While everyone is talking Thanksgiving turkey, I’m putting out my favorite Christmas decorations, stacking up Christmas music, lighting holiday incense and soaking in the sights and sounds and smells.
It’s not because Thanksgiving comes a week earlier this year. We’ve always played Christmas music during Thanksgiving dinner, but by now my music and dvd collections have expanded so there isn’t enough time between Thanksgiving and Christmas to hear/see each of them once. So I started earlier this year.
I love everything about Christmas. There’s no frenzy here. I don’t love shopping, never did, but gathering a few things to give as gifts isn’t a hardship. I do much of it online, but I also go to malls on purpose during the season, just for the festive look of it.
Making fudge and apple cake with a Christmas glaze for my neighbors is nice. (Christmas music plays while we cook.)
I love church during Advent season. The faces of the acolytes who carry the light down to the altar candles always look like Christmas – a bit shinier than usual and quite reverent. As the kids walk slowly, jeans poking out below the white robes, they resist the temptation to jostle each other and I imagine their parents watch and wonder, who is this child, so somber? Surely this is not the kid who had to be reminded (threatened) to get here on time.
You won’t find me griping about the commercialization of this event, because for me it never has become that. If all I ever had of Christmas were the sights and sounds and fragrances, and if that could last for months, I wouldn’t complain.
Ó Anita Garner 2008
Hammy, the more I learn about you the more I like.
As one who plays Christmas music occasionally just any old time of year I think Christmas is what you make of it. If you think of it as a hassle and never-ending expense maybe you’re not doing it right.
And this year, while we’re all focused on what is being hyped as economic armageddon all we need to do is look at our kids and grandkids when they sleep or smile. And remember the words of Jerry Herman from “Mame:”
We need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas now!
Memories, memories, memories . . . . . . .
Christmas at home, Christmas at grandparents, . . . . then Christmas at the Garners. Eggnog, lots and lots of munchies, a constant flow of Christmas tunes, laying under your tree staring up at the prettiness, grinning ear-to-ear as the pile to torn wrapping paper builds higher and higher, jumping into the pile afterwards as if they are fall leaves . . . .
Just isn’t the same anymore. Me and my family wish you the absolute BEST Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years that you’ve had in years.
Eat and drink some things that probably not too good for you and think of us out here in the Midwest!