Memories

The memories are coming like a glinting string of lights

In variegated colorschemes of shadows and delights

By now my years of celebrating Christmases are several

Seasons of light, of Advent wreaths, and Maccabean candle

Traditions carried every year, in food, in song and story

The joyous shock of God incarnate, telling of the glory

Three siblings to enjoy them with, and more at age eleven

One star of hope in all our joy, the baby sent from heaven

So many thoughts and festive times within that blessed season

Arranging wood nativities in glad anticipation

From decorating cookies, cakes, to trees and candycanes

We pray each task is permeated with a glad "He came"

~Olivia 12.3.2012

sleigh-rides, years ago...

buying fragrant trees in the snow
-playing hockey on the driveway..

I think a great deal of the delight of this time of year is in the remembering of years past, all the different sorts of Christmases and seasons we've had.  The aromas that will remain with us forever, the time we changed our traditions a bit, and the parts that have been always the same.  The glory of the advent season, with its good news of great joy, that somehow still startles us when we look it full the face...



and of course, the snowman of a lifetime,
Christmas 2009

And with the years our lives change, the people and places we know and ourselves change too. I've gone from the child who climbed on the kitchen chairs to watch Mama whisk gravy, to mixing up those Christmas goodies myself, and helping my niece and nephew to help me.  I still have to climb on things to string lights (being the short one) but that's part of the fun anyway.  Christmas music on cassette-tape, and then CD, and then back to records, just because.  I get to stretch out under the twinkling of the Christmas tree and explain the nativity again to little ones, just like I heard it so many years in a row, and never tired of it.

I share with my sister and brothers so many memories and funny stories that I hope we don't forget... I hope actually, that as we grow older, we'll remember more; finding things we want to do differently in the future; and working harder, perhaps, to keep alive those traditions most dear.