”At Christmas play, and make good cheer,For Christmas comes, but once a-year.”
The first thing I do every morning is let the dogs loose. After that I light the trees, the Santa’s and the stars. The house twinkles.
I see and feel the cold just by looking out the window. It is a perfect day to stay inside and bundle under the afghan on the couch and read with a couple of dogs beside me keeping me warm.
We had a dusting of snow last night then rain then freezing cold. The road is rutted with ice. The low today will be 17°. The high will be 32° as if that can be described as high.
My mother used to tease me about presents. She’d tell me knew what I was getting, and how much I’d love it. Even when I was an adult she’d tease. It was always one of the fun traditions of Christmas.
We always had an Advent calendar with little doors which were numbered 1 to 25. We’d take turns opening the day’s door. The 25th was always the manger scene. The other doors had toys, Christmas trees and an angel or two. The higher the number the closer we got to Christmas and the more excited we’d get. I remember counting the unopened doors so I knew how far away Christmas was.
My mother always put a few wrapped presents under the tree. I think she did it deliberately to drive us crazy. We’d shake and squeeze the presents hoping to guess what they were. The pajamas, destined to be opened on Christmas Eve, were easy. My sister knew what many of the other presents were. She could see through the small hidden hole she had torn in each present.
Every year the school had a Christmas fair. It was up the street at the town hall. We walked there in class lines in twos accompanied by the nuns, but once we’d arrive, the nuns let us loose. The big hall had tables filled with gifts and cookies. My mother would give us money to buy gifts and lunch, usually a hot dog. The best table was the children’s table. It was loaded with gifts to buy which were a dime or a quarter. One year my sister bought my mother a Christmas cactus. It was kept on the end of the kitchen table by the window. It got enormous over the years and flowered every Christmas. It lived for 60 or 65+ years.
Today I still need to fill the bird feeders as I couldn’t in the rain. I hope to build the gingerbread house I bought yesterday, and I have a Christmas jigsaw puzzle to put together. I also have my book. The day will be filled.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
December 21, 2024 at 5:51 pm
You should consider Allen Sherman’s rewrite of the “12 Days of Christmas.” It begins “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a Japanese transistor radio. I think it is on the same record as “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda here I am at Camp Granada.”
Cordially,
John Wilson, Jr.
December 21, 2024 at 6:48 pm
Thanks, I foregot about Alan Sherman. That one and, “Grandma Got Run OverBy A Reindeer”.
December 21, 2024 at 10:55 pm
Thanks, John.
I know of his Camp Granada album and his camp song, but I don’t know this song. I’ll see if I can find it other than YouTube as I can’t post songs from there.
December 21, 2024 at 10:45 pm
Hi Kat,
Today was sunny but cool with a high temperature of 55°. The low was right at freezing. I had to post my second favorite Christmas song, above. My favorite is, “The Christmas Song”. It was written by Mel Tormé on a hot July day in Los Angeles. He wrote the song to feel cooler.
When I was in elementary school, before Madalyn Murray O’Hair took the public schools to the Supreme Court, they had Christmas plays and decorations. My parents had no problem with us celebrating the secular portions of Christmas. Santa Clause and the Grinch have nothing to do with virgin births, nor saviors.
I still enjoy the idea of celebrating Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us, on December 23rd. Only Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David could have thought up that idea. And, so where does Kwanza fit in to all the other winter solstice holidays? Hey today is the winter solstice and the beginning of winter. Happy longest night of the year.
December 21, 2024 at 11:53 pm
Hi Bob,
Right now it is 22°. My dogs are in and out quickly.
Tomorrow the high will be 23°. We will be stuck with this cold for a while. I tend to stay inside the warm house except for the dump tomorrow which I dread. It is always the coldest place in town.
I’m not a fan of your second favorite Christmas song, but I do love your favorite. It is the perfect description of Christmas. There are so many wonderful covers of it.
Because I mostly attended Catholic schools, we always had Christmas programs. In elementary school which was in each classroom, but in high school it was a whole school program in the evening.
Kwanzaa starts the day after Christmas and continues to New Year’s. I totally forgot this was the Solstice.
December 22, 2024 at 12:16 am
The only reason I enjoy that song is that it describes the hypocrisy of the holiday season and it’s funny. Obviously, it’s also just silly.
December 22, 2024 at 12:21 am
I’ll have to listen to it again. It has been a while.