Christmas Day 2010

Just a short post hoping Santa was good to all of you this year. I know you were all super good! ;-)

I'm enjoying a lazy day until the turkey goes into the oven this afternoon. Dave is, of course, working in his machine shop as he does every year, so I can watch the snow when it starts and meanwhile I can read. Then I can watch football while I cook. Now that's my idea of a good day!

I have many wonderful memories of Christmas. When I was a child, I had more presents than I deserved from Santa, and then we were off for two Christmas dinners - first at my mother's parents' in town and then 60 miles away to my other grandparents' for more food. Makes you wonder why I was such a skinny child, but explains why I grew much wider later I guess. I also remember a Christmas when my parents took me out to dinner and I ordered spaghetti! Mom thought that was just me being quirky as usual.

Once when my parents lived in Canada, I flew up from Illinois for the holidays. As we approached Montreal my two seatmates asked if I had ever seen Montreal from the air at Christmas. I said no, so they insisted I sit by the window. What a sight! It seemed like every building down below had colored lights; it looked like fairyland. I'll always be grateful they let me see it.

Earlier in our marriage Dave always spent way too much on me. He has good taste in clothes and I would open box after box of new things to wear, along with books of course. I never knew what to buy him. What he wanted were things for his shop, either costing thousands of dollars or things that I didn't know about and wouldn't have known where or what to buy. I had a terrible time buying for him. Years ago we stopped buying for each other so I don't have those worries anymore.

There was one Christmas, the first year we were married, that we happened to be in a campground in West Virginia Christmas morning. It was only an 18' camper and we were on a month-long trip so I don't know where he hid the presents, but when I got back from taking my shower that morning there were wrapped gifts everywhere. That was fun. That evening in Tennessee though we couldn't find a place to eat out so our Christmas dinner was a can of chilli!

Our tree, when we were home for the holidays, was filled with meaningful ornaments. Every year we bought or made something that was representative of that year: a dove for our first year which is reddish because it "flew" into the shrimp sauce, cookie cutters from the year we were broke and I gave everyone homemade cookies, a tiny bench Dave made for our 7 dwarves that same year. Friends and relatives also gave us ornaments, and I had a baby face drawn by my grandmother that is supposed to be me to hang on the tree.

Due to our health issues, I don't decorate the house now but we enjoy everyone else's decorations and we enjoy having a quiet time of year while everyone we know is bustling around and getting exhausted. This turned out not to be such a short note after all, but I do wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.