A rainstorm before Christmas is just wrong. Today is dark and miserable. I wanted sun on the shortest day of the year. On the plus side, though, my tree is shining in the darkness.

The morning is unseasonably warm, in the high 50’s. I did all my errands yesterday so today I’ll start my cookies. I’ll do at least one batch and maybe a second. First will be my world famous orange cookies. The butter is already on the counter.

When I was a kid, the countdown to Christmas began a week away from the big day, but first, we had to get through Christmas Eve, the longest day of the year to any kid. On that big day, bedtime never seemed to come unlike all the other days of the year when bedtime always seemed to be early. I remember being so excited we’d talk from one bedroom to the other across the hall. My mother would yell up the stairs for us to quiet down and get to sleep. That took forever.

My parents went to midnight mass. I was too young so my brother and I went to church Christmas morning. My sisters were too young for even the morning so they stayed home. I envied them.

When I was really little, we had a turkey at Christmas dinner. When I was older, we had a roast beef of some sort. We always had mashed potatoes. I have a fondness for mashed potatoes. The other vegetables varied though creamed onions were often on the menu. As we got older, the vegetables got fresher except for my dad’s can of asparagus.

We always got dressed up on Christmas Day. Sometimes I’d wear the new clothes I had opened that morning. One year it was a new skirt, a fluffy white sweater and a necklace with a gold pendant.

A heavy wind is blowing now. The rain has stopped for the meantime. I find nothing about this weather inviting.

Right now it is 30˚. The high will be 35˚. The sky is beautiful like the icy, deep blue from a Crayola box. The wind is blowing hard enough to whip the top branches back and forth. They look like one of those sky dancers in front of a car lot. I have no errands today. I have the laundry to do, the dreaded laundry. 

When I was a kid, the only Christmas books we had were The Night Before Christmas and A Christmas Carol which I read every year when I was old enough to read it. That’s probably why I can watch all the Christmas Carol movies over and over every year. My favorite scene is when Scrooge wakes up and finds out it is still Christmas morning. He dances and sings, sort of, “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man.” One year my mother, sister and I went to Boston to see A Christmas Carol. The theater was filled. We had great seats close to the front. Just as Scrooge began his dancing the fire alarm went off. We all sort just looked around then a voice told us to go out the nearest exit. We did. There was no fire. Worse, we never did get to see the happy Scrooge and Tim with his, “God bless us everyone.”

Yesterday I got home when it was dark so I got to see my house lights in all their glory. I was amazed. I think because the houses around me are dark, mine look so much brighter. They light up the night and this whole end of the street. 

Im going to go through a few boxes of Christmas stuff. I’ll be down the cellar anyway with the laundry. I’m thinking finding Christmas treasures will make doing the laundry festive in some weird way. 

The play was good and the meal excellent. I loved the time with my two sisters. I also visited my uncle, our favorite uncle. I hadn’t seen him in a while. It was good to sit and chat. He used to call me Leeny, shortened from Kathleen.

The ride home was in torrential rain. Even the quickest setting on my wipers wasn’t enough at times. The traffic slowed in the worst of it. As I got closer to the bridge, the traffic was lighter so less backsplash. That was the best part of the ride. 

When I was a kid, snow at Christmas made for a special world. Even though the bulbs on our front bushes got covered, their colors shined through the layers of snow, and soon enough the snow on those lights would melt from the heat of the bulbs while the rest of the bush stayed covered. The house looked like a magical place. The plows never completely removed the snow off the streets. I loved to walk on the side of the road and listen to the crunch sound my footsteps used to make on the packed snow. It was almost a squeaky sound. 

One year on Christmas Eve my mother asked me to go to the store to get bread. There was no snow so I took my bike out of the cellar and pedaled to the white store. All the way there I kept thinking my mother had no idea of the importance of Christmas Eve or she wouldn’t have sent me on such a mundane errand. It was the day of all days. Every kid knew that. My mother didn’t.

The weather is dreary. I have a couple of errands and that’s it on my to do list for today, but I’ll probably wrap some more tonight. When we were adults, my mother wrapped every gift and every tag on my gifts read to Kat from Santa. My father used to help. We could easily identified his wrappings. One year my mother was behind, and I offered to help wrap. She’d hand me a box, and I’d wrap. A couple of times she told me the tag should read to Kat from Santa. I had wrapped my own gifts. She was a tricky Santa.

Gloomy, damp and dark are the adjectives for today. When I got the papers, it was even colder than I thought it would be. The sky is rain ready. 

Today is play day. My two sisters and I are going to see It’s a Wonderful Life. My mother started this tradition. She’d treat us to a Christmas event then we’d go out to dinner. We had a table at the Pops one year and saw Death of a Salesman with Brian Dennehy another year. Most times we went to the local theater, and that’s where we’re going today. We’ll have dinner afterwards. It is such a Christmas treat to have my sister Moe here from Colorado. 

Tradition is so tied up with Christmas. One year my sister’s whole family came for the holidays. My mother, my sister and I baked tremendous amounts of cookies and candy. We each made spritz cookies because my mother had made them every year when we were kids and we wanted to honor the tradition. One of the fun memories of these cookies is the year my mother added red and green food coloring to the dough to make the cookies festive. My father wouldn’t eat them. The color gave them a weird taste was his complaint. We laughed. My mother always left them plain after that. 

My tree is decorated. The only things left on my to do list are shop at the grocery store, make cookies and wrap cape gifts. Last week at this time I was in a panic. 

I have a Santa hat for Henry to wear for pictures. I also have some Christmas bandanas. What are the odds he’ll wear them long enough for a few shots? 

The B doesn’t work on my keyboard. I couldn’t get into my computer because there are B’s in the password. I got into this program through guest user. I tried resetting my password and thought I did, but no luck. I’m still a guest. As for the missing b’s, I copy and paste. 

Christmas is getting closer. It’s almost time for the countdown. 

Today is a dreary, rainy day but a warm one. When I woke up, the first thing in my head was my list and what I have left to do. The house is all decorated so I just have to finish the tree and make a batch of fudge. Yesterday, when I was bringing up tubs of house decorations, I brought up a tub filled with boxes. When I opened the tub to check the boxes, I found only empty boxes. I didn’t return the decorations to their boxes last year. I laughed. 

One of the ornaments for my tree is one of the special ornaments my mother insisted we not touch in case we broke them. The ornament is a big, colorful ball. I always put it toward the top of the tree just as my mother did. I’m very careful.

When I was a kid, school always dragged around Christmas time. We did a few Christmas activities like coloring nativity scenes and making cards for our parents which helped pass the time. My nativity scenes were heavy on the brown, but the hay was yellow and Mary always wore blue. I remember getting a box of hard candy from the nuns, I think, on the last day before vacation. The boxes were cardboard and had white strings to hold to carry the boxes. I still have a box, and I hang it on my scrub pine. 

I put my nativity set on the table in the living room. It is an old one very similar to the one we had when I as a kid. My sister has that now. They both have chalk figures. When I opened the box yesterday, I noticed the camel was missing its nose. I found the nose and glued it back on. I bought the set at a church fair even though a few key figures were missing. I had to buy some sheep and the Wise Men. I easily found two Wise Men, but Balthazar, the Black Wise Man, was difficult to find. I hunted on E-Bay and finally found one. When he arrived, I put him with his fellow travelers. This Balthazar is about half a height taller and a lot bigger than the other Wise Men. I never checked his size. I was just happy to find him. Every time I place Balthazar I laugh. 

Today is warm which is a welcome change from the freezing weather we’ve had all week. It was so cold the water in the bucket where the tree sat outside froze. Even the dog didn’t want to be outside for too long. 

The tree is up and the lights are on. The rest will happen today. I did notice the tree leans a bit in the stand. I tried to open the pedal on the stand and hold the tree, but it seemed risky. I need a bit of help. I’m hoping to see my neighbor get home from work so I can ask him to help. If not, my tree will lean just a bit. 

I was worried that my to do list was too long for me to get everything done, but I’m doing a great job. Besides decorating the tree, I need to shop for a few ingredients, wrap my sister’s presents and make cookies, but I have a whole week on the cookies. I’ll wrap her gifts tomorrow as I’ll be seeing her on Sunday for the play. I think I’ll end up with a few days of rest, of sitting in the living room looking at my tree, listening to Christmas carols and drinking egg nog out of my moose mug. 

When I was a kid, everything we did added to the excitement of Christmas. The two times a day delivery of mail meant receiving so many Christmas cards we could hang them on a string which stretched across the whole living room wall. My brother and I looked through the Sears catalog just about every afternoon. I would circle what I wanted from Santa, but I changed my mind so many times the pages were messy with circles crossed out and new ones added. We stenciled the picture window with outlines of Santa and Christmas trees. We made our own ornaments using construction paper and crayons. We’d also cut the construction paper into strips which we strung together to make a garland. We made paper mâché ornaments using flour glue, that gloppy paste made from flour, water and a touch of salt. I loved my fingers covered in stiff glue. My favorite of all the things we did was decorating cookies. We’d crowd around the kitchen table. My mother would put different colored frosting in bowls on the table. We each had a spreader. We liberally covered the cookies in icing. That didn’t matter. They still tasted delicious. 

Christmas is still filled with wonder for me. I stop to look at houses covered in lights. I smile every time I see my tree. In many ways I am still that kid who loved all of Christmas, and I’m glad for it. 

The saga of the Christmas tree began yesterday. I went to the garden center and bought my tree. It is a concolor tree. I read about it in the flyer from Agway. The tree has long needles, a bluish tint and smells of citrus. It lasts a long time so we may even be talking about my valentine tree. I hadn’t ever heard of a concolor before, but my Colorado sister had one last year and has it again this year. I also did some shopping and bought decorations for the house and chocolates for stockings. This morning Skip, my factotum, arrived with Bobby, his factotum. I had wrestled the tree out of the trunk and leaned it against the fence. Skip cut more of the trunk so it fit into the tree stand. Right now the two of them are moving the tree in the stand to make sure it’s straight. I laughed at them discussing the tree’s position, “No, my left. Go the other way. Move it back. Move it forward. Okay, that’s it.” It took far longer than it sounds. Right now they are putting on the lights, as may sets as can fit. Christmas music is playing. The house is getting festive.  

My Christmas to do list is shrinking. The Colorado presents went out UPS yesterday. They’ll arrive Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. Tomorrow is shopping for ingredients for baking. It is also wrapping my other sister’s gifts. Saturday is make fudge and maybe date nut bread for my sister. The marathon baking starts next week, and I have gifts for my cape friends to wrap.

When I was a kid, I never saw my mother wrapping gifts. She must have done them when I was asleep. We didn’t have a real attic. We had a Christmas Vacation attic with boards and insulation. A small ladder came down when you pushed opened the attic board. My mother used to hide gifts from Santa in the attic. I found that out one year when my father was in the attic passing gifts down to my mother. My sister was young then and she was getting a push toy which played music, and that’s what I heard, that’s what woke me up. I waited until my mother and father went downstairs for good then I sneaked down the stairs and looked through the bannister to watch my parents putting out the toys around the tree. I saw it all, and they never saw me. When I woke up and saw my gifts, I gave an Academy Award performance filled with wonder and surprise. 

I love Christmas, and the tree is like the icing on a chocolate cake. 

This morning I had an early meeting. The alarm was jarring, but something worse awaited me. When I got to the car, I had to scrape the windows, the first time in years. 

Winter has taken hold. This morning it was 27˚ when I went out. By the time I got home, it had warmed to 37˚. Never did I expect to use warm and 37˚ together in the same sentence. 

When I was a kid, my school had a Christmas fair every year. It was held in the auditorium at the town hall a short walk up the street. We only had a half day of school the day of the fair. We’d walk two by two up the street accompanied by the nuns. After arriving at the fair, we were cut loose. My mother always gave us shopping money and money to buy lunch. Tables were set up all around the room each manned by one of the mothers (a bit of irony to spice up the narrative). Some tables sold knitted mittens and scarfs. At other tables you could buy potted plants, old games and books. I remember one table was filled with crocheted chair headrests and arm protectors. My favorite table was the one with inexpensive gifts for parents. I always bought my presents there. When my sister was in the 4th grade, she bought a Christmas cactus for my mother. It is still living and every year it still blossoms. After shopping, I’d buy my lunch. It was always a hot dog in a soft bun with a small bag of chips on the side. I loved that fair. 

Today is finish my wrapping day. I got a good start yesterday so I’m hopeful today will end it. Mailing the presents day is tomorrow. Thursday is set up the tree and decorate the house day. Friday and Saturday are begin the baking days. Sunday is a play, It’s a Wonderful Life, with my sister. On Monday I will take a day of rest.

My dance card is so filled with Christmas I can’t help but smile.

Today is colder than yesterday. The clouds seem close. I’m glad to be inside, and I’m happy I have no plans to go out. 

When Henry went out, I went on the deck for a minute or two. As I was going back inside, I noticed something at the bottom of the two steps below the back door. A closer look was a mistake. It was a flattened grey mouse. I don’t know whether it was coming or going before its demise. I kicked it off the deck. I wouldn’t have thought Henry responsible, but he was sniffing the spot where the mouse had recently been lying. Maybe it is the first mouse returned but he was dropped over a mile away so I doubt it. Maybe it was going to be the third mouse stopped by Henry before it could get into the house. Either way, it’s gone to its heavenly reward. 

Cross another item off the Christmas to do list. All the gifts are sorted into individual bags for each person. I was determined to finish, and I did. Today  marathon wrapping begins. 

When I was a kid, the only gifts under the tree before Christmas were from my parents, and they were always wrapped. We got to open one of them on Christmas Eve, my mother’s choice. It was always new pajamas. We whined, cajoled and begged to open different gifts, but that never happened. We were stuck with the pajamas. We were ungrateful whelps. 

Santa’s gifts were never wrapped. They were grouped by kid around the tree. I remember one year it was my brother on the left, then me then each of my sisters. Our stockings were hung on the bannister. I can remember going downstairs and getting my first look at the tree surrounded by presents. It was always jaw dropping and pretty much stopped us in our tracks. In my memory drawer is one of those first looks. I remember pink doll furniture in the front, the bed covered in doll clothes. They were for my Ginny doll. I can still see the game of Sorry leaning on a doll cupboard. Books were on the floor in front. I don’t know why that one Christmas is what I remember the most because every first look on Christmas morning was just as spectacular. Santa was amazing.