This week: Christmas Treasures Edited by: fyn  
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Christmas is the day that holds all time together.~~ Alexander Smith
Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white'. ~~Bing Crosby
Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ~~Norman Vincent Peale
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home! ~~Charles Dickens
Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today's Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday. ~~Gladys Taber
Christmas is a time for slipping into familiar patterns.~~David Hepworth
On Christmas morning, before we could open our Christmas presents, we would go to this stranger's home and bring them presents. I remember helping clean the house up and putting up a tree. My father believed that you have a responsibility to look after everyone else. ~~George Clooney
I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold. ~~Dan Brown
We got to the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of a poor year for this country. We had Vietnam. We had civil unrest. We had the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But we went around the moon and saw the far side for the first time. A script writer couldn't have done a better job of raising people's hope. ~~Jim Lovell
Why not share with the world the way it is and tell them my feelings about my cat, and how I played with my kids, and how addicted to Christmas time I am, and the smell of pine needles and hearing my kids laugh.~~ Steven Tyler
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If I have heard it once, I've heard it a million times (cliched but true) that this holiday season is going to be awful, the 'worst' ever, terrible, and on and on. NO, IT WON'T. Why, because if one chooses to embrace the uniqueness of it and try varying perspectives, it CAN be good even though it won't be what we are used to. It is fair to grouse about it not being like 'normal' (Honestly, mine isn't any way, is yours? Really?) but it can still be memorable even if it isn't exactly the way we want it to be. It is all a choice. Does my friend want to spend it alone? NO. Do I want my daughter here? Of course, I do. But if it isn't meant to be this year, it isn't. So we must therefore CHOOSE to still find the positives.
I expect my daughter will not end up coming. She isn't worried about catching anything here, but that she might bring something to me. Then, I might get sick and die (cue ominous music) and it would be all her fault. I get it. Hard not to acquiesce when it is due to a child caring. Personally, I'd just as soon she comes here. But we all must make choices and then deal with them. We will probably do a 'bag of gifts' handoff, open stuff at our homes, and yack on the phone afterward. Perfect scenario? Nope. Can it work? Yup. Will it be different? Yes. And yet ... and yet, I remember Christmases when she was stationed overseas and we were not together. We survived it. More, we appreciated the Christmasses together even more later on. We'll all get through this.
My grandmother died a few days before Christmas. Years later, my dad just after. I remember breaking up with someone a day before. The years shortly after my parents passed were hard. But again, we found special ways to include them and yet not let it take away from everything. My mother would have thwopped me a good one if I had. She'd have hated for us to be sad. We honored her wishes. And it made it easier. It is hard, and it might be sad, but then there is the whole 'reason for the season' thing and none of us is the centerpiece on that table! I think my mom had it right. Remember, tell the old stories (like the one her first Christmas with dad, and her first turkey and she forgot to take the innards out!) and keep the old times alive - living and breathing.
We've got two trees up and decorated, the manger's in place, the stockings await the walnuts, oranges, and goodies, and wrapping paper has taken over the dining room. All the peripheral stuff's in place. More importantly, our hearts, after tons of whining, moaning, and groaning, are also in that special Christmas space they should be in! In the absence of the old normal, I seek (so NOT a new normal!) to create special touches to give this year its own extraordinary place.
As could be expected, in thinking about what this Christmas might not be, my mind meanders back and back and back to Christmases past. My 'Christmas Angel' year (see poem below) and the one dad hid my brother's new skis inside the chimney and neglected to tell my grandmother about it ... who, of course, started the fire early in the morning. Every single Christmas Eve we seemed to lose power up on the mountain where we lived. Dad would bribe the electric company guys with scotch and we'd cook hotdogs over the fire in the living room. To this day, we have hot dogs on the 24th. Tradition, such as it is.
I remember a Christmas Eve in Alaska, alone, with my newborn daughter as my soon to be ex had vanished to parts unknown. The last tree on the Boy Scouts' tree lot (given to me for free) made Charlie Brown's tree look fantastic. One extra string of lights the downstairs neighbor scrounged up, snowflake ornaments cut from paper napkins. The presents from my folks had yet to arrive and it was snowing. Pretty, fat, fluffy flakes fell far surpassing the eight inches we were supposed to get. Ten at night sitting by my pathetic excuse for a tree and feeling very sorry for myself. The doorbell rang. The UPS man said snow was great for Santa but not so much for the UPS trucks. He hoped it wasn't too late at night, but he was trying to finish delivering the last few boxes in his truck. I was never so happy to see anyone. He brought the heavy box inside, looked at my tree. Said, he'd had one exactly like it once before. He also said it needed a finishing touch. He took a candy cane out of his jacket pocket, hung it on my tree, wished me a Merry Christmas, and headed out the door. I opened the big box and carefully scattered the presents beneath the tree. My mom even had a stocking each for my daughter and me. All of a sudden, it was as if my folks were right there with me. Suddenly, it wasn't so terrible after all.
Back in the late 1980s, I gave my then-boyfriend a blown glass ship for Christmas. It wasn't his favorite (the USS Constitution) but it was the closest I could find. He loved it. Unfortunately, our relationship fell apart for a number of reasons. We parted amicably and stayed friends. Seventeen years would pass and I returned to Michigan (from the east coast) to see the grandkids. He and I ended up back together. That following Christmas we were putting up the tree. The first ornament was (and had been since he got it) was a snowman drummer boy he received the year he got his drums, a set of Ludwigs which are down in the basement still being played. He told me to take out the second ornament. I unwrapped that blown-glass ship. He told me it was always the second ornament on the tree. For all those years, it had been second on his tree. Fifteen years later, it still is.
When my youngest was stationed in Spain we weren't together. Then later, she was assigned to the USS Ronald Reagen and was over in the Gulf. Those years, I sent out multiple numbered packages in August. The first one would be a mini tree with battery-operated lights, tiny ornaments, and candy canes. The second was always a stocking stuffed with little things she could use. And cookies. Can't forget the cookies. Lastly, a box with all sorts of stuff. Stuff to bring home to her. After that first year, I sent out hundreds of Christmas boxes addressed to 'any soldier.' They went out to bases all over the world. Tiny little dollar-store trees, ornaments, a string of lights, and cookies. A stocking stuffed with goodies. Each one was sent on behalf of my daughter, their fellow soldier/sailor. For years, we'd hear back from troops all over the world. Made a lonely Christmas brighter all the way around.
So. This Christmas, this holiday season will be very different. For many reasons. Each of us will have our own unique reasons and differences. And we can choose to find bright and shiny. We can choose to have candy cane moments and strings of twinkling memories. We can choose to make ourselves gaily wrapped gifts out of our pasts and the present!
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[user:bikerider} says: Thank you, Fyn, for highlighting my stories in your November 11th newsletter. Sadly, I remember the way service men and women were treated during the Vietnam War. I felt the scorn myself. I think about that when I visit the Vietnam Memorial in DC, where you can change an obscure number into the actual names of those who are no longer with us.
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”
― Laurence Binyon
{user::callmet} writes: It's easy to understand how a person can take up arms and be willing to die for what they believe in. As American veterans, our task is to take up arms and be willing to die for what you, and everyone else in this country, believe in, even when those beliefs are different from our own.
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