Christmas Songs

As a child, Christmas was all about me.  I would get the Montgomery Ward or Sears catalog and circle all the toys I wanted.  Every toy commercial was something that I had to have.  I would lay awake on Christmas Eve, as long as I could.  Sometimes I thought I heard Santa.

Before I became a teenager, the wonder of Christmas dissipated from finding out things about the season that I had believed since I could remember.  I’m trying not to ruin it for any young readers.  But the one thing that always made me have a little wonder were the Christmas songs that were played on the radio and on records.

Johnny Mathis, Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole, The Carpenters and many more made me dream of being a grown up.  I thought there were chestnuts roasting and sleigh rides in my future, cozy fires and a partridge in a pear tree.

Those things would still be nice but my mind goes there whenever one of my favorite songs are played.  I seem to love them more every year.  That, along with the decorations on my Christmas tree, the memories of who made or gave them to me over the years, the ones my children and grandchildren have made.  The angel one that I made when I was eight months pregnant, was stuffed so tight with stuffing that I must have been trying to mimic how I was feeling.  I still smile when I look at it.

When I was in my early 20’s, I needed a clothes dryer.  With two very young children, it was hard to hang the clothes outside and corral them.  I can only go one direction at a time, and they usually went different directions.  I had a friend offer me to sell some popsicle stick sled ornaments, at her booth at a local fall festival.  I started several months ahead of time and had lots ready.  When I told her I wanted to sell enough to buy a dryer afterwards she said I never could sell that much.  Back then, a dryer could be bought for around $250.

I sat at the booth and would paint the names on any sled that was wanted.  I sold them for one dollar each and the week after the festival, I went and bought a brand new dryer with cash.  I was so happy.

As a young woman with a family of my own, I would plan family parties around the holidays.  I always wanted to see my aunts more then I got to growing up, so that was a way to do it.  Plus, lots of cousins made it fun.  As I look around, with Christmas songs playing, my family generations all around, from the age of 77 down to 4, I am again in wonder.

One, how fast it has all happened, secondly, to see my four year old granddaughter singing Jingle Bells and Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.  Thirdly, is to love that the traditions and things that I love about Christmas, is being presented to the generations that come after me.  They can choose what they like best and will continue to pass along what they love.  Maybe two hundred years from now, my lineage will still be singing, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”, and dreaming of a day when they will have their own families with their own Christmases.  And that is something to really be in wonder about.