Christmas Is Coming

Dec 06, 2008 10:42 AM Filed in: Stories For A Friend
NovaAMedievalChristmas
Stella Nuova
Angelus Ad Virginem
Edi Be Thu Hevenqueene

Season's greetings, my friend! Yes, Christmas is coming, and I'm always a happy camper at this time of year. I rede you beware. LOL! It's a fine frosty December morning here. There's a cold grey sky and light wisps of snow fluttering about on the wind, a perfect day to revel in the holiday spirit. I have my hot cup of coffee and the fireplace lit, two cats snoozing on the bed behind me, and some lovely Christmas music from Days Of Yore to help spin the holiday spell. A perfect Saturday morning. The only thing we're missing here is you.

 It's Christmas In Pixney Land There's just something about the whole holiday season that brings a smile to my face. It always has, well, for as long as I can remember anyways. Even when I was a little kid I'd spend hours listening to all the Christmas albums we had and playing with the decorations on the Christmas tree. LOL! And when I was old enough to do it by myself, it became my job to put up our Christmas tree every year which I would usually do right around my birthday. I loved it! It was a holiday ritual that taught me how to mark the changing of the seasons and acknowledge the passing of time. It's so easy to be swept away by the activities of our days and the responsibilities of Life. The little rituals help to center us and bring us together to share in the moment. Putting up the family Christmas tree was one of the first rituals I found for myself, and it was a good one.
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Of course once the tree was up, the whole family would help to decorate it. We had some decorations that went on the tree every year, old ones that we had from the earliest Christmases I could remember, including a beautiful little angel for the top of the tree. She was like a little doll with lovely gown of cloth and a gold halo, and she was always the first decoration on the tree after the lights were in place. I remember helping Dad with the big old multi-colored lights too, laying the long strings out all around the living room floor while we tested the lights always looking for that one burned out bulb that would cause the whole string to go dark. I know Dad had a lot less fun doing that than I did. LOL! And then once we had the lights all shining bright we would start wrapping the tree in one long continuous string of color. Well, in the early days we had lots of color. Then for a lot of years we were in a Blue Phase with all the lights being the same soft blue color. Then later still we switched again to the multi-colored twinkly lights. Much fun! But we always had our angel and all our usual decorations with silver tinsel scattered here and there around the tree. It was always a lot of fun getting the tree dressed up just right, a real family affair. Around the time I was in high school we even started using popcorn and cranberries! We would all sit in the living room together making long strings of popcorn and cranberries using needle and thread, and every so often one of us would have to run off to the kitchen to pop more popcorn which would happen more or less each year depending on how hungry we were while we were doing it!
GingerbreadHouse
Those were the years when often we were joined by my sister's boyfriend or my girlfriend or sometimes both, whomever was the lady or gent of the year. It was a lot of fun and made decorating the tree even more interesting. LOL! One year I remember quite well. My girlfriend Amy was with us and Cheryl's boyfriend David, and together the four of us baked and decorated gingerbread people to hang on the tree. That was so much fun! And I remember keeping several of those gingerbread people for several years to hang on my own trees in the years that followed when I was living in different places around the country. Of course over time they would break, first one and then another, until eventually I was left with just two, the last gingerbread people standing! And then eventually they too broke and the Christmas trees there after were gingerbread people-less. But by then those last two gingerbread people were nearly 20 years old, so they had had a really good Christmas run. A Fine Life! Christmas seasons now I always think of them and the night the four of us made them all those years ago. It always brings a smile to my face.

And Christmas music does that for me as well. I think that's why I enjoy it so much. For me it is wrapped up with all of those wonderful memories from all those years. Not that every year was full of Love and Peace and Joy, not by a long shot. There were some pretty dodgey years there for a long while, but through all of that stuff we always managed to keep Christmas, and that's what I remember most about those seasons past. The music always takes me back to all of the good memories, and it takes my mind places and brings me that sense of season and ritual and the marking of the passage of time. Tempus fugit.
ReinDeerKick
Of
MerryCow
course, my collection of Christmas music is a bit different than the average bloke's. Now there's an undertatement. I do have several of the recordings that I grew up listening to at Christmas, The Harry Simeone Choral's "Little Drummer Boy" and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's "Carols From Around The World", Eugene Ormandy's "The Glorious Sound Of Christmas" and "Joy To The World" with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Temple University Choir, and "The Andy Williams Christmas Album" to mention a few of the favorites. But over the years my musical experiences broadened, and my musical tastes broadened along with them. Somewhere along the way I discovered that I had a strong affinity for ancient music, madrigals and medieval sacred music, Gregorian chants and Winter Solstice folk ritual music handed down from century to century. Not everyone's cup of tea, I know. But for some reason all of this really really old music hit me at my very core. It's not something I can explain very well. I just know that it awakens in me feelings and thoughts that other types of music never touch. It seems to tap into the most creative parts of me, and it stirs emotions and ideas in ways that other day to day experiences just do not. So in my house at this time of year you're as likely to hear something in an ancient Celtic tongue or perhaps Latin (like Stella Nuova!) as you are the more usual "Little Town Of Bethlehem" or "Silent Night".

But I like it, and the cats seem to be okay with it, and so we mark our Christmas seasons in our own way, and all here is well. I hope all is well there with you too. Know that you are in my thoughts and in my heart this Christmas season. I hope your holiday season is filled with Love, Joy
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and Happiness. Perhaps one of these years you and I can bake gingerbread people of our own? Now there's a happy thought for a Christmas yet to come!

Merry Christmas, my friend.