Posted on25 Dec 2009

Christmas is winding down. The kids are worn out from hours of wii. I’m worn out from hours of wii whining. My oldest tween told his little sister that Santa wasn’t real today. This started a whole discussion on what Christmas was like when I was a kid – it was great – I hadn’t thought about a lot of those things in ages.
My parents used to really go out of their way to make Christmas magical for us kids. One year we woke up to see the carrots we had left for the Reindeer, in the middle of the frozen lake. One time Santa left his big black glove on the hearth of the fireplace. My mom used to start celebrating early. We started the season with Advent. Big dinners every Sunday night where we would light our advent wreath and talk about the meaning of the season. On December 6, St Nicholas day, we got our Christmas stockings filled with fruit, nuts and candy along with a little gift, left mysteriously outside our door. The 24th of December is my birthday so we had a big party at night with lots of family and friends. Christmas came next – always a day just for family. Lots of food, games and usually a new set of jammys to put on before bed. (It’s so funny, while I write these warm fuzzy feelings and thoughts I have to stop every couple minutes and scream at my rotten kids because they are acting like complete morons – I’m going to take their video games and shove them . . . somewhere) OK, back to my memories – My mom used to leave the Christmas tree up until epiphany, 3 Kings Day. This was kind of a repeat of St Nicholas – while we where sitting down to an awesome dinner, packages would magically appear from Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. My mom kept this up until I was 30.
I always get a little depressed this time of year (I can’t help it I want to be a kid at Christmas) – the magic now comes from me trying to create new memories and magic for my kids. It’s exciting watching them get excited.
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