Here we are with another year gone by.

Does your balance scale of accomplishments tip towards the “Did” or the “Didn’t” for all you had planned for 2009? I think my balance scale of accomplishment accidentally got stuck in a box of stuff I hauled to the local goodwill store. It never worked right anyway.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions for the same reason I don’t make a lot of plans in general and that is that you avoid the disappointment of an unaccomplished plan by not making plans. Also, if you have no plans almost anything that happens is potentially a pleasant surprise…a pleasant surprise you didn’t have to break any plans to take part in.

I realize sometimes it can be dangerous not to have a plan. For instance, on Christmas Day the Chrest and Stevens family got together to celebrate Christmas at the Lignite Senior Center…as planned. If this event had not gone through any sort of planning process, we may have all starved or shown up on Boxing Day instead, but we all enjoyed too much good food and the company of family.

Following the Christmas dinner we didn’t really have much planned because generally the food part is of greatest concern and everything else is left to chance. This is when things can get dangerous…especially in Lignite.

Some had gone home to lapse into a food coma while some of us pushed on and visited, put together jigsaw puzzles, ate some more, and had no plans. That’s when somebody said, “There’s a bunch of people coming with masks on.”

Sometimes when somebody says something it confuses you for a second. A bunch of people with masks? How many is a bunch? What kind of masks?

I briefly thought it may be a hostile takeover and glanced around the senior citizen center for a weapon to defend our supply of leftover turkey and juneberry pie. I found a cane someone must have forgotten during a moment of spryness and pried the non-slip rubber tip off to make it look more menacing.

Then as the first few of the “bunch of people in masks” started to enter the building it all started to make sense….Julebukking. These were Norwegian terrorists disguised in old bridesmaid dresses, leisure suits, and muskrat coats, wearing a variety of masks to hide their identity. If I wasn’t in Lignite I may have been frightened. If they weren’t in Lignite they may have been shot at.

You hate to try and guess who people are and run the chance of upsetting them. It’s kind of like being stuck in a room with a bunch of irritated women and being asked to walk up to each of them and guess what size underwear they wear. When faced with Norwegian terrorists in leisure suits and irritated women it’s best to keep your mouth shut.

We waited them out and the Julebukkers finally gave into the relentless heat of the senior citizen center and removed their masks to reveal their identity. I was right… they would have been upset with any guesses I had. Thank you to the Nielsen, Bloom and McEvers families (my aunt, Suzie slipped in amongst them as well) for making an unplanned visit and keeping the tradition of Julebukking alive.

According to my research the tradition of Julebukking is still observed in parts of North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ketchikan, Alaska. They say the practice of Julebukking is dying out…they also say there is never anything to do in a small town. They’ve never been to Lignite.

Happy New Year.