This Holiday Season

An old friend from elementary school (Oh my! I am old!) wrote this and I love it. Thanks Gary!

Remember when you were a kid and Thanksgiving was coming? Remember that feeling you got? All the handprint crayola turkeys in the classroom windows? All the excitement of Christmas around the corner? Remember how it felt to just know that everything was okay? Where did those holiday feelings go? It seems we have grown as adults and become so preoccupied with life that we have forgotten about living. Now WE have to explain to OUR children what Thanksgiving and Christmas are all about. This is a very tough time for a lot of American families and our children will not understand what the holidays are representing if all they recognize as different this year is a few less presents under the tree. we need to teach them how beautiful this time of year really is.

You know how on an evening stroll, you smell the air and in it is a familiar smell that brings you back to a specific moment in your life? It almost places you at an exact moment in time; you feel it, your body becomes engulfed in a strange familiarity. Suddenly, you're back in second grade, reciting the lines for the Christmas play and making reindeer out of clothespins. You're cutting plain white pieces of paper a thousand times to make a magical snowflake. You're at Grandma's house and the sweet smell of cookies in the oven takes over. You're at home with your brothers and sisters, Moms and Dads, watching Ralphie shoot his eye out or watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" while the smell of sweet evergreen pine is in the house and can almost hear the theme song by Vince Guiraldi on his piano. Nostalgia is a beautiful thing. It takes us back. Back to a simpler time in our lives when the biggest decision of the day was choosing between Cap'n Crunch or Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

But in order for us to have any nostalgic feelings, we must have memories first. We need Grandma's cookies, or home baked pies. We need the smells, the sounds, the warm feelings of the holidays in order to burn a sense of peace and well-being in our souls.

Christmas has a feeling to it that I worry will be lost this year to paying overdue bills and mortgages and worrying about our futures. This holiday season, relax just a little more; be a Mom, be a Dad, be a brother, a sister, a grandmother or grandfather, be a friend to somebody who needs a memory created. Most importantly, create memories for the children in your life. There may not be as many presents as there used to be, but when they're 30, 40, 50, even 80 years old, what they'll remember are the feelings that the holidays give us. Bake some cookies with the kids, take them on a trip to see the lights, take them iceskating, build a tradition that is only yours. Don't use that old plastic tree with bunched up needles and wire branches. Go pick one out of a lot, or, better yet, take the kids on a trip to a Christmas Tree farm and let them help you pick out a beautiful tree and cut it down yourself. That tree is one of a kind, made by God and Earth for your family. Let thesmell of Christmas pine permeate your home. Make your home feel like Christmas. Make it so when your children are on an evening stroll with their children twenty-five years from now, a smell of something familiar will bring them back to relive memories with you. Slow your life down and live; be there for your loved ones. Bring friends over, bring family over, burn that feeling of peace into your childrens' souls. After all, nostalgia won't exist for your children if you don't creat the memories. Peace and love in this holiday season to you and all you love. Happy Thanksgiving, and Merry Christmas.