Christmas in New Haven

Merry Christmas to all of our devoted readers and to the rest of the world besides (which may be redundant). It has been a busy season and a happy one. Just a few words about our recent activities.

Monday (12.22.2008): Justin left home just before 9 this morning to join forces with his redoubtable comrade, Brady Pope, to spearhead the ponderous project of moving an elderly and immobile sister in the ward from one apartment to another. Conditions more adverse for such a project could hardly be imagined. It snowed for most of the preceding day; temperatures when the project began hovered around 10 degrees, sharpened by the bitter edge of an icy wind; the sister’s apartment (really one half of a duplex) rested at the top of a very long driveway, steeply inclined; getting stuff from the apartment to the truck involved descending a treacherous set of wooden stairs, laced with a parlous sheet of incipient ice; and the apartment was chock-full—wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling; bedroom and basement, bathroom and bookcase, kitchen and closet—with junk, junk, junk; with a lifetime of accumulated baubles and bric-a-brac, trinkets and trash. Here was pack-rattism run pathological. Brady heroically took the lead in tackling the gargantuan task of emptying the place, diverting its contents by turns to the new apartment, to a storage unit, and to the rubbish bin.

The first task was to trek to Trumbull in search of boxes. Justin and Brady bought more than sixty and stuffed our van with them. They then picked up a Penske truck and a pair of fellow laborers on their way to the good sister’s home in East Haven. In all, they were seven men, intrepid and indefatigable, to undertake the task. They worked through the day and into the night. After the sun had set they were given an assist by our local missionaries.

At one point, Brother Shane Lloyd was asked what his plans for that evening were. He responded, “Oh, nothing special. Just dinner, then family home evening, then the long process of smoothing things over with my wife.” All present had some apologizing to do at the end of the day for absenting themselves from spouse and offspring for the whole of a rare day off.

A little after seven, Justin and Mike Turner, our inestimable bishop, dropped off the rest of the gang at the storage unit for the final unloading before racing back to New Haven for the much-awaited festivities of that evening.

These centered on a tri-familial staging of a nativity play, written by Justin and performed by the Collings, Turner, and Thompson families for family home evening. Julia was a wise man,

joined in this role by Elias Thompson and Isaac Turner; Eli was a shepherd,

alongside Maddie Thompson; Lia and Rhonda Turner were angels; John Thompson was Samuel the Lamanite, the rest of the cast his archer-aggressors; Shad and Abigail Turner were Joseph and Mary, and Bishop Turner was Mary’s donkey. Justin read the narrative, which was duly interrupted at strategic points by the singing of primary Christmas songs. The evening was a success, the children angelic and adorable. It was a rich experience.





Tuesday (12.23.2008): We celebrated the 203rd birthday of the Prophet Joseph Smith by joining other members of our ward—there were about 35 participants in all—on a pilgrimage to the Prophet’s birthplace memorial in Sharon, Vermont. The morning began early with a “morningside” at the Church dedicated to the Prophet’s life and mission. This was largely Justin’s production: two of the three musical selections were his compositions (“Brother Joseph,” which he wrote for the Prophet’s bicentennial and “Praise to the Seer,” which he wrote as a missionary after the Nauvoo Temple dedication; the opening hymn was, of course, “Praise to the Man”) and he gave a presentation of some length about the Prophet’s life and ministry. Two members of the bishopric added brief testimonies and then we were off to Sharon.

The trip north proved astonishingly easy going. We didn’t stop once and, incredibly, we never got lost nor even diverted. Arrived near Sharon, we all met up for lunch at a local pizzeria where the kids raised havoc and we collectively disposed of ten pizzas in short order. The adults having staved their hunger pangs and the children having shed themselves of their inevitable “wiggles,” we were ready to visit the memorial. We first watched the movie, “Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration.” Recognizing in his maturer years that film is art, not history, Justin rather enjoyed it (neither he nor Lia had seen it before). Julia liked it, but thought it too scary (rightly so); Eli was enthralled. Lia missed a lot of it while she was feeding Katharine. On a couple occasions, Justin too stepped out with Katharine to calm her down. On one of these, he emerged into the display room just in time to witness the placement of Volume 1 of the Joseph Smith Papers into the glass display case of books about Joseph Smith. Justin and Lia both worked as researchers on that volume, so it was a special thing to witness its formal encasement at that sacred memorial.


When the movie was over, we were given a tour of the visitors center where Justin ran into a guy (now a master’s student at Dartmouth) with whom he’d taken a gym class at BYU. After the tour, we were invited into the home of the site directors (a senior missionary couple, the McKinnons) to eat some of the Prophet’s birthday cake. By this time night had fallen, and the memorial was illuminated with a hundred-thousand Christmas lights. Justin then took an investigator, Carlos, and his son, Ben, to visit the actual monument. Justin loaned his overcoat to Carlos, who was singularly underdressed for the occasion. Carlos was very excited by all of this, and it was touching to see his first encounter with that impressive monument raised, “Sacred to the Memory of Joseph Smith the Prophet.”

The whole day constituted a very moving experience. Justin loves the Sharon memorial, perhaps above all other Church history sites, and dreams of returning their some day as a senior missionary. Although our drive home was distinctly less smooth than the drive up, the trip was well worth the time and trouble. It was a rich and memorable experience, the perfect way to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday.




Wednesday (12.24.2008): Christmas Eve means last-minute shopping. In the morning, Lia took Eli out to get a present for Julia; in the afternoon, she took Julia out to shop for Eli. Justin held down the fort each time with Katharine and her non-shopping big sister. Both big girls loved shopping alone with their mom. In the evening we were hosted by Brian, Keely, and Savayah (3) Knudsen for dinner and merriment. Also present were Brian’s sister, Rachel; Keely’s mother, Nancy Smith; and the four New Haven missionaries. We had a fabulous meal of steak and potatoes; Brian kept a blazing fire roaring on the hearth; Julia and Eli rhapsodically shared in the glory of Savayah’s toys; and Justin and Brian regaled the elders with tales of their own missionary exploits. After the elders dutifully went home at their appointed hour, we played “Time’s Up” (known in some circles and in alternate forms as “Celebrity”). Lia and Nancy emerged as the triumphant team; Keely and Rachel as the funniest team; Brian and Justin as the most sportsmanlike competitors. It was a wonderful evening. Eli cried bitterly when it was time to go home. The girls got to bed late and their parents, after playing Santa for a time, got to bed even later.






Thursday to Saturday (12.25.2008 to 12.27.2008): Christmas dawned with the inevitable opening of presents and the inevitable subsequent fighting over them. Justin found this distressing, but Lia rightly pointed out that little girls have it in their genetic makeup to quarrel over the introduction of any new object into their sphere of activity. Justin’s parents arrived Friday evening, having previously sent a caseload of presents before them in the mail. Saturday morning we opened these presents. Later in the morning, another package stuffed with presents arrived in the mail, this one from Lia’s recently-returned-missionary sister, Jini. All of this is more interesting in pictures than in prose.