tinsel_and

TINSEL AND TREES

When we were kids, the biggest day of the year was Christmas. It seemed like the wait before Christmas was forever including the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In “kid time”, it WAS a long time. It seemed like an eternity. This was also true waiting for the end of each school day. On some days, it was an eternity! Of course, with us adults Christmas comes way too fast especially right after Thanksgiving. I think one thing that contributes to this phenomenon is that the stores start putting Christmas stuff out way before Thanksgiving. In the past, they AT LEAST waited until 12:01 AM the day after Thanksgiving. Now days you go into a store to look for Halloween stuff and all they have is Christmas stuff! Hmmm, Hopefully I’ll be ahead of the stores with Christmas stuff since I'm planning to do all my Christmas shopping early this year. Even Santa Claus shows up just after Halloween, which makes me wonder how he and his elves have enough time to finish building all those toys. He must have moved from the North Pole to China since everything including toys is made there these days. Eventually they’ll probably replace the word Mayo with Mao. “Hey, get me a deluxe hamburger and hold the “Mao”. About the only thing I’ve found made in America these days are Chinese fortune cookies. They’re made in New York! They really are! The next time you eat in a Chinese restaurant, read the wrapper for yourself! I wonder if Chinese have “American” cookies after their meal when they go out to eat at an American type restaurant. "Ahhh, here honorable Keebler chocolate chip cookies with double chips! AH SO" Well, be that as it may, we kids really enjoyed Christmas. About a month before Christmas, Tim and I would practice running down the stairs as fast as we could so we would be in good shape to get down stairs as quickly as we could to start opening our presents when Christmas actually came! During our practice sessions, when we got to the place the Christmas tree would be (before Christmas there was a table there), we would practice opening up our imaginary presents. When I was real young, and Christmas finally did come (when eternity finally ended or the school day did), I was always relieved to see real presents under the tree. This was due to our mother telling us that we’d better be good or Santa Claus won’t come to our house this Christmas! Luckily, Santa must have missed us when he checked his list twice or we would have had imaginary presents to open. One thing we always had in those days was a real tree. Like everyone else these days, I have a fake tree too. I really miss the smell of a real tree and stepping on big dried up pine needles and have them stab me in the foot when I walk around the carpet in stocking feet. When the time came to decorate the tree, Tim and I would throw the tinsel on it in big clumps. Our mother said we should put it on 1 at a time. Good grief, if we did that it would have taken us till next Christmas to finish decorating the tree! In spite of her telling us not to, we continued to throw all the tinsel on the tree in big clumps anyway (see pics below when the camera caught us in the act!) I’m sure our mother took the pictures with the tinsel in the air just to remind us years later that we didn’t listen to her. In fact, we didn’t listen to her about anything! After all, what did parents know then. Another area I caused controversy in was the color of the light in the middle of the star that was on the top of the tree. Every Christmas I wanted to put a green light in it because that was my favorite color. Every year they would always put a blue light in it. Yes, on my own tree there has always been a green light in the middle of the star, so THERE!

When Tim and I and later Sue were very young, probably 2 or 3 or younger, some lady knitted a Christmas stocking for each of us. Now some 56 plus years later, Tim and I still hang those same stockings up every Christmas Eve! When we were kids, we always got an orange, apple, and a new tooth bush and other small gifts in our stockings! We always waited until after we opened our real presents before we finally got around to checking our stockings. I haven't needed any new toothbrushes for the last several years since I get a new one every 6 months when I get my teeth cleaned and I actually use it every day. When we were kids, it was ironic that we got a new toothbrush in our stockings every Christmas since neither Tim nor I ever brushed our teeth in those days. We could have kept our original new toothbrushes from the first year we got them. Our mother always warned us that if we didn't brush our teeth they would all "fall out". This never fazed us in any way. In addition, if anyone thinks it did, then I will "gum" them right on the arm! Since I get a new one every 6 months, I won't need anymore in my stocking. This will make room for other swell gifts. Hint Hint… (Oh, by the way, I still have all my original teeth, albeit they are full of fillings).

This year, I did indeed get all of my shopping finished early for once since I got all the gifts on line and only one small one in an actual store. That makes it so (too) easy to do all that shopping on line and keeps VISA jobs secure. Thank goodness for a mouse, that way UPS and Fed Ex do all the driving and I don't get so tired out from doing all that running around in stores. Well, on line shopping does have some drawbacks. The first is that I don't get to see Santa Claus in any store and my fingers do get a little sore from clicking a mouse. Oh well, things are tough all over…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!