touchy-feely new age substitutions, or able to access/ inherit more pagan and less consumerist holiday traditions, I’m just not sure what to do to make it ours.

So this year I am giving a few gifts as a crutch, and then I will see what other sorts of Christmas Day traditions I can try to start in order to make me feel like I have observed the holiday. Next year perhaps I can return to the no-gift challenge! In the meantime, please let me know what non-gift traditions you have on Christmas Day, I need help.

Because we usually leave town and have a small apartment, and also because I’m lazy and cheap, we have sought some other options. For example, we did a Christmas branch last year. (Notice the “elegant” eucalpytus garland that makes my bookshelf look like Mr. Snufulupagus). This year we brought out my favorite holiday plant (which also stars as our Easter Egg tree in springtime), my estate sale Euphorbia. These wonderful succulents require almost no care, will grow gigantic if permitted to do so, have perfect ornament-hanging branches. They tend to be more vertical than the standard Xmas tree shape, but they could probably be pruned and trained into greater compliance. And unlike a real potted Xmas tree, this lovely euphorbia has lived happily in a pot for many years (it was an adult when I got it 5 years ago) and will likely continue to do so for many more. We did burn a “nobel fir” scented candle while decorating for the full piney effect, and really, it was a pretty good substitute.

Though the question of whether or not I should quit sending paper holiday cards on the basis of their carbon cost has been addressed on Sparrowpost before, it is a question that comes up again every Dec.1. As I weigh my options each year, I usually decide to keep sending paper cards because I continue to love getting paper cards. Especially now that I’ve tried to pare down other elements of holiday largess, I think I relish opening these little holiday greetings more than ever.

As much as I love getting cards, though, the thrifty Calvinist in me has a very hard time putting them in the recycle bin after the holidays are over. At various times in my life, this has led to a dangerous accumulation of holiday cards. I’ve managed to buck up every now and again and, in an act of daring strength, clean out these viking hoards of holidays gone by, and thus have saved myself from a lifetime’s accumulated cards–but it wasn’t easy.

On Martha Stewart and in other venues I’ve seen some interesting projects that repurpose these old cards, but a lot of the projects are pretty clunky. I have a friend who cuts out the designs from the cards and turns them into gift tags, which is great, but which still seems like a pretty serious downcycle (since the design is usually small, and usually you are gluing it onto new paper.

Things get even tougher these days because of the dominance of the photo greeting card. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE photo cards, and in fact have almost gotten to the point of feeling seriously robbed if cards don’t include a picture. But in terms of future re-usability/disposability, they are the worst. It’s all well and good to cut out a reindeer from one of those “classic” holiday greeting cards and turn it into a gift embellishment, but that doesn’t work so well when you’re trying to figure out how to recycle a very nice picture of your cousin. Even worse is the notion of chucking all those adorable baby picture holiday cards in the trash can (can you recycle photo paper?)–if you are superstitious like I am, throwing away pictures of babies really carries some troubling ju ju. So what to do besides hoard? I’m taking suggestions…

In the meantime, since I am so painfully aware of this dilemma, my new dogma is to create cards that 1) are made from materials that were just going to get recycled anyway and that 2) nobody will feel badly about recycling once Jan 1 rolls around. Last year we made cards out of the accumulated scribbly drawings that we’d drawn with our toddler son over the course of the year. We rolled on some red ink and sprinkled the drawings with glitter to make them look more “holiday,” and then mounted them on some old paper I had lying around the house. We made a stamp out of a easy to carve lino block, and envelopes out of old grocery sacks. The result is not beautiful, and I did feel a bit like we were shorting people on the photo-card experience, but at least I hope that nobody had qualms about tossing the end-product in the recycle bin. (Does glitter f*@k with the paper recycling process? I wonder…)

This year we’re going slightly more up-market thanks to an unsolicited gift of black card stock received earlier in the year. This combined with the outrageously lavish art supplies we’ve accumulated for our son should lead to a decent product. We are also planning to hybridize the paper/digital card by including a url for a digital holiday picture. This will not only eliminate the guilt issue for our card recipients, but will also mean that those who find pictures of us insufferable will not have to bear witness to another family xmas photo. So get on the list now if you want one (paper addresses only, please, we’re trying to keep USPS in business here!) Email cablackmar@yahoo.com

And happy holidays to you and your recycle bin.

I know this might make me the enemy of children everywhere, but this year for Halloween I was trying to come up with good “treats” for the trick-or-treat basket that didn’t involve buying something from Hershey Inc. It was really just good fortune that led me to the concept of melted crayons. I was telling my co-workers about my son’s obsession with crayons, and about the many many gnarled, half-melted discards we have lying around our house, and they suggested melting them into new forms.

I guess this is a well-loved preschool craft, and I can see why. I’ve been a little bit confused about what to do with my son now that the sun is going down at 6 pm. The night seems eternal, and daylight savings hasn’t even ended yet. Pulling the wrappers off of crayons and putting them in our cheapo silicone ice cube tray we got from Ikea a few years back was a GREAT way to pass some of those dark hours. Because my son has certain favorite crayons (blue, red, yellow, purple), and those favorite crayons seem to have fled our household, we have a superabundance of oranges and greens lying around. The first candy corn crayon was just an accident resulting from all those orange crayons lying about. Then I thought that this might actually be a sort-of fun, non-consumer Halloween giveaway.

They didn’t really turn out as perfect “candy corns” because the colors all swirled together, but they’re sort-of recognizable. I was a bit concerned about the safety problem of children mistaking them for candy (yeah right), so I created some labels for them with a skull and crossbones. I agree with my husband that in all likelihood, and kid who is… em… clueless enough to think that this is candy is also probably unlikely to be deterred by the skull and crossbones and “100% reclaimed crayon” labeling–but these are the cases where we have to hope for parent supervision.

I’ll post a follow-up to this and let you know what kind of reviews we get from the trick-or-treaters. We’re also giving away some Mardi-Gras beads (we have millions, I don’t know why) and maybe some reses pb cups (so I can eat them myself… what was that I said about boycotting big sugar???)

Let me know if you think that we’re shortchanging America’s youth.

PS: to “cook” the crayons, you put them in the oven at around 200 degrees F for 15 minutes. Then you can just pop them out of the silicone containers once they are cool to the touch.

I have a love/hate relationship with eucalyptus trees.

Hate because:
-They shade my garden
-They drop poisonous herbicidal oils that suppress other, competing plants (my garden, native plants, etc.) from growing
-They drop reasonably heavy branches everywhere with very little notice
-They make parts of San Diego appear forested

Love because:
-They grow large and provide shade with next to no water
-They make parts of San Diego appear forested
-They look beautiful when they blow in the wind
-So many different kinds!
-Beautiful flowers, many in outrageous shades of pink, looking like tiny sea anenomes

Would I prefer San Diego without them? Yes. Would I also prefer San Diego not to have been settled by 1.2 million people?

So what better way to commemorate the urban pests we all are than by making a spooktacular eucalyptus branch wreath. Special thanks to the eucalyptus tree that shades my garden for providing the materials.

Making the wreath is easy.
Materials:
wreath form
light wire for wiring branches down (hopefully in an unobtrusive color)
wire cutting scissors
branches

To make: twist branches into armature, going for a sloppy look (at each point where a branch veers off the wreath form, add a new branch under it). Wire branches in place (don’t go to crazy, this is an ephemeral art form). Ta da!

Saving tomato seeds is easy.

Be sure to harvest seeds from fruit that is well-formed, and representative of the characteristics you like BEST in the plant.
1) Squeeze out the seeds into a reclaimed plastic container with a tight-fitting lid. You can discard the skin, or if you prefer, you could use it in a sauce.
2) Put the lid on and label the container. Place it somewhere warm, but out of direct sunlight. The goal here is to get the seedy stuff to ferment. You will know this has happened because the gasses from the fermentation process will “pop” the top off the plastic container. Once this happens (in 2-3 days) the seeds will be ready. Don’t let it go too long because the seeds could mold.
3) Rinse the seeds with water, pouring off any gunk that is not seed.
4) Drain rinsed seeds onto labeled coffee filters
5) Once they are dry (3 days or so in my dry climate), you can pop them off the filters and put ‘em in some kind of storage. Make sure the storage is dry, cool and dark to prevent premature germination!
6) Tada! Incendentally, one of the easiest ways to re-seed your tomato crop is to let some of the fruit rot into the ground each season… you may have volunteers for years afterwards.