Five Christmas Memories

Our scraggly neighborhood decorations have had an effect; I'm starting to get into the holiday season:

The Sixties: Our parents took the four of us to see the Black Watch Bagpipers at Cincinnati Gardens.  I still remember how wonderful that evening was.

The Seventies:  As we piled out of our Chistmas Vespers concert on the last night of the semester, we discovered that it had begin to snow while we were in the chapel. We were surrounded by inches and inches of fluffy white, weighing down the pine trees and completely covering the ground and roadways.  One of my best friends, from Arizona and, like me, not enthused about our lives, danced down the steps in the swirling snow in the dark and cried out in delight, "Oh, I'm SO glad I go to boarding school in New England!"

The Eighties: One of our five-year-old sons, decorating his very first tiny Christmas tree and dragging it over to the big one because "the little tree needs to be next to its mom."

The Nineties:  Dragging a dhrurrie rug upstairs to the tub, with the help of one of the dads from the ten or so families crowded into our house, because a certain other son had become so excitedly overwrought that he had thrown up hot chocolate all over the off white background.  And no, that rug was never the same.

The Aughts:  Christmas Eve in France, with the family hosting that Christmas tree son for the year: lots of gestures and laughter over an amazing feast.

2005: We're working on it.