For the Christmas Geek in All of Us

I wrote this about a year or so ago, December 7th 2008, to be exact. It's actually where I got the idea for this blog from, hence its title. It's something that really means a lot to me.

Just to see if anyone else can relate...

Sometimes a sense memory brought on by a song can be so beautiful.

I'm listening to Christmas music on Lite-FM through my computer (since I'm not home and I can't listen to it for real) and Anne Murray's version of O Holy Night came on. My parents used to play Anne Murray's Christmas CD all of the time when I was a kid...and just hearing that version of the song allowed me to go so far as smell my mom's hot apple cider from Williams and Sonoma. I spend so much time thinking about the negative and not enough time remembering everything that was great from my childhood.
And Christmas is quite possibly the best time of year for this...because when it was Christmas, EVERYTHING was great. There were miracles...I honestly believe that.

We used to have these great cassette tapes called "Christmas Through the Years" that played all of the traditional Christmas music by all of the traditional artists who sung them...like Jingle Bell Rock done by Bobby Helms and Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee. Kate Smith sings a song on there called Christmas Eve in my Hometown (which I was able to find on iTunes) and it also had Christmas in Killarney (also in iTunes) but I can't find the whole collection anymore. We bought the Time-Life Treasury of Christmas some years later, and while that was great, I still loved those cassettes more, along with the Anne Murray CD and Nat King Cole's Christmas CD. I'm honestly sad that I can't find those cassettes anymore...ours are so old that the quality isn't great anymore...but maybe I'll look in ebay.

And a story that I've told recently...when I was six or so years old, some of the kids in my class told me that Santa wasn't real. My parents took action immediately and my dad insisted that I was going to have proof that Santa existed. They bought a Santa suit and filmed my dad on Christmas Eve bringing presents into our living room. And when I asked how the camera knew when to turn on...they thought quickly and said "it's floor activated!" My father, a known health freak, even hammed it up for the camera while eating those delicious chocolate chip cookies and rubbed his belly..made out of pillows!
I truly didn't put two and two together about how this was my father impersonating Santa until three or four years later...I totally bought it!

One of the best things about Christmas is how some things about it may change from year to year but the feelings are still the same. My mother and I still make cookies, every year..and Gauri loves those cornflake wreaths! We still go to Target on Black Friday every year and K and Bevin joined us this year to make it more fun. I still watch A Christmas Story every year, and if Gina and Joe are around I watch it with them! We go to Midnight Mass every year. And new traditions, like the Salve christmas concert, make the season...for lack of a less corny word...brighter.

It will always be the most magical time of the year..and it will always make me feel so full. <3