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This week: Observations Over a December Weekend Edited by: fyn  
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Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.~~Norman Vincent Peale
Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.~~Edna Ferber
Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.~~Charles M. Schulz
It's true, Christmas can feel like a lot of work, particularly for mothers. But when you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you'll find you've created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul.~~Caroline Kennedy
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home! ~~Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.~~Laura Ingalls Wilder
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At Christmas, 'It's a Wonderful Life' makes me cry in exactly the same places every time, even though I know it's coming.~~Nicholas Lea
Wonderful weekend with family, our 7th Anniversary, shopping and watching all those movies we all watch again this time of year. There is just something about the hubbub coming to a screaming halt when someone scrolls through the channel guide and comes across 'It's a Wonderful Life' or 'White Christmas.' Darned near know all the words by heart, and yet, we sit there and get shivers when the snow starts to fall or Clarence gets his wings. You can't help but feel so warm and comfy inside. Then you go back to the scrambles of wrapping or cooking or creating with a lighter step. I love those random moments when you squish an extra hour and a half into a crammed schedule to watch that movie. Because it really doesn't matter if you've time or not. Sometimes, time will stretch and besides, sleep is vastly over-rated!
A bouquet of roses arrived for me with seven roses in it. (Hubby gives me 'the number of years we've been married' roses on our anniversary. So pretty! I still am so thrilled when those roses show up! Expect I will always be. Earlier, I'd written a long, happy blather on FB about it being our anniversary, appreciating and being so grateful for a truly good man, who loves me.
Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen. ~Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby
'Mary's Little Boy Child' playing on the computer. My daughter, EarthenAura  , my friend, dragonflyrose and I all keeping time to the beat and singing along as we wrap presents on the living room floor. Sharing scissors, tape, and tags as we wrap presents (for each other as it turns out!) without any of us picking up on it, because we were so involved and singing and laughing. Happy times. The music stopped and my daughter said, "Listen!, The Christmas tree is singing too!" We all giggled and smiled. I said, "It's a pretty tree." The other two parroted the family-traditional response, "It's a very pretty tree." We all giggled again. From the basement came sounds of one of the various saws my hubby has down there as he works industriously creating one or another of the presents he's making. He obviously had his headphones on and was just singing away to whatever carol he is listening to. My hubby can really sing. But at the moment, he was hilariously off key. Cause for more laughter.
Love filled that room. It fills the house. It is brighter than all the tinsel, glitter and lights combined!
Christmas is coming; it is almost here!
With Santa and presents, good will and cheer!~~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Christmas" (1940s)
My daughter and I went shopping. She didn't care where. I had a few specifics to find. Easy things that I knew I would find. We picked a town we don't usually find ourselves in. We had a blast. Singing in the car. Coming up to each other with a gift in our hands and both saying, at the same time, "Oh! Wouldn't (name deleted...can't give away secrets!) love this?" We both had the same thing! Funny. And she would. And it was added to our stuff. It got dark. Christmas lights came on. Two stores to go. We'll make it quick, we'd said. We were tired. Two hours later we headed home. Happy, excited and (me) with sore knees from tromping around on concrete floors. (Seriously, floors in stores SHOULD be much more feet friendly. Wouldn't folks tend to shop longer if their feet (or knees) didn't hurt after an hour?)
We hadn't heard any cranky, exhausted children crying. The tired cashiers were relentlessly in good moods. No one said 'Happy Holidays' to me. We were wished, Merry Christmas over and over again. LOVED it! We wend our way home, taking back roads, and marveling over various pretty, creative, or simple lights on houses. Pure magic! Home, into the usual craziness. Reenergized, we ate the dinner my hubby'd cooked on the grill, standing around in the kitchen as the dining room table was buried under wrapping paper, tissue and bows. I'd bought more paper. Never could resist it when a particular pattern screams at me. Neighbors showed up, the noise levels increased. House is a disaster. O well.
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
People were sharing tales of Christmases past. The year the tree fell over. The sleigh bells heard on a roof. The cobbled together Christmas toy that didn't have a 'slot B' to put 'Tab A' into. Each story reminded someone of another Christmas 'moment.' Memories danced. My brother called. He works at The Hub, a restaurant at the top of the Prudential Center in Boston. Outside, during his break, he heard carols playing on the carillon. It was so special he had to call to tell me about it. My folks would have loved it!
I love the Christmas-tide, and yet,
I notice this, each year I live;
I always like the gifts I get,
But how I love the gifts I give!
~~Carolyn Wells
This Christmas will be the first time in over fifteen years that my 'scattered across the US from Boston to Colorado' family will all be in the same place at the same time. Seventeen people. Almost half of them to be housed and fed for a week. I have a small house. There will be bodies everywhere! (Can't wait!)
This year, I found some of those 'absolutely perfect' gifts (some big, some small) that are the sort that would never make it to a 'Christmas list' but will be a big hit. I am so excited about them, as are the rest of those who have seen them. The anticipation levels are high. The teasing about said presents is epic. Secrets are bouncing off the walls. Conversations hush or giggles erupt. Clandestine meetings in hallways or the garage. Preparations on 'how to wrap a ________,' that impossibly shaped 'thing' or how to disguise a ________. So much of the sheer fun of it all is the knowing that someone will be blown away by the 'whatchamacallit' or the handmade 'thingamabob!' There'll be some happy tears. There will be incoherently worded sentences. I think I love the waiting to see their reactions as much as anything else! The best thing is that those folks are geeked about stuff they got for us. As we say every year, it's going to be a great Christmas!
There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime. Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them.~~P.J. O'Rourke
Every year we do Christmas Jammies on Christmas Eve after everyone arrives from various other houses, church services or last minute shopping.. Kids, adults, everyone. Usually they are practical. Sometimes...eh...not so much! Last year, after my hubby said he always loved those one piece cozy ones as a kid, I teased him I'd get him some for Christmas. He told me, (in that challenging way) that they'd have to be 'camouflage' ones and adding that, "You'll never find any." Uh huh. A dare now? Of course I found some! Camo with the drop seat and a deer on the backside saying 'Buck Naked!' I got them as more of a joke than anything else. Didn't he just go and put them on. He looked patently ridiculous. And loved them and the moment and the laughter. This year, it is dragonflyrose 's turn. *giggle* She is going to absolutely LOVE them. They are silly and fun and will make her smile clear through! One of these years someone will get me...ohhh dear.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the tree tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow...~~Irving Berlin
I grew up in New England. I LIKE snow at Christmas. I went for old-fashioned sleigh rides. My son is driving here (Michigan) from Colorado. I hope it doesn't start snowing until everyone is here. Then it can snow its heart out. I've always felt that snow on the 24th is a magic snow. Just seems different somehow. The kid in me comes out. (Not that it is ever buried too deeply!)
When I was little 'Christmas Magic' (a scattering of star or tree confetti) was always a part of Christmas. Santa always spread some around when he visited. My children experienced the magic as well. When my daughter was about ten, my mother brought her to see Santa in a mall. She insisted she was way too old for that sort of thing. But, with the 'Grammy-glare' working, she gave in and sat on Santa's lap for that picture. He asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she whispered her answer to him. She and my mom then went off in one direction and I in another. About ten minutes later while I was wandering the book store, Santa appears. "Do you know what 'purple Christmas Magic' is? Your daughter told me that if I was truly Santa, there'd be purple magic this year." I explained about the magic and he smiled. I was so thrilled that Santa had tracked me down! We'd never had purple. It was always red, green, gold or silver...sometimes a combination. I went and found purple. That Christmas morning, she woke to purple Christmas magic everywhere! From her pillow to the empty plate, where there was a note from Santa telling her to always believe in the Magic of Christmas. It continued across the house to the presents and stockings. It was inside the wrapping of presents from Santa, all over the house...inside the stockings. The look on her face was priceless. She's all grown up now, but there is still Christmas magic all over the house come Christmas morning!!!
And, you see, that's the thing. Christmas, for a plethora of reasons, is, indeed Magic! It is wondrous, life affirming and full of love. Sure, I've had lonely Christmases and empty one and ones with just me and the pooch. But each and every time that happened, I realized that it was empty only if I chose for it to be. Because I still had memories. Folks were only a phone call or short walk away. Even when my daughter was stationed in Spain and we couldn't be together, we still talked. It wasn't great, maybe, but the magic still existed.
~*~
So much that happens to us in our lives has yet another level when it comes to our writing. Using the memories, the ups and downs, the crazy and the harried, the magic and the falling down tree moments adds an additional luster when we write. The descriptions, the moments, the 'feel of real' adds a depth and brings the reader in to the story...regardless of the season or time of year that these moments occur. We each have so much in our lives to pull from...but only if we remember to take advantage of our varied experiences use them in our writing!
And so I'm offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two
Although it's been said many times, many ways
Merry Christmas to you~~from Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire Nat King Cole
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For Authors: December 16, 2015 Issue [#7374]
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