Here it is Wednesday night again and I’m getting the pleasure of sending a few words out to my friends. Hi, everybody.
By the way, I’m still tripping over that box of tree ornaments, but I’ll drag that tree up from the basement this weekend for sure. I admire people who put up multiple trees. One of my daughters-in-law puts up a tree in every room and the trees all look great. But me, I guess I take after my grandmother. Mom said Mama Rose never wanted to bother with a tree in the house so they used to just hang their stockings on the rocking chair. They didn’t have a Christmas tree until her youngest sister talked their dad into bringing in a cedar when Mom was a teenager.
I’m not that bad. I want a tree and so far I’ve always gotten the tree decorated before Christmas day. So far. I used to go out with my kids and cut down a cedar tree. We always picked one that was way too big. Those trees just look smaller out there in the field. And greener and not so lopsided. As you can probably tell, I wasn’t the best tree picker, so most of the time Darrell took care of that chore. Thank goodness. He was definitely better at it.
Cedars smell good sitting in your living room, but they are sticky. Not so bad when you decorate them, but very prickly when you take the ornaments off after Christmas. Especially those foil icicles. Any of you remember those? Plus cedars dry out fast even if you set them in a bucket of water and that makes you have to worry about them being fire hazards. I’ve gotten modern now with an artificial tree, but I sometimes think how my dad would frown if he knew I paid good money for a fake tree when the fields were full of cedars that need to be cut down.
Dad didn’t overflow with Christmas spirit, but sometimes he’d go to Louisville and buy us something at a warehouse or secondhand shop that we weren’t expecting. One Christmas he brought in a turntable record player. It didn’t have a case, but since it played LPs and 45’s and had a stack ’em on spindle, we were happy. So he wasn’t exactly a Scrooge. He just left most of the merry preparations up to Mom and his sister. They made Christmas fun.
Hope you have many great Christmas memories. Share your favorite with me if you want. That would be fun. And here are some Christmas quotes to make your day brighter.
- There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. – Erma Bombeck
- Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won’t make it ‘white’. – Bing Crosby
- My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that? –Bob Hope
- When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things — not the great occasions — give off the greatest glow of happiness. –Bob Hope
Wishing you much happiness and joy. Always joy.