CHRISTMAS DRUTHERS

 CHRISTMAS DRUTHERS

1Thessalonians 5:18-19 In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Do not quench the Spirit.

  Being from a different country, Maryland, and cultural era, the GI Generation, folks don’t always understand my parlance. Consequently, after arriving in Nebraska I soon stopped using certain expressions lest I be thought to have webs between my toes.

  One such turn of phrase is “Now if I had my druthers …” meaning “If I had my preference …” (And it isn’t just some Southern idiom. It’s a real word. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/druthers )

  Bogged down in The Christmas Druthers Syndrome some folks will swamp 1Thessalonians gratitude.

  My Dad and Mom were hard workers. Married, starting a family and purchasing a home during the Great Depression era was no easy feat. Dad worked fulltime, and on the side drove cab, cut meat (self-taught) for local Jewish family corner grocery stores, delivered daily newspapers, ran a side business, and was on call to *pickup the deceased for a mortician. Mom worked on military plane radios at Bendix until WWII ended, waitressed banquets and painted and wallpapered (very popular then) then and after, and kept house.

  We lived carefully. Brother Jim and I each had a single pair of shoes at a time, sometimes worn with cereal box inner soles to cover a hole in leather sole and keep our socks from wearing out. (Worked fine except when it rained.)

  According to present day government agency standards we’d be considered living in poverty.

  We were not poor. Not because we were too dumb to know the difference or that many around lived just like us, but because we had everything that mattered, knew so, and were thankful for it!

  Did I have druthers then? Sure did. I would have liked second pair of shoes, hi-top sneakers like a very few of the other kids wore. I wished I did not to have to wear durable-wearing itchy wool trousers. But there were no druthers that overrode gratitude for extended family love and security.

  I’m thankful we were impressed in that long ago time to live gratefully instead of with attitude that throws a wet blanket on one’s spirit.

  I’m thankful that such Proverbs 22:6 childhood training prepared me for later financial times. (When Ann and I married we had neither electricity, plumbing, or central heat or AC.)

  Didn’t know the difference at the time, but oh my what a wonderful Christmas gift!

  Which would you druther have, the latest consumer items or a thankful heart?

EBB4

 

*This most involved downtown tenement buildings sans elevators. They would place the deceased in a large wicker basket with handles and carry them down the narrow stairways to the hearse.