Christmas!

We had this family picture made about two weeks before Christmas. It took four adults and one photographer to get all the babies posed right. Family friend Tonya juggled little twins back and forth to help pose them, and sil Lavina made sure Matilda's dress and my hair looked right. We actually broke a sweat this was so stressful. But the resulting photograph for our efforts is lovely! My dads scan isn't so great...



My mother found some Christmas spirit and she and her sisters celebrated at my 87 year old Grandmas home for Christmas Eve. My grandma has the coziest home, and I was sad to not be there with them. Its a tiny little house that my grandfather purchased in the 1950's. My mother likes to scare my nephew by telling him all about how poor they were growing up. She doesn't quite grasp that to a 17 year old boy in this age, hearing that your grandma shared a full size bed with two of her three sisters and that they fought each night over whose feet the cat slept on (to prevent frostbite, no less) is as ridiculous as a distant relative of my moms telling her when they used to rub sticks together to create FIRE. Or me telling my own grandchildren one day that televisions used to be as large as kitchen stoves and just as heavy and how at one time we only had 13 channels on ours (gasp!). But, I digress. My grandmas house is full of Christmas Cheer. She has snoring santas, dancing Elvis dolls, a faux fireplace with a mantel she enjoys decorating, a small tree and a cement goose that wears her own holiday dress on her front porch. The house is literally a festival for young eyes and it makes me sad that my children missed it.

When I was a little girl my favorite Christmas decoration at my grandmas house was a small glittery gold bell with a piece of holly glued to it and a matching gold cord with a ball attached. For as long as I can remember, the ball on the end of the cord still had its plastic wrapping on it. When you pulled the string down from the bell, it would play a nice holiday melody and it continued to play until the cording was slowly pulled back inside the bell. The music sounded like the clanking of wind up Victorian music boxes. The bell was hung in the door frame of my grandmas kitchen and children under 4 feet tall couldn't reach it. My paw-paw and my father were delegated as the adults who lifted grandchildren up to the bell to pull the string. I know that sometimes my sister and I would be lifted up into the air 25 times to yank on that cord and listen to the music and watch mesmerized as the cord slowly withdrew from our grasp and back inside of the bell. My dad would smile at my sister and I, that something so simple gave us such joy. It was the first thing I looked for at my grandparents home every Christmas Eve. Eventually we were tall enough to reach the cord on our own, and similarly, lost interest in the bell. However as an adult, I now look for this bell every year at my grandmas, but for now it has been put away and no one remembers where.

I hope I can create some sort of magic for my own children at Christmas. Although, I don't know that I have to... it seems to me that holiday magic seeks out children on its own, and that its the children- who having discovered it- share this magic with adults at Christmas. I believe this is the reason why people say "Christmas is for children" when in truth Christmas is for everyone (it is a birth story, after all). Because children are best able to appreciate the glimmer of lights on a tree, candy cane shaped cookies, the story of Santa, and a little melody from a dime store glittered bell. When we as adults are around children during the holidays, we get a glimpse into our own Holiday pasts and see Christmas through our eyes as children again. I think this is why my dad gave Lucas a radio flyer wagon for Christmas. He has been as excited over the wagon as if it were his very own, and makes me believe there must of been a very special wagon in his childhood. Its nice that he and my sons will be able to share this memory together oneday. Matilda will probably sully their wagon with dollies and play pretties.

We had a small dinner here on Christmas Day. I have to say that at this age, Lucas and Matilda really don't grasp "Santa". But, they did enjoy having company and Matilda danced and sang, and Lucas tried to escape the playroom every chance he could. And I enjoyed having a big family to share our holiday with. My sister was here for the week, and the kids enjoyed her extended visit. We were not welcome at my husbands parents home for Christmas as usual, but it matters less and less when I realize that our family is each other, not the drama that is going on around us.