Mamacita says: It’s getting closer.  IT’S GETTING CLOSER.

Everyone whose spirit of celebration is still alive and quickening, hark!

There are a lot of old, boring, easily offended, humorless  people out there who don’t care much for the excitement, the wonder, the sparkles and reflections and tinsel and candles and suspense and giggles and hand-clapping and twinkling lights and bedecked trees and jammied children and ribbons and pretty paper and surprises, and this makes me sad for them. However, I also figure they were pretty much the same when they were young younger.  People without the capacity to celebrate and imagine and create and laugh and understand that at this time of the year we all NEED some twinkling lights in our windows are to be pitied, but usually they’re so full of self-pity that we needn’t step in; they’re doing just fine on their own.

They’re tired, you see.  We aren’t, but they are.  Too tired to care any more, or too busy trying to walk without that corncob falling out to try.

I think the ability or tendency to glow and laugh and clap and appreciate things is there in all of us, and whether we let the light of these things shine through us – or not – is a choice we make. Scrooge was Scrooge because he chose to be Scrooge. Yes, certain childhood happenings helped mold him, but ultimately, he chose his life. Free will choice. All of our lives are that way. We can’t always control the circumstances, and sometimes Karma really hits us below the belt, but we can always control the way we deal with it. Most of us go up and down, back and forth, hot and cold with our reactions; even-keeled people are rare and actually rather boring. But whether we reel from the blows and get back up, or stay down and cover our heads and wait for more, is up to us. We’ve all been there. We’re all tired.  None of us has enough time.  It’s easier to let others do it; we’ll just look at their windows.

WTF?

This is one point on which I will quote Vizzini and know it’s being done correctly:  Inconceivable.

Me, I love Christmas. What, you didn’t know?

December is such a magical time. It’s all ahead of us, you see. To paraphrase Katie, age 8, in my all-time favorite Christmas novel  What Child Is This, by Caroline Cooney, the night before Christmas isn’t called a ‘night,’ it’s called ‘eve,’ and Christmas morning isn’t called ‘morning,’ it’s ‘morn.’ Eve and morn: two special words to highlight two special times.  All the other times of the year have mornings and evenings, and New Year’s has “eve,”  but only Christmas has both eve and morn.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Morn.

Eve and morn are special.

How special are they? They are special already, in their own right, but how you make them special for yourself and for your children is entirely up to you. I hope you give them memories they will cherish all their lives, so much so that they will pass the glory along to their own children.

Children flourish with roots, but they soar with wings.

May your Eve be full of anticipation and warmth, and may your Morn be all you hoped it would be.