Conference quark::mennotes-v1

    
    
    
    
      My mother would always ask each of us( at the table) to name
    something we were thankful for. I always thanked God we were almost
    finished so we could eat ( drew a terrible look from my Father) :-)
    
    My mother was a remarkable woman. She had nine children, and alot of
    them were like me, and she didn't drink:-) I think this year when I
    am asked what I am grateful for I will say " For a heavenly mother".
    
    David

    
    I've found a lot of men saying that the shopping ritual of finding
    gifts for friends and family members BELONGS to women. The average male
    who goes is just along for the ride.
    
    My sister used to do apricot bavarian cream every year. She hasn't done
    it in a while. Maybe I'll do it this year. Its one of those "Jello"
    desserts, and its AWESOME.
    
    Perhaps it is because there are so few men in my family, and we're not
    that traditional, I don't think of things as gender-determined. If you
    were good at something, you just did it...

    Every Christmas my mother used to go way into the woods in back of our
    house and pick princess pine and evergreen to make wreaths with.  When
    I was a little kid she used to make me go with her, and I used to get
    bored with it.  I can remember my hands being cold and trudging through
    the woods and wishing she would hurry up and get ready to walk home. 
    After I got married she always made me a wreath, too.  One year I made
    my own but thought it was tedious so after that I let her make them
    both again.  She enjoyed doing it anyway.  My mother is 79 now and has
    been in a nursing home for the past almost 6 yrs., because of brain
    damage caused by a brain hemorrage.  She no longer knows what's going
    on in the real world, and I really miss her at the holidays.  It's
    funny the things we take for granted as kids and young adults, that we
    may eventually really miss someday.  It would mean a lot to me now to
    be able to have one of my mother's wreaths, or even to go trudging
    through the woods, with my hands freezing, while she picked the
    evergreen.  I might even help pick it now if I had the chance.  Well,
    maybe...
    
    Lorna
    

    
    When I was growing up, my family always did all of it together......
    
    We all picked out the tree from designated areas in the mountains
    (of course, I'm sure that's not an option anymore), we'd all decorate
    the tree when we brought it home while my father would play all of
    his Bing Crosby christmas records.....we all cooked dinner together,
    each of us assigning ourselves a particular job in the kitchen, which
    got to be interesting some years.....
    
    We didn't have Christmas dinner until Christmas day (I think this was
    a ploy from keeping my brother and I from eating too much candy) and
    of course my brother and I would always wake up every hour on the hour
    (because we couldn't sleep anyways) and run into my folk's room, wake
    them up too and ask if it was time to open presents yet.  My parents
    now tell me it's *my* turn.
    
    Most of my Christmas's have been very traditional except for last year
    as I was raised in Colorado and now live Houston for the past year
    and a half and last year was the first time for a Christmas without
    snow.  We were actually wearing short and t-shirts at this time of year
    last year - allthough I tried VERY hard to decorate my house to make it
    seem more like home - "something" was missing.....this year we ARE
    heading back to the mountains and I can't wait!
    
    -Lynn
    

    
    My mother did most of the christmas shopping on everyone's behalf from
    us to remote family members (to cousin whoever from the Bobbitt
    clan...etc....)...when we had stockings she also bought and
    tissue-papered all the stocking stuffers (even the orange that went in
    the toe).
    
    she also did the cooking and carving, though my father helped often
    with the cleanup.
    
    -Jody
    

    Mom made, signed, and sent the Christmas cards, sometimes with help
    from us kids (depending on how complicated this year's arts-and-crafts
    exercise was - I remember one year when she made angels using lots of
    little bits of colored paper, and we had a regular assembly line going
    on the kitchen table for _weeks_). 
    
    Mom made the "Paradise Roll," an incredibly dense, rich concoction
    involving dates, walnuts, marshmallows, and graham crackers all run
    through a meat grinder to form a paste that rivalled tar for
    stickiness. This was, with great difficulty, formed into rolls, coated
    with more graham cracker crumbs, and chilled; it was served in units of
    about one cubic inch, topped with Redi-Whip and a Red Dye #2 maraschino
    cherry (ah, the good old days! Mom was artsy-craftsy, but she wasn't
    into all-natural ingredients).
    
    Mom bought most of the from-her and from-Mom-and-Dad presents, but Dad
    always came up with a few on his own.
    
    Mom delegated the Christmas-tree decorating to the kids at a fairly
    early stage - it's hard to get the tinsel off your hands when you're
    mixing up Paradise Roll - so we generally did that.
    
    And Mom cooked the Christmas dinner, delegating table-setting and
    salad-making to the youngest kids and gravy-making to the older ones.
    
    Oh, and I suspect she chose all the Christmas music, too. ;-)
    
    -b

    
    
       To cook, clean, be quiet, and keep the beers coming.
    
                                  :')

    i just read in the national inquire that women will take over in about
    20 years, the article , which was about a page long, said that
    more women are getting in business and that they are better than the
    men in sharing the power and that they dont do the hierarical (sp?) thing,
    whatever that is, it also said already about 5 million business are
    owned by women (that sounds too much, doesn't?), the article also
    said that women will kick men out of top position in major cooperations
    and that major TV news anchors will be all women not men. it said this
    all will happen in about 20 years .

    i do not remember the name of the author , but i think the  magazine
    was one of those ones at the news stands in the supermarkets.

    buy,
    /nasser

    
    
    Nasser,
    
    
      First of the National Enquirer is best used to wipe you nose with.
     Secondly, this topic is for the discussing holiday traditions, not
    articles about takeovers.
    
    
    David

    David,

    you go blow your own nose thank very much you and dont tell me to blow
    my own nose or what to blow it with, that is my own decisions
    to take and not yours by the stretch of any imaginations plus why cant 
    a take overs happen during the holidays any ways? the papers never said 
    when these will happen because even you did not read and you coming
    here making yourself like and expert at it and all so you go
    bang your head with it and come tell us how it feels.

    \buy
    \nasser

    
    
    NASA
    
    you can blow anything you want; remember you're in the USA now.
    
    Commander
    

    .-1
    Commandor, what do you mean iam a Mommy's boy?
    
    IAM NOT!!!
    
    you dont know me, so you better get off it. ok? thank you.
    
    \bye
    \nasser

    
    
    Nasser,
    
     Ok. Sorry if I upset you. I simply did not want takeover topics to
    turn this into a battle. It's Christmas time. Lets save all the fighten
    for next year.
    
    thanks for understanding,
    David