The Best Christmas Party Ever
A Christmas Party Fail
“I’m going to have a Christmas party for the worship team this year.”
The thought popped into my mind one morning in mid-October. I quickly looked at my family calendar loaded on my phone. December was an empty slate. I had longed to plan a party for my worship team for the past few years. The idea always came too late in the season, so regretfully it hadn’t happened yet. As I enjoyed a cup of coffee looking out on the green lawn where my son played, I could barely recall the busyness of the holidays to come. Yet as I watched my son running in his short sleeved shirt I could feel a vague warning rising up from deep within.
“It will be fine,” I reassured myself.
A few weeks later, after designing the cute little postcards and mailing them off I smiled and sighed with relief. “Thank goodness that’s over with,” I said to myself and felt an inward sense of pride thinking I had beat the Christmas rush. It was only November 1st. Outside the sun was shining and the temperature was a warm 60 degrees, perhaps this Christmas would be different.
Fast forward just a little over a month to the actual party and the calm smile on my face was replaced by a frantic look. As I tried to get all the details together for the grand party the list kept getting longer. Games, food, contests, and prizes were my Pinterest obsession. For a week I spent every day making or baking something in the church kitchen, I named Becky. We were becoming besties.
I had it all planned out, it would be a Christmas Party for the whole team plus their families. This would be a big group of people. The enormity of the number made me want to crawl up into a little ball and dance a jig at the same time. I love creative chaos, but I was about to learn a big lesson.
For food, it just seemed right to give myself a baking challenge: 34 homemade individual pizza crusts for the Make Your Own Pizza Line! I know I could have bought pre-made pizza crusts, but what is the fun in that? I had even diced up toppings and put them in individual serving cups so each person could just choose the toppings they wanted quickly and easily.
My second idea was to have our own Christmas cookie decorating contest. Working with Becky, (the church kitchen) was so much easier than baking at home so I made over 200 cut-out sugar cookies for the contest.
The party was scheduled to start at 6 PM on Friday, December 3rd. I had worked every day whittling down my to-do list. Did I have help? Not for the baking, except for Becky. To be honest, I didn’t have help because I didn’t ask for it. It is hard to explain the vision in my brain, so sometimes I conclude it is easier just to do it myself.
Does this ever happen to you?
Pinterest gave me so many cute and glittery ideas, it was hard to narrow them down. Occasionally I would ask my daughters what they thought about all my ideas and they just laughed. Gritting my teeth I decided I would show them…show them, I would, along with all my friends.
(Sigh…)
I am organizationally broken. This explains why I failed at PTA or any other group based on planning and organizing huge efforts. Still, it was the inward optimism that kept me going solo on this party plan.
“It will all work out fine.” I told myself.
(Insert eye roll here)
Some people might call this “an illness.” Nonetheless, when 6 PM hit I was ready. For the Make Your Own Pizza Line. I put the pizza on a parchment paper and placed them each on their own brown plastic tray. Each guest went down the table loading their pizza with toppings and then I would pick up the tray to transfer the pizza onto a cookie sheet. When I had enough pizzas I would pop them all in the oven for 10 minutes. Simple enough, right?
In no time flat I had 6 pizzas ready for the 3 ovens I was using. Quietly, I whispered to Becky, “Please don’t fail me now.” And I put those pizzas in the oven. As the 10 minutes slowly passed for the pizzas to bake, 6 more pizzas piled up. The timer went off and I quickly delivered the pizzas to the eager guests.
I had originally thought teenagers could help me with this process, but as they gathered to talk about hair and boys I realized I better just man this crazy idea myself. There was no time to rethink my process, I had just launched my own pizza business. Quickly I put in the next pizzas.
The Christmas music filled the room as children chased each other around the fellowship hall. I was just about to congratulate myself for a job well done when I caught sight of something strange happening in the top oven.
“What is that?” I said out loud, but as the words came out I suddenly knew.
Brown goo was dripping down from the top oven rack onto the bottom pizza. But as I looked in horror, I realized the bottom rack also had brown goo dripping unto the bottom of the oven.
“Oh, no!” I yelled. Two ladies, I like to call angels, came to my rescue. The first, was a mom to one of my teen “light techs” and the other, a sweet alto on the worship team. Quietly they had slipped into the kitchen to help me when the teenagers were not interested. Instantly I realized, in my haste to get the set of second pizzas in the oven I had made a BIG mistake. I had forgotten to transfer two pizzas from the brown plastic trays to the cookie sheets to bake. Those sad brown trays were now sizzling on the hot baking racks. As the guests realized the room was getting smokey, interested little faces peered into the kitchen as others came to try to help…
My face felt hot with embarrassment. It was obvious I had bit off more than I could chew. Brad came in laughing and said, “What did you do?”
In a cool voice I said, “Can you please get out, I don’t need you to make fun of me.”
It was more awkward to see the Pastor and his wife “have words” than the dripping brown goo destroying the pizza. The kitchen cleared instantly. I was relieved and embarrassed at the same time. Alone with my thoughts I couldn’t help but feel low. All my work was ruined. All the hours of preparation seemed to be burned up in the oven, I thought.
At that lowest moment, the two angels came in. One quickly propped open the back door of the kitchen so the smoke could clear. Then they both began to shower me with words of encouragement.
“I‘ve done the same thing…”
and
“This will be easy to clean up.”
As they began scrapping away at the mess I left in the oven, I felt relief and the courage to get up and put a smile back on my face. I didn’t ask if they were just saying these things to make me feel better, because in truth the grace in their words helped me to realize even big mistakes don’t have to ruin a good night.
Miraculously the smoke cleared quickly, and there was no burnt plastic smell left in the room. The other two ovens kept up baking the rest of the pizzas and everyone was fed. The cookie decorating contest turned out to be a hit, with some very creative entries. My favorite was the church shaped cookie transformed into Yoda.
After all the pizzas were served we had a few wacky games that brought a lot of laughter and everyone left with smiles on their faces. You could say the party was a success, but I know the party will go down in history with the tray melting catastrophe. I am sharing this story in the hope that instead of getting embarrassed and frustrated I can learn to laugh at myself over yet an other party fail.
And for pity’s sake, I hope to learn to invite more “angels” into my planning process. Because let’s face it, if I didn’t learn my lesson on THAT ONE, I am doomed.