Well it is that time of year again. Everywhere you look there are coloured lights twinkling and decorations up for Christmas. Makes me wonder where the year has gone. This is a hard time of year for me because I miss my parents terribly. I would give everything I have for just one last Christmas with them. To me that would be more valuable than everything I own.

Sometimes I have to wonder what Christmas means to folks. I myself believe we need to put "Christ" back in Christmas and back off of the greed that seems to be building in today's world. 

Everywhere you go you see advertisements for this fancy toy or that absolutely wonderful handy dandy gadget. Prices are astronomical and little kiddies do without things they truly need because parents are too busy trying to buy the things they want but that they really do not need or because parents just can not afford them. 

Tell me - whatever happened to homemade gifts? Things like blankets and quilts and Gramma's knit socks and scarves and mittens and sweaters and home baked goodies from the oven?
Where did they disappear to? Now it is expensive toys and perfumes and robes from the store. Everything has to have a designer label or it is not worth wearing. I do not know about you but to me a homemade gift from the heart is still a huge treasure.

Some people are so busy trying to keep up with the present buying and not trying to teach their children the real values of Christmas. Whatever happened to teaching our children old fashioned traditions? Things like stringing popcorn or cranberries for the tree? Things like going caroling and making someone happy at a senior's home? Things like just getting together with friends or family over hot chocolate and music and memories? *sigh* 

My eldest daughter is cooking Christmas dinner this year and we are going there. She phoned me up and said, "Mom, how about I cook us an old-fashioned Christmas dinner?" I know how busy she is with her computer business and asked her if she was sure she had time. She told me she was going to make the time because she wanted an old fashioned Christmas with us all together for dinner. She said she just wanted to stay in her own house with her children for Christmas and not be traveling everywhere to visit. Well I definitely agreed with her and will pitch in with the ham and homemade cranberries. I am looking forward to packing up the 5 of us from my home and going to her home to share Christmas with my grandchildren. 

Without the girls and their families coming home to my house during Christmas this year I am not sure about putting up a tree. Guess we shall see what time brings as there is a while to think it over yet. :) Because I live in one town and my two daughters and their families live in 2 different cities it is sometimes difficult for us all to get together on the same day. Everyone has things that need to be done and places they need to be and sometimes the dates do not coincide with each other so we do the best we can to try to see each other sometime during the Holidays when we can. But we do make sure we see one another just the same.

You know life is too short to be so busy I say. Sometimes I wish we could turn back time and live in the days when family is all that counted. Times when family would move heaven and earth to be together for Christmas. But we can't and in this day and age everyone has to grasp at the chances there are to be together for fun times.

There is nothing like a home cooked Christmas dinner and the smells in the house of wonderful things in the oven. There is nothing like wonderful stuffing and homemade cranberries and the brown skin on the turkey. The laughter and delight of little children as they rip the pretty wrappings from pressies and squeal in delight at what they find inside. 

When I was a youngster I can remember what I got for Christmas. I got one of my Dad's socks with an orange and an apple, a candy cane maybe and some nuts and Christmas candy. There might or might not be one thing wrapped in pretty paper from my parents. Maybe a new Nancy Drew mystery or one year a slide projector that you put a wheel of piccies in and then shone them on a wall. But there was not the piles of gifts that children of today get. There were other gifts sometimes from an aunt or uncle but if you did get something from them it was always serviceable like a pair of socks or pj's. Yet back then I was ever so grateful. Now if you give a child a pair of socks and nothing else they look at you like you are the tightest grinch in Grinchville. LOL 

Well enough of my babble for today. Maybe I will go and close my eyes and try to bring back a Christmas memory.

hugs
Misker