Christmas Fun for Boys!

By on December 7, 2011 in Christmas, Uncategorized

Manly Christmas Decorations?? It’s hard to get boys interested in the homemaking things moms love so much. What color bathmat should we choose? “Who cares.” Clean up the living room? “Why? It doesn’t bother me.” And decorations? “Can’t we make cookies instead?” Cookies, you see, were made to be eaten. We’ll never forget the time we made special salt cookies for Christmas ornaments. Our boys were incredulous that we’d make cookies and not serve them to anyone. What a waste!

If you can capture their interest, though, sometimes they’ll surprise you. One thing we’ve found our boys love is to decorate with natural things. What better time to do this than Christmas? The very most elegant, beautiful, classic Christmas decorations are made from natural things. We always think about Colonial Williamsburg – lovely pyramids of fruit in the center of the table and the aroma of pine garland as you stand at the door of an old building.

You might show your children this video of Holiday Decorating at Colonial Williamsburg. Scroll down and click on Holiday Decorating on the right to inspire them with ideas. It’s really quite easy to imitate. God has done much of the work!

That suites boys down to the ground! They just love collecting pinecones and cutting off branches and making things that employ clippers and wire and wire cutters. So, grab some branch clippers and take a walk. Look for evergreen trees, and holly, and things with pretty red berries if you don’t have a toddler, or have a spot up high you can put them. Take a big basket and collect some pine cones, both small and large, a few acorns, some magnolia leaves, and perhaps a pretty vine (avoid leaves of three, though!). Go to the Farmer’s Market or store and get some pretty winter fruit – lemons, limes, oranges or apples, too.

This is a great time to talk to your children about the Christian history of decorating with greenery (It’s true! Check out Christ-Centered Christmas for the exciting story.) and what all those things stand for – evergreens to remind of us of eternal life, white for Christ’s sinlessness, red for his blood, gold because a King has been born!

If you can’t find enough materials in your yard, or your neighbor’s (ask first, of course) or on your walks in the woods, then ask a Christmas tree seller if you can have the branches he’s trimmed off the bottom of trees. They are usually glad for you to cart them away. The ones that don’t sell handmade garlands or wreaths themselves are the most likely to share!

We love to make our own wreathes and garlands, and so do the boys! Here’s an excerpt adapted from our new book, Christ-Centered Christmas, to show you how:

Evergreen Garlands and Wreathes

Evergreen boughs

Small pruning shears (in a pinch even your dog’s nail clippers will work)

22 or 24 gauge wire, green is nice, but not necessary

Something to cut the wire, like wire cutters or a pair of cheap scissors you don’t mind ruining

(Optional) Lemons, limes, apples, or other fruit; ribbons; cheap gold or silver beads, magnolia leaves, other Christmas decorations

 

 

Cut the boughs into sprigs about 10 to 12 inches long. Pick up a few sprigs of evergreen and wind them together with wire. Don’t cut the wire! Add another handful of sprigs to the stem of the first, with the tops pointing the same way but slid down further, wiring them to the first group by just wrapping the paddle of wire around both of them a few times. Pick up another handful and do the same thing.

Continue until the garland is long enough for your purpose. Turn the last sprig the opposite direction and wire it to the next to last bunch. We put a large nail at each corner of our front porch and drape the garland across it.

Once you’ve made a garland, you can make a wreath very easily the same way. Find a sturdy, but flexible longer branch and bend it into a circle shape. If you don’t have one long enough, wire two or more, or a whole handful of thinner branches together. Choose a starting point and wrap the paddle around the wreath-form branches and around a handful of sprigs. Move over a bit and pick up another handful of sprigs. Use the top of the sprigs to cover the wire you just wrapped (Point the sprigs all the same way!) and wire them to the wreath the same way. Continue all around the wreath, making it as full as you desire. When you get back to where you started, lift the top of that very first sprig, stick the stems of the last sprig under it and wire them down. These wreaths smell wonderful!!

We like to decorate it Williamsburg style: wiring lemons and limes or apples to the wreath. Just get a straight piece of wire and holding it close to the point, aim it right at the side of the fruit. Just jab it in and smoothly push it through the fruit – it will pop out on the other side. Pull the wire halfway through, then use the two ends to wire the fruit to the wreath. We add a big red bow, too.

Christmas tree decorations (glass balls in particular) are lovely wired into the garland, as well. You can make small garlands to decorate your tables and mantles, too. Just lay the garland down the center of the table, using a curving, winding path. It’s lovely to wind gold beads around it, or ribbon, or to decorate with fruit or pinecones.

We use just the branches, too, letting them droop over the edge of pictures or pile pretty ones on the top of book cases, or arrange them behind the nativity scene.

We’ve found that our boys greatly enjoy this work. It seems like a manly way to decorate! Nice, foresty smells, no frou-frou stuff, all natural. Just the kind of stuff guys like. It’s like making the whole house his treasure shelf!

Want more fun ideas, and help to keep your Christmas stress-free and focused where it belongs? Click here to check out and download a copy of our new book, Christ-Centered Christmas: The Ultimate Guide to Celebrating a Christmas Your Family Will Never Forget.

Hal & Melanie Hal & Melanie Young

Hal & Melanie Young are the authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, CSPA 2011 Book of the Year. Check out their blog, join them on Facebook, and take a look at their great character-building gifts for boys!

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The Manly Virtues: A Powerful Mercy

By on November 18, 2011 in growing godly men, leadership, Manly Virtues, Uncategorized

The Alamo, 1854

When the outnumbered defenders of the Alamo refused the Mexicans’ demand to surrender, General Santa Anna ordered his buglers to play “El Deguello” – a call meaning “no quarter”, a signal that no prisoners would be taken, and anyone surviving the assault would be put to the sword. As everyone knows, that’s precisely what happened – the entire garrison was killed in the battle or executed afterward, with the possible exception of a woman and a servant who were spared. A second and even more ruthless massacre followed at Goliad.

Fall of the Alamo

I was working on an audiobook dramatization of the story and searched in vain for a useable recording of “El Deguello.” There are plenty of American bugle calls in the public domain, but I thought it was indicative that the American military has no need of such a command. It’s been said that the Marines, for instance, are no worse enemy—and no greater friend—to those they encounter. That character of fair play and mercy are characteristic of our troops.

It is true that in the heat of conflict, sometimes passions run over. When the British troopers under Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton bayoneted the American prisoners taken at the Waxhaws during the Revolution, it came back on their comrades a few months later. As the Carolina backwoodsmen surrounded the British Maj. Patrick Ferguson’s men atop Kings Mountain, the battle climaxed with spontaneous cries of “Tarleton’s Quarter!” – meaning, the American militia didn’t intend to stop, either. To their credit, the patriot commanders rushed to restrain their men and were mostly successful. But the desire to punish brutality of Tarleton’s sort runs deep in righteous men … and that’s a far cry from the cold-blooded orders of a Santa Anna.

Checkpoint Charlie

When I briefly lived in Germany during the 1980’s, there were marches and protests against America in West Berlin, Frankfurt, and Bonn, over U.S. plans to deploy certain new weapon systems in Europe. Where I was staying, though, we were just a few miles from the border with Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia. There, even we American college students were wildly popular with the older Germans, who welcomed us into their homes and paid our bills in the local inns. See, they were thankful: many of them and their  parents had rushed into the advancing American troops rather than risk the mercies of Stalin’s Red Army approaching from the east. They recognized that occupation, or even capture and imprisonment, under the U.S. Army would be tempered with that quality – mercy.

General George Marshall

It does make you think. What other nation has spent billions in dollars and thousands of lives to grind a vicious dictatorship to dust, as we have done several times the past century, and then turned and invested still more to rebuild and restore the survivors of our former enemies? Our “nation building” activities in Iraq and Afghanistan are under criticism right now, and there is certainly room for debate, but who remembers the Marshall Plan? The Berlin Airlift? Who rebuilt post-war Japan? It was Americans, the victors, and our generals led each of those efforts. (True, George Marshall was Secretary of State by that time in 1948, but as Chief of Staff he was General Eisenhower’s superior until August of ’45).

It’s easy to forget sometimes that with the strength of a great nation, or a great army, or a great man, the call is not for revenge but restraint. There is a time to exert great and even overwhelming power to protect the weak and turn back evil – our national anthem says, “Then conquer we must, When our cause it is just” – but it must be conditioned by justice and the desire to reconcile when that becomes possible. The anthem continues, “And this be our motto: In God Is Our Trust”  That last bit makes the difference. Jesus said we are to “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36)—and that Father says of Himself, “I am merciful … I will not be angry forever.” (Jeremiah 3:12)

This Friday, Veteran’s Day, as we express our thanks to our soldiers, sailors and airmen of all ranks and ages, let’s take a minute to point out to our sons than along with their courage, discipline, self-sacrifice, and honor, there is a strong tradition of mercy—proving that it is a sign of strength and not weakness when flying in formation with all these other virtues.

Hal & Melanie

Hal & Melanie YoungHal and Melanie Young are the parents of six boys and authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys. You can hear the complete stories of Kings Mountain and the Alamo in Hal’s dramatic rendering of Theodore Roosevelt’s Hero Tales from American History. Visit their website at RaisingRealMen.com!

Scripture quoted from the English Standard Version.

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The Manly Virtues: What do Noblesse Oblige and Condencension Have in Common?

By on October 8, 2011 in growing godly men, Manly Virtues, Men of the Bible

Gustavus Adolphus Magnus of Sweden, the Lion of the North, Defender of the Reformation

I was really puzzled when I read in a very old book a character saying that the king “kindly condescended” to spend time discussing the battle with him. Huh? I had always thought of condecension as something bad — as that attitude someone has when they think they are better than you are.

We don’t like that in America.

“He’s no better than I am!”

“Any boy can grow up to be President!”

We like to think that everyone is just the same with the same basic equipment and the same opportunities before them.

Is that really true, though? I can’t sing on key reliably. Can I become a famous opera singer? Uh, no. We don’t have a lot of excess money. Can I make a book a bestseller by a huge media buy like some I know? No, just not possible.

Is that unfair? Again, no. Thankfully, the Lord made us all different, with different skills and opportunities, with different missions in life.

Our boys need to understand this from the beginning. Math is hard for you and easy for your brother? That’s great. Glad someone finds it easy. That’s difficult for boys. They tend to be really competitive and want to constantly try their skills, but when they consistently lose, it’s awfully easy to give up.

On the other hand, when they are stronger or better than others, they want to boast and parade about it. Here’s where the noblesse oblige comes in.

Noblesse oblige means “nobility obliges.” It has the sense that those who are noble must behave as nobles and further, “To whom much is given, much is required.”

That means that when our boys are particularly good at something, there is an obligation to help those who aren’t. Is he quite strong for his age? That strength should be used to do hard jobs for the weak, to protect those around him, to be a blessing. It should never be used to lord it over those that haven’t been blessed with the same strength or skill or talent.

I love the Homeschool Football League. I love that the boys strive as hard as possible against each other, then help the other guy off the ground as soon as the play is over.

In the same way, we need to teach our boys not to use their strength and age to Lord it over their younger brothers. This is where the condescension, in the old sense, comes in. Condescend didn’t used to mean to act in a superior way, but indeed the opposite, to lay aside the privileges of rank.

We try, not always successfully, to teach our guys to behave not as an equal necessarily, always competing with their younger brothers, but to genially respond to them as an older brother, even as a father. Instead of “Ha! I can’t even feel it when you hit me. How does this feel?” Why not, “Wow. You’re getting stronger all the time. You’d better not go around hitting people. You could hurt someone,” said with a confident smile and a thump on the back. That little brother won’t be hitting him harder and harder to try to actually hurt him this time, he’ll become his adoring slave. How much more influence will he have over him then?

It’s hard to teach boys noblesse oblige and the proper kind of condescension, but it’s worth it. It’s a way of imitating our Lord:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Philippians 2:5-8

As the hymn, “Come Christians Join to Sing” puts it:

Come, lift your hearts on high,
Alleluia! Amen!
Let praises fill the sky;
Alleluia! Amen!
He is our Guide and Friend;
To us He’ll condescend;
His love shall never end.
Alleluia! Amen!

May our sons always be guides and friends to their younger, or weaker, or less-gifted brothers.

Hal & Melanie Young

 

 

Hal & Melanie Young

We’d love to have you join us on Facebook, Twitter, and at our home blog, Raising Real Men, where you can find great resources for growing godly sons, including our book, Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching, and Appreciating Boys, 2011 Book of the Year by the Christian Small Publishers Association and Hero Tales from American History, our audiobook series by Theodore Roosevelt that will tell your guys the stories of the great men of virtue that built this country.

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The Manly Virtues: Courage

By on September 12, 2011 in Manly Virtues

When someone mentions courage, we usually think of wrestling bears or facing down terrorists, but godly courage is so much more than that! Courage is doing your duty despite your fears. Sometimes courage even looks like cowardice…

“Why don’t you try it? It’s really cool,” the older boy said.

“No. I…I…I can’t.” Tom slowly said.

“Why not? Everybody’s doing it. You don’t want to be left out. All dudes do it,” his challenger promised.

“No. It’s just not right,” blurted out Tom.

“I dare you! You’re just scared. Hey guys! Tom’s scared to try. Sissy!” the older boy sneered.

Write your own ending. Does Tom resist, daring the mockery of his peers, or does he succumb, afraid to be the butt of their jokes?

How hard to teach our sons that true courage lies in doing what’s right, even when you’re made to look like a coward. It’s the real coward that violates his conscience rather than be teased, falsely accused or ostracized. A real man cares more about righteousness than fitting in.

Our son told us, sadly, that most Christians at his college were so worried about being thought “weird” that they were ineffective for Christ. He said that the only believers who were more afraid of what God thought than their peers had been homeschooled.

That seemed odd to us, so we put a lot of thought into it. Quite a few of the other young adults had come from Christian homes, even ministers’ families. Quite a few of them had gone to Christian schools. What was the difference?

We realized that the homeschooled young people had fellowshipped with other kids mainly in the context of families, or groups of children with the mothers present. That had limited their exposure to the unhealthy coercion of their peers until they were old enough to understand the irony of, “You’re just afraid to do something you don’t want to do anyway.” Yeah, those that fall for that are afraid – afraid of their peers!

Regardless of how your boys are educated, they need to really get this about courage: Courage is about doing what’s right, no matter what. It also really helps to plainly understand who’s more powerful; the Creator or the people He created – even when they act like animals, destroying the weak.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others. ~Winston Churchill

I sought the LORD, and He heard me,
And delivered me from all my fears.
They looked to Him and were radiant,
And their faces were not ashamed.
This poor man cried out, and the LORD heard him,
And saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him,
And delivers them. Psalm 34:4-7

The fear of the Lord is the cure for fear and the root of true courage.

Hal & Melanie

Hal & Melanie Young

We’d love to have you join us on Facebook, Twitter, and at our home blog, Raising Real Men, where you can find great resources for growing godly sons, including our book, Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching, and Appreciating Boys, 2011 Book of the Year by the Christian Small Publishers Association and Hero Tales from American History, our audiobook series by Theodore Roosevelt that will tell your guys the stories of the great men of courage that built this country.

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