When we are used to cold and pine scent (from real, growing trees) and then, begin spending the holidays where there is heat and nothing smells anything like pine, it is very hard to feel the Season. Even Thanksgiving does not feel like itself without the cold, and without family. I think it is more missing family than it is missing cold, but that is part of it. I decorated with lights and artificial garland and baking and all the things we do when we first began spending the holidays further South, but now I do only the wreath (hang it up, put on a few extras, plug it in) and the tree.
Which is a most excellent invention of a tree and one day, maybe, I will market it.
I remember going for drives to see the lights. Now when we do that, there seem not to be any lights. Those that do decorate seem to have hired someone to do it. The lights are that perfect.
So, something human is missing.
But I do like my tree very much, and will hang the wreath, too.
No reindeer this year. I had to replace lights last year for the reindeer in the yard? And I wound so many light through the wire and they are those ultra bright ones and they are so blaring bright they turn their area almost bright as day!
But I spent so much time winding all those new lights in. Roar. Last year, I put them out, anyway.
But no reindeer in the yard this year, I think.
Just the wreath and the tree.
And music.
So, this has me thinking about favorite holiday things. I have two.
When the grands were little, D H found a Christmas train to go around under the Christmas tree. It has Santa and the elves and skaters with magnets beneath their skates going round and round as the train circles the tree. The child could push a button on the controls and Santa would roar out Merry Christmas.
The other thing is Christmas music in general. I cannot think of which is my favorite. All of it seems to go together with the lights and the things that make it special from the rest of the year.
I am making baklava this year from the recipe Lil found me on allrecipes.com and sending it along with the story of the War of the Grandma's Baklava and the Ugly Christmas Sweater contest that never was because Baklava Grand and the Greek boyfriend broke up over Christmas.
Now, I am getting excited for the holidays.
What an excellent thread.
:O)
Cedar