I am a nut about Christmas trees, lights, decorations and Christmas specials. My wife starts seeing the twinkle in my eye on November 1st and I can see the dread in hers. She is a very good decorator but I will admit the task is a daunting one. My job is to get all the decorations out of the attic and handle the outside decor. Our decorations take up one full side of the attic and part of a storage room. Then I sit back and watch the Christmas magic. Usually we have around 6 trees in the house of various sizes, garland, wreathes, nutcrackers, nativities, stockings, elves, snowmen and reindeers that fill each and every room and when it’s all done it looks great and my wife is ready to beat me with a candy cane. This year will be even more of a challenge with our 1 year old. We will either have to get some kind of orange safety fencing around the tree or only decorate half way down. Maybe we should try one of those upside down trees that hang from the ceiling. I bet that was invented by a couple with a baby or neurotic cat. For about 4 years we have had this inflatable snowman in front of the house. Last year he got a small hole in him somewhere and he looked drunk all the time so he had to go. I start watching Christmas specials as soon as they start showing them and will watch any of those old clay-mation ones or classics like frosty or “It’s a wonderful life” every time they are on. The life time channel I am kind of over. Every holiday special they run is either about a divorced mother of 15 who finds a Christmas millionaire with perfect hair and abs after wishing on a magic fruit cake or about Santa’s wayward children living among us mortals to learn a valuable life lesson and find love. Give me Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble any day. Then there is the food. Cakes, cookies and pies oh my… turkeys and ham and everything that goes with it. Fudge and homemade candies…I just gained 10 pounds writing about it. I guess the presents are ok to but as I get older, they seem to become far less important than the joy the season itself brings to so many. Every year my wife and I struggle to find gifts for each other and we have just started finding something the house needs and getting that. The kids are reaching the age when the toys are getting smaller but more expensive and they seem to get so much from Santa, relatives and grandparents, they hardly look at what they got before they move on to the next gift. How many of you can remember Christmas night going on forever and the gentle sound of your father somewhere down stairs saying the sweet words “Where’s that #$%#@ screw driver and why are these instruction in Portuguese”. And when you got up, there were a couple of things under the tree you had really wanted, maybe one wrapped present and a stocking and that was it. We have tried to make them slow down and even make them wait to open anything until we have read the Christmas story from the Bible so they remember why we even celebrate the holiday but before you know it, the living room looks like someone ran a hundred rolls of wrapping paper through a shredder. Every year we say we are going to cut back but somehow every year just gets a little bigger. Another one of my favorite things about Christmas is the candle light services the local churches have on Christmas Eve. If seeing a sanctuary lit by candles while singing silent night does not put you in a place of peace then therapy is called for. Well whatever type of Christmas or Holiday celebration you have, I hope it’s the best it has ever been and that your heart grows 2 sizes that day and that you and your family from the Scrooge to the Cindy Lou Who remember to give the gift that always fits…the gift of love, hope and grace. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 21:14:18 +0000
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