It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!...(if you have the right frame of mind.)

Well, school just started a few short months ago, Halloween just passed, Thanksgiving isn’t even here yet so it seems the perfect time to start talking about Christmas. I mean, why not? Right? Walgreens and Hobby Lobby have had their Christmas trees out since July. I guess, by their standards, I’m way behind!

                                                                                

                                                     

     While the commercialism and pushing it up earlier and earlier to make a profit irritates me, the general overall feeling and meaning of the holidays makes me very nostalgic. I love thinking back to when I was a little girl and my grandma would make thousands of different Christmas cookies and deliver them all over town to the people and businesses that took care of her all year; the grocer, the bank, the mailman, the salon, etc. It was something I loved to do with her and it was a tradition I always looked forward to. Her house was, and still is, a place of warmth, faith, family, and friendship. Every Christmas Eve, there would be a gathering at her house of family, friends, and neighbors. I loved it. There would be candles lit and, in addition to the big tree in the living room,  she had a small artificial tree with little lights that would sit on her buffet table in the dining room. She also had a gold candle holder that held four tiny candles and when you lit them it would make the little angels go around in a circle above the candles. They’d make a very delicate ring as their tiny golden sticks struck the little golden loops they passed. If the angels got moving fast enough, it sounded like little wind chimes. It sat at her dining room table and would watch it for what could have been hours. She had the “Mitch Miller Holiday Sing Along” album (yes, album) and I’d sit on the landing on her staircase with the album cover in my lap and listen to the songs over and over again. To this day, I still remember all of it, even when I visit during the rest of the year, like it was yesterday. Grandma’s house is still my favorite place on this Earth.

    One of the best things grandma and I used to do in the winter was cross-country ski. She bought me my first pair of skis when I was about 8. We’d go skiing through the neighborhood (she lives near the woods) and we’d go back into the woods and she’d snip pine boughs off the trees and place them over her windows when we got back. Then she’d make hot chocolate and we’d have cookies. It was our own little Currier & Ives painting.

                                                                                

     Now, with my own family, I love to tell my kids stories about my good fortune to have an amazing grandmother and tell them about all our old traditions. But honestly, I’m finding it a little challenging to come up with our own. Of course, every year, my husband and myself bundle up the kiddos and we head out to get our Christmas tree. That is definitely something we have enjoyed for the past decade. But doggone Pinterest has gone and made me feel like I should be doing a thousand other things in order to give my children fond memories of their childhood. Well, I‘m sorry but I hate clowns and that stupid Elf on the Shelf is *not* ever making its way into our home. To me it’s too clown-like. A clown cousin, if you will. I won’t have it pooping Raisinettes all over my counter nor will it be pouring sugar all over my kitchen floor or scrubbing its butt with my toothbrush.

                                                                             

                                                        Honestly. There are no words.

     We read “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve and we always read the Christmas story from the Bible and watch classic Christmas movies like “Christmas Vacation,” “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” etc… so why am I being made to feel like a failure if we don’t roast chestnuts like the pioneers and hold hands around the hearth as we sing “O Tannenbaum?” I don’t have a hearth!! I’m not going to make an advent calendar by folding impossibly tiny pockets of paper with even smaller bows and put a homemade “goody” inside each pocket.

                                   

                  (Do any of these, by any chance, contain expired gray chocolate?)

 I’m not going to do this. But you know what??? I’m still a good mom. My kids will have a wonderful Christmas with memories of parents who weren't so stressed out by trying to do everything “right” that they ended up making everyone around them miserable. We’ll laugh, we’ll have fun, we’ll celebrate our Lord and Savior’s birth, we’ll eat ridiculous amounts of sugar, and we’ll gain 50 pounds. Just like a normal family. Guilt free. And I wish the same for your family.