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This week: Thoughts on the Season 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
He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.~~Roy L. Smith
Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.~~Freya Stark
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 far and away my favorite holiday. I love everything about it, from the event that inspired it, hoping for a white one, to wrapping presents. But mostly I love having family and friends gathered, and sharing traditions~~ Ellen Hopkins
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There, for me, is just something extra special about Christmas. I don't mind that it seems to start earlier every year because I keep it in my mind and heart all year long. Honestly, I have often bought my first present for the coming Christmas by February! I stash it away in the closet and add to the stash all year long. I flat out love everything about the season and embrace every single nuance. It just makes me happy! Pure and simple.
Every year, about this time, I reflect back on Christmases past: the ones I spent alone with only the dog for company, the ones when the kids were little and I knew what was in every single package under the tree, the ones when garage sale finds over the summer would make Santa appear and the ones as a child. I think back and back to sneaking downstairs early in the wee hours just to look and marvel before quietly going back to bed hugging the joy of it all as I snuggled back under the covers. I remember snowy morning giving the horses an extra treat, midnight masses, holding candles and singing 'Silent Night' as we left the church to find out it was snowing, and spending Christmas afternoons dishing up turkey dinners down at the shelter. I remember cutting out construction paper snowflakes to hang on the last miserable excuse for a tree dragged home late Christmas Eve and thinking it beautiful the next morning when far, far away from family. I look at my tree in the living room and remember the events and people each ornament brings to mind: friends long gone, parents no longer with me, children who live hundreds of miles away, and through the magic of the season they are right here with me.
Over the years have learned that it isn't the pile under the tree that makes a Christmas. It is purely the feelings it engenders, which, I expect, is why, to paraphrase Dickens, I keep it within my heart all year long. Today is our eighth anniversary. Although we never have money to do anything special for our anniversaries, being so close to Christmas and all, I don't care, because all those loving feelings are just mixed in and it is all we need. At this moment, I am writing this newsletter in predawn darkness, the dog is asleep on my feet and my husband is outside snow blowing the ten inch of snow out of the driveway. We've opened cards, hugged and later, he will come home from work bearing roses. Each year, he gets me the number of roses for each year we've been married. I'll have roses in the bedroom, on the dining room table and in the computer room on my desk. The house will smell like balsam, cinnamon and roses; smells that these days translates into what I've come to think of as Christmassy smells.
Last night, I was wrapping some presents. I fuss when I wrap. Pretty, cloth ribbon bows with bits of greenery and berries or peppermint sticks entwined in red ribbon ... all color coordinated with tags to match. Each is placed under the tree and each brings a smile for each seems to remind me of another year, another Christmas; some recent, others years and lifetimes ago. Last night I was reminded of a Christmas up on the mountain as a child. It was a very snowy Christmas and a tree had come down along our two-and-a-half mile long driveway taking the wires with it. The house was candle lit and we cooked hotdogs Christmas Eve over the fire in the Franklin stove. To this day, we have hotdogs the 24th of December. I remember the guys from the electric company out there fixing the power and my dad giving each of the men a bottle of Scotch. They'd come in to warm up before heading home. One of the men had a long, snowy white beard and was rather rotund. I came out, half awake and thought he was Santa Clause. I brought him the cookies I'd left for Santa and the carrots for the reindeer. He was an intuitive man and I went back to bed sure that I'd seen Santa. Know what? I truly did! For while Santa Clause is just a teensy part of it all, that evening infused the child with a belief that has lasted my entire life. A belief in giving and giving back, a belief that there is always goodness to be found in everything even if I can't quite see it at the time and a belief just in joy in general!
Later, I was reminded of the first Christmas that my dad was not there physically with us. I was wrapping a fleece-lined jacket for my hubby. My dad had had one (and I still do) that was black and red checked. Dad was fond of Hershey's Kisses. He always had a handful in one pocket or the other. I remember digging that jacket of Dad's out to wear just to feel him close. It still smelled (back then) like Dad: Borkum Riff pipe tobacco and Old Spice after shave. I'd snuggled into the corner of the couch and was really, terribly, clear-to-the-gut missing him. I put my hand in the pocket and my fingers wrapped around a kiss. Funny, over the years, I kept finding a kiss in that pocket. Logistics be darned... Dad was 'there.'
Sitting here typing, a thousand other memories surface, in waves of tidbits and snatches. I have a silly grin on my face. I think of the year my daughter, who, at ten, felt she was far too old to sit on Santa's lap. My mom wanted a picture of her with Santa. We were at the mall and she was a very unhappy little girl, deathly afraid someone from school would see her with the 'little' kids, but she went along with it. Grudgingly. She went up, sat on his lap and whispered something in his ear. Picture snapped, Mom happy. My daughter headed off with Mom to one side of the mall, I headed to the bookstore in a different direction. A few minutes later there was a tap on my shoulder and I turned to see Santa standing there. "Your daughter said that the only thing she wanted for Christmas was 'purple Christmas magic.' Do you know what that is? She said that if I was 'real' there would be purple Christmas magic this year."
Every year I sprinkled Christmas confetti...stars or trees or wreaths...around the tree. Christmas colors: red, green, silver or gold. I went and found purple. I think it was stars and moons. There was purple Christmas magic in every 'Santa' gift. There was purple magic near her pillow and by the obligatory Christmas cookie plate. The look on her face that morning was priceless!!!! I will never forget it!!! Neither will she.
There was a Christmas, when I was a teen that is told in my item below. So many snippets of memories from this time of year find their way into my writing. They might be a straight-forward story (as below) or played with and modified to fit a particular character in a novel. Either way, perhaps because of the feelings (good or bad) associated with such memories, they add a layer of reality or magic or just depth to the writings because they are a part of me. They help a character come alive because the characters we write are not just words on a piece of paper, they are living, breathing beings who react, interact and have lives, feelings, memories and true emotions. Sometimes, it is easy to get so wrapped up in 'the story' that it is easy to forget that our characters have entire lives, not the moments within the frame of the writing; that they existed before the slice of their lives that we read. This layering of the 'before' that brings them into the 'now' of the story being told, has an impact on the who they 'are' and how they react to a given situation. |
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Elfin Dragon-finally published  says: I loved this issue of trivial facts.  I love trivial facts of historical figures, mostly because they begin to beg the question of "what if". People like Hitler and Castro. But for small trivial facts our world could have been very different...
DRSmith jokes: Hmmm, interesting piece as always. And it appears you've done a good deal of homework to boot. But I, pray tell, must elaborate on at least one item... I've been told many times to "sleep tight", but usually after a snoot full of my favorite imbibofill to where I had no choice but to hit the hay "tighter n' Cooter Brown", or, as "Dick's hat band." Hmmm, come to think of it, I never did find out who Cooter or that other fella, Dick, was. (Don't you dare print this!) lol
Oh, I dare ... :)
Jacqueline says: I enjoyed your newsletter very much, I love history and I would normally read Romanic stories that had history in it. John Jakes was one of the authors I read.
Always loved his books!
willwilcox adds: I LOVED THIS! GOOD JOB!
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For Authors: December 14, 2016 Issue [#8027]
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