From the Heart
It’s beginning to look a lot like … oh my goodness!
How can Christmas be just some 20 days away?
I have our home looking like it’s been visited by Martha Stewart. Okay, that might be a huge exaggeration. More like a visit from a Hobby Lobby elf.
I just want to stay home and bake cookies and watch Hallmark movies. Seriously, I need an extra week just to enjoy all the festivities. I want to sing carols and sip hot chocolate and listen to everything with a Christmas genre. I need a whole lot of falalalala and less hustle and bustle.
As I am sitting here with visions of sugar cookies and homemade caramels and cinnamon candy, I can’t help but remember Christmases of yesteryears.
The aroma of so many somethings from the oven. The line at the Santa House on the Courthouse Square. The Firestone Christmas parties at the Diana Theater. The church plays that always ended with a Nativity scene. And, oh yes, the Hallelujah Chorus sung by Mrs. McFarland’s choirs.
It was all so good.
It was never about the presents. It was about the feelings and the people who made it special.
I love the Christmas Eve church services. I love singing “Silent Night,” knowing good and well that my eyes will leak as I hold up my lit candle. Truly, love comes down at Christmas as I sing “Joy to the World.”
I have decked the hall and the front porch and the living room and kitchen and even the bathroom, a bit.
I have Frosty the Snowman and his mom and dad and several sisters and brothers tucked on the island in my kitchen with candlelight all aglow. Chuck would say I even have a few cousins with them.
Our Nativity scene on the sofa table reminds me that it was a Holy Night when a baby was born in a stable.
That baby changed the world. While there was no room at the Inn, I never want to crowd Him out of my heart.
Oh no! I have presents to buy. Hello Amazon! I have done my share of local small business shopping. Local business people know me by name. Chuck will tell you that I support them well.
I have run out of Christmas cards. I need five more. I buy another box to have extras when someone that I forgot to send a card sends me one.
Live in the moment Janet, live in the moment.
My heart is happy and everything will come together. It always has. It always will.
Christmas memories, made long ago and those we have yet to make, are just the warmth that makes it a real Hallmark Christmas … and it’s not just in the movies.