They say this is the season of peace and joy, but you couldn’t tell it from our household. It has been pretty tense around here.

Part of the conflict has been Christmas music. My favorite Christmas song has somehow become `The Christmas Polka’ by Jim Reeves. More importantly, it is Ben’s favorite song, and he asks for it to be played OFTEN. This causes Nancy, JT, Matthew and now Katie to flee the room. But it is so catchy that I will find myself being STRUCK by the tasteless four who say `I can’t get it out of my head now!’

My response? I remind them that `This is Christmas season so there isn’t any reason we can’t DANCE the Christmas polka.’ This results in another hit, which is pretty darn un-Christmasey if you ask me.

Then there is the Katie issue. Nancy has felt outnumbered by the male level of the household, and has tried to indulge the girly side of Katie. Imagine her response to Ben when he loudly proclaimed `Katie can burp gooder than even JT!’ This elicited the deepest sigh from the other female in the family I have ever heard.

Finally, in almost 22 years of marriage, I have never beaten Nancy at Scrabble. Nancy received her degree in linguistics, which is part of the explanation. Nancy is also smarter than me, which is more of an explanation. Mostly, Nancy lived with Joanne Chinn when she was single, who is a force of nature in Scrabble, and she learned from the expert.

But Nancy and I went away for the weekend, and we brought the Scrabble game, and I beat her TWICE. I woke up the first night and wondered if it was a dream, but I beat her two days in a row. Because I am renowned to be a gracious winner, she has thrilled to my victory dance MANY times since then, and for some reason, it just hasn’t gotten old to me, but Nancy hasn’t had the same reaction.

Maybe, instead of the victory dance, I should do the Christmas polka.

We had a chance to go to Egypt for five days. RVA has something they call Caring Community, and you are assigned a group of students who come to your home once a month to enjoy a relaxing environment for the evening. We have had the same group for the last two years. One of our group is a Korean student named InHoi who is someone who, as his mother puts it, `Even when he was a baby, people would look at him and laugh.’ I don’t have a picture that captures it, but if you saw InHoi, you would know what I mean. His parent’s are stationed in Egypt, and he loudly asked `Why doesn’t anyone visit ME during the breaks?’

It had been a dream of JT and Matthew to see the pyramids, so we started to investigate, and we found a way to go to Egypt for five days. InHoi’s parents were so gracious, and they have an amazing work in the second largest city in the world. It would be so easy to just give up and be overwhelmed, but they have a computer and English school where they train unemployed folks, and they have touched the lives of thousands.

Ben’s favorite part of Egypt was the sand

The pyramids are awe inspiring, but Egypt doesn’t take care of them. We went to one place where they had five thousand year old caskets displayed outside, and people were flipping cigarettes in them. And if you looked sideways at any Egyptian, it was cause to for them to demand a tip, which got old pretty fast.

But the biggest thing I noticed was the driving. When you have 18 million in your city, you have 6-8 lanes of traffic, and everybody honks all the time. Honking is an art form in Egypt.

This led to issues at night. We tried to do this as cheap as we could, and we did not stay at a glamorous hotel, and so we were in an area where they honked all night.

This is the view from our glamorous hotel

My solution was vetoed but I thought it was ingenious; I was going to make a big sign that said `Honk if you love Jesus’ and stand outside the hotel. That would have quieted it down, but cooler heads prevailed.

I asked a tour guide about Christmas, and his response surprised me. He told me he loved Christmas because it was the one day that everyone was happy. It reminded me of Pastor Glenn who had written about watching Dean Martin singing Joy to the World on his TV show and weeping as he first understood that the most meaningful time of Christmas was that `God and sinner reconciled.’

I hurt my shoulder weight lifting and I hurt my Achilles heel running. I’ve been a gym rat for 30 years, and it has been discouraging to not be active. I wondered if it was a sign, and that I needed to hang it up…

But I got up early on Saturday because that was when the results of Early Admissions were posted. I went down to the office because one of the kids couldn’t access the internet because she lived so far in the bush. I was to check if she got into Stanford. She got in; the first woman in RVA’s history to get into Stanford.

Then I received this email:

Mr Peifer,

I just received my acceptance email from Harvard! I wanted to tell you right away (it is 3 in the morning here). Thank you for doing so much for me. This would never have even been an option if you hadn’t put so much effort into this. Thanks again,

Emily

I am very very happy

And finally, one of my students stopped by the office to tell me that she was the first student in 100 years of RVA to be accepted at Yale. Suddenly, my sore shoulder and heel didn’t seem to matter.

This has been a year of heartache and discouragements and setbacks, but in the midst, I have discovered that if you don’t give up, if you stay in the fight, you will lose some, but sometimes, there are battles you will win.

We don’t have words to describe how grateful we are to you all for what you have done for us, but my gift to you is to keep that word in your heart as you celebrate the season and contemplate 2007.

There are still battles to be won.

Your pal