Tis the Season

“Tis the season”, but what “the season” actually is varies amongst individuals. December is definitely a month in which you reap exactly what you sow. For example, if

you’re a Grinch and decide you hate Christmas and all that goes with it, then you are most certainly in

for a very long, arduous month. On the other hand, if you throw yourself into the holiday festivities with cheer and gusto, there’s no end to the joy you’ll take away from it all.

Personally, the month leading up to Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year. When I was a kid, there was no end to the holiday traditions we concocted, and even now, some of those traditions remain in tact. Mom stills buys a new puzzle or Lego set for us to work on (adults that we now are) on Christmas Eve, while watching Christmas movies and drinking homemade hot cocoa. Dad and I still make vast amounts of Spritz cookies at the beginning of December, just the two of us, filling buckets full of the tiny, Crisco-y delights, which always last until New Years. Icicle boy twinkle lights still hang on the mantel amid our stockings, the only change being that now the quantity of stockings which hang there has joyously grown as we’ve added new members to our family.

Next weekend, Old Fashioned Christmas in Wilmore will take place, which has always been my favorite Wilmore festival. All of the little shops on Main Street hold open houses, encouraging people to come in out of the cold, receive refreshments, listen to live Christmas music, and then venture back out onto the street to repeat the process all over again. Hundreds of Wilmorons walk up and down Main Street, sharing Christmas together as they reunite after not having seen each other in some cases since the festival the previous year.

When I was in Middle school, I can remember my friend Mary and I having sleepovers on the evening of December 22^nd, carrying over into December 23^rd, which we cleverly referred to as “Christmas Adam”, it being the day before Christmas Eve. We would watch as many Christmas movies as our brains could process, working on craft projects as we watched.

Back in the days before my brothers and I got too wise for our own good, we had many questions about Santa Claus. We each had our own personal elf we would write letters to in a spiral notebook, leaving it out on the kitchen table when we went to bed. When we woke up the next morning, our letters would have been answered by our elf friends (mine’s name was Elizabeth), and sometimes a treat or two would be left as well. Once I remember Elizabeth’s handwriting looking particularly like Dad’s, and when I confronted him on this matter, he admitted to being the letter writer that one time, because when he’d woken up and seen Elizabeth had not been to the house to leave a response to my letter, he had not wanted me to feel upset, so he’d intervened.

There was a magic elf that Mom made back before memory, that had green yarn hair, a red elf suit with bells on the toes and a little black belt around his middle, and eyes that remained closed, in a happy, sleepy state. Every year when we’d put up our Christmas tree and unpack our decorations, we’d take the magic elf out of his red flannel sack, and each member of our family sprinkled him with the magic glitter dust kept in a vile inside the bag. After everyone had sprinkled him (including our dog, Lucky), we’d place him under the Christmas tree, and the next morning when we awoke, he would have hidden himself someplace in the living room. Every morning we found him in a new place, and after he had been discovered by all, we’d place him carefully back under the tree, so that he could hide again the next night. This was a daily ritual up until Christmas Eve, when Santa would take him back to the North Pole, and we wouldn’t see him again until the next year.

Back in the days when Dad was the pastor of different Churches, December was a month of wrapping gifts to take with us the nursing home, where we’d sing carols to the inhabitants. One year a lady told Mom that she had the most beautiful singing voice she’d ever heard, and I think that’s when Mom developed a soft spot for crazy, old people. We’d carol door to door in various neighborhoods as well, and I can’t remember ever having had more fun than I did on those cold nights of spontaneous singing.

I have a thousand such memories that I’m sure will never fade, and I suppose they are what make the entire Christmas season such a joy for me. I am looking forward to all of the parties and celebrations that will take place throughout the coming month, and I hope that you are too.

Ape Day

You may find this hard to believe, but the annual Ape Day celebration that my older brothers developed 12 years ago is one of my favorite, most anticipated holidays of the year.

It began as a bit of silliness when Cris and Dusty were attending Asbury College at the same time. They hung around with the same group of friends, and for some reason, they thought it would be a laugh to dedicate an entire Saturday to watching all 5 of the Planet of the Apes movies. Little did they know then that their goofy idea would become the basis for an ongoing, beloved tradition.

Always held the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Ape Day became a major event for the Asbury crowd, each year requiring a bigger venue to accommodate the loyal participants. Of course, after the first few years, Cris and Dusty had finished their time at Asbury College, but the tradition lived on.

Old friends who had helped found this celebration of bad Sci-Fi movies would sometimes travel quite a ways to attend. In some cases, founders that had settled in areas too distant to make the trip hosted their own Ape Day, making it a nationwide holiday.

Each year, new traditions and rituals are added to our bizarre day of fun, including, but not limited to:

- Incredibly violent monkey fights between Scotty and Dusty, in which they put on ape masks, find some grass, and pound each other until one of them can’t take it anymore.

- The Passing of the Sacred Ape ritual, which takes place after every movie, and involves everyone in the room congregating in a circle, clapping and doing their best ape impressions as we pass around an ape statue, wearing a Packer’s uniform, that Dusty painted back in high school. The full extent of this rather terrifying ceremony has developed over time, but if I’m not mistaken, The Sacred Ape was present even at the very first Ape Day.

- T-Shirt making. We don’t do it every year, but at this point, I think I’ve acquired at least 4, each unique and awesome.

- When the remake Planet of the Apes movie came out in 2001, we of

course incorporated that into the festivities. If you’re going to do something, do it right. The first few years we held an Ape Day Eve to watch the new movie, but now it has become a part of Ape day, extending our celebration, which now lasts from 10am until around 9 or 10pm.

Only themed snacks are allowed, and you wouldn’t believe how creative we get with this. I for one am responsible for making ape faced cookies, which you can see depicted here. Jen and Sharon have been known to bake different kinds of cakes, either shaped like ape heads, or bearing a creative, series related name, such as “Damned Dirty Cake.” Without fail, Dusty and Sharon always

provide the “Monkey Poo”, which is a giant bowl of crumbled and mashed brownies with the added class of walnuts. Most years Jen makes hot apple cider, and we call it “Monkey Blood.” Every so often, someone will bring monkey bread and bananas. Usually we have a two liter of grape soda around that no one ever drinks, but it sits as a trophy, the letters “GR” scratched out with a Sharpie.

This year, Molly brought a crock of delicious pulled pork, and we had no choice but to call it “Simmering Simian.” One year, Cris made a bunch of beer ahead of time, then spent who knows how long developing labels for his “Ape Beer”, which depicted scenes from the movies. Scotty is famous for his diligent yearly modifications to boxes of Charleston Chews, placing cut-to-size post it notes over the letters “ES” to make them Charlton Chews (and if I remember correctly, he sometimes changes them to “Cheston Chews”) to honor the beloved hero in the series, Charlton Heston. He also revises the word “Vanilla” to “Gorilla” so that the flavor matches the day. Genius.

If you’re not weirded out right now, you probably should be. This is by far the strangest celebration I have ever come across, and I love it dearly. It’s a day of consistency and fellowship. So many things in my life have changed as I’ve grown from a child into an adult, and I don’t mean for better or worse, just different. But Ape Day is for the most part unchanging, and I can count on its silliness to give me a boost as I share these traditions with my family and friends, who fortunately are as goofy as I.

The Crunching Of Leaves

Every Kentucky autumn seems like a miracle to me. Sometimes I get in my car and just drive, no destination in mind, only a longing to see the bright orange, red, yellow, purple, green, and brown leaves hanging from small and massive trees alike. Some people place trees into a single category, but the truth is, trees have as many personality types as people. Some drop a leaf at a time, knowing the time is coming when they can no longer keep what they’ve made and beginning the transition of loss, yet reluctant to give up their entire livelihood until it becomes absolutely necessary. Others jealously guard what belongs to them, keeping each leaf in check until all in one moment, the weight of responsibility becomes too great, and every leaf is abandoned into the breeze.

A friend of mine accuses me of extreme morbidity, because the truth is, I enjoy the dead leaves on the ground just as much as I love them alive in the trees. Making a point to step directly on as many as I can throughout the course of a walk, I am filled with pure joy at the crunching sound released from beneath my feet. There is nothing so simple in life as the crunching of leaves.

Some of my favorite memories are bound up with crunching leaves:

Building fort outlines with friends as a child, the elaborateness of the structures causing my mind to reel even now. The kitchen was essential in order to shelter a teepee stick configuration holding a bucket of dirty water in which we mixed fallen walnuts to produce imaginary stew. Almost equally important was a living room to relax in when the days work had been completed, and though young, we new the importance of prioritizing a space in which a girl could see a man about a horse (theoretically, of course)……

Waiting for that one day of opportunity when my favorite Ginkgo tree on Lexington Avenue would share its spongy, bright yellow fan leaves, giving us an entire afternoon of childhood ecstasy as we wore ourselves out building up piles and jumping in, building up piles and jumping in……

Walking from the bus stop with Kelly sophomore year of high school, both of us stomping as hard as we could, and laughing hysterically……

Rolling my lawn mower over thick leaf accumulation and watching the machine spit out the puréed product in perfect uniformity……

Strolling through my college campus after a fascinating literary discussion, the smell of dried leaves in my nostrils, their resonating rustle in my ears as I contemplated life’s wonders, both big and small……

The anticipation of the Evely family Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving, played amongst the fallen leaves with a belly full of culinary wonders……

These are the things that make Autumn mine, and now, I’m sharing them with you;)