Memories of Christmas

There is excitement in the air! Christmas will soon be here. I watch some people carefully count their pennies and decide what they can buy with what little they have, and I watch some people spend like money is no object. There are people everywhere pushing, shoving, grabbing, sneering; and there are some who just quietly move out of the "movers and shakers" way and then continue on when the rush has moved on.

Someone asked me today if I remembered what Christmas smelled like. Oh most definitely I do! The air smelled fresh and clean -- it smelled of snow. There were smells of pine trees (no one had an artificial tree when I was little). There were smells of wreaths, turkey, pumpkin pie, oranges and cloves that wafted through the air sometimes when you passed someone's house... and the smell of church and the candles from the midnight service when we would sing Silent Night and they would turn the lights off so that you sang by candlelight.

We didn't have very much when I was growing up. If we had a tree it was because it was the only one left in the lot and it was a "Charlie Brown" tree that no one else wanted. To me it was absolutely beautiful. There were construction paper ornaments, and ornaments that were given to us. The gifts were few.... I cherished every book, every puzzle, every pair of pajamas... I even still have some of the books and I have one puzzle that my Sister gave me. I even kept a yellow chenille robe that she gave me... of course it is so old that there isn't much left of it.

We might not have had much, but we had family; and those Christmases were absolute magic to me.