Halloween is a few days away. It is Lorelai’s first
Halloween, and I am so excited! After Halloween will be her first Thanksgiving,
and then mere days after that will be her 1st birthday! Now I am not
writing to gush about her birthday, instead I am writing to gush over the
wonderfulness of holidays.
I know there are some people out there who don’t really pay
attention to holidays. I’m not just talking about the “silly” ones like St.
Patrick’s Day or Valentine’s Day; but they don’t even put a up a tree for
Christmas! I think about growing up with my mom and my family and the magic
that was every holiday. At Christmas we had not only one tree, but three. We
had holly garland over windows and evergreen wrapped around the banisters.
Small white lights twinkled behind every pine branch and every red bow. Even
the outside of our house was adorned with colored lights and icicles hanging
off the roof. Since we live in Texas, we rarely had snow, but that did not
detract from the magic of Christmas. Not many people on our street put up
lights, so our house shone like a beacon of Christmas magic. I felt a little
sad for those families who did not have the trees, the lights, or the bows…the
magic. What do they look forward to all year long? What makes your year
special?
It was what I loved
the most, what I look forward to the whole year. Even as an adult, I had the privilege
of experiencing the holidays with the same child-like wonder because I worked
at a preschool. I got to see the astonishment in the kids eyes, the excitement.
I loved it.
It wasn’t just Christmas with my family that was so
wonderful. We decorated for every holiday. We had green food-coloring in our
milk for St. Patrick’s Day, we received chocolate hearts for Valentine’s, we
saw fireworks twice on Independence Day, we carved pumpkins and went
trick-or-treating every year for Halloween, our entire family gathers for
Thanksgiving, and we went egg-hunting with special assigned colors for Easter.
We did it all.
I am now a mom and want to give all of that to Lorelai. Obviously
Christmas and Christmas Eve are my favorite. The love and warmth that surround
the day, the magic and faith that are involved are what make that holiday the paramount
of the year. Halloween in a close second though, the silliness and the opportunity
to dress up is a great break from the everyday. This year Lorelai will dress up
as a cute, girly skeleton. I will carve her jack-o-lantern this weekend too…and
of course, there will be a ton of pictures documenting the fun. After all the
fun come the chores of the season. In November I need to Christmas shop and
birthday shop. I CANNOT wait for her first birthday party! J I also need to work on
a special project. Which brings me back to Christmas:
During the month of December, my siblings and I used an
advent calendar to count down the days until Santa. Our calendar wasn’t like
everyone else’s. Instead of pulling out treats from a little drawer, we hung
ornaments on a wooden tree that hung on the wall. It was handmade by my
grandmother and we all loved it. We were assigned certain days so we all got a
turn, and we even chose which ornaments we wanted to hang. They don’t sell this
kind of advent calendar…I’ve looked. So, I am going to make one. I want my kids
to have the same special feeling when waking up. “It’s my day!” Then followed
promptly with “Now there are only __ more days until Christmas!”
So, I have to find a large piece of unfinished wood (I think
I found a clever alternative), I have to make a tree in the center, then all
the ornaments for the tree; All handcrafted and hand-painted. I look forward to
this project. I highly anticipate the many years of enjoyment with it.
Now, I don’t want to take away from the meaning of any
holiday with secular objects. I do love the meaning behind each day…but the
decorations, the music, the fun; it’s what makes the season different and
special. I get excited over the first official Christmas commercial I see, and I
get addicted to the Christmas radio stations in November. Looking at Christmas
lights this year will be extraordinary; I think Lorelai will thoroughly enjoy
seeing the wonderment.
Ahhhhh, holidays. I seriously can’t wait. I hope your days
are as memorable and meaningful to you all as they are to me. Thanks Mom,
thanks Oma, for making the holidays so special and for making my childhood so
loving and nostalgic for me. It is the absolute best thing I can pass on to my child
and to my family.
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| Our old home (apartment) before the arrival of Lorelai...I did what I could with no fireplace :P |
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| Our engagement Christmas Eve...being silly. |
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| My church. No lights, just candle light from the Christ candle...singing Silent Night. Seriously the best feeling. |
I will leave you with a little something that always brings
a smile to my face. This pretty much encompasses my feelings for the holiday
season. I still believe, I will always believe. J
“Yes,
VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity
and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its
highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no
Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would
be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this
existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal
light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
No
Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from
now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to
make glad the heart of childhood.”
M.LEWIS
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