Another Christmas Past?

Another Christmas Past?

Happy New Year, 2013.  I have now "celebrated" 50 New Year's celebrations and 50 days of Christmas. During the last couple of months, I have spent much time reminiscing with the ghosts of my Christmases past. Last year in my Advent Calendar of Christmas memories I shared many of my favorite stories and thanks to this blog, I am able to go back and read them again. While doing so, I couldn't help but remember some of the joy and anticipation I was feeling during those early Christmas times. The scent of the Christmas tree, the colored lights shining behind the white curtains in our living room, watching the snow softly falling in the glow of the streetlights, thinking I heard Santa walking softly around my house while I pretended to be asleep, believing the red lights on the radio towers were Rudolph's nose.... 

Ah, the magic that is childhood.  How quickly it flew by.

Even at 50 years of age, I still find myself at times seeing those towers and remembering how I stood outside my house on Christmas Eve, believing that red light just might be leading Santa's sleigh through the night sky and sometimes I feel the goosebumps at the thought of what might be waiting underneath the tree.

Many of the people I spent those wonderful holidays with are no longer with me, but the memory of my loved ones is so clear in my mind that they are always here in spirit. This year I seemed to be missing those people even more than usual, so I created an Ancestor Christmas Tree and on it I placed photos of many of my ancestors and those of my husband as well.  It is a reminder of those wonderful past Christmas and New Year's Days.  I labeled the reverse of each photo so that my children and grandchildren will know their names and I plan to have the tree up again next year when my new granddaughter will be able to appreciate a Christmas tree for the first time.  It helped me hold onto a little bit of "Christmas Past".

Photograph of my great grandmother, Margaret McBride Marling, on my Ancestor Christmas Tree.

 

50 Christmases?  No. That can't possibly be true! I know it was only yesterday I was wishing for that talking doll.......

 

Happy New Year, 2013.  May it be a blessed year for us all.

Christmas Past

This has been a difficult year in the life of my family. Like every year, we have experienced deaths of loved ones, various illnesses, job losses, and the like. But this year, we have also encountered the recent, unexpected break-up of two family marriages. Christmas this year is painful in many ways. Is it any wonder that we find comfort in looking back at what seems like a simpler time and place? This is a photograph of my mother and me in the house where I grew up. I was blessed with incredibly loving and supportive parents and two older brothers who were protective and with whom I usually got along. I'm sure that my parents had problems and worries like everyone does, but if they did, they certainly didn't show it. I can remember a Christmas when the employees of NCR, the company where my father was employed, went on strike and my parents had gone through all of their savings. My parents did everything they could to still provide us a merry Christmas. I am so grateful that my parents invested in movie and still cameras and that they documented those past Christmas mornings so fully. During times like these, it's good to look back and remember.