Christmas nostalgia

I've officially flug myself whole heartedly into the golden and glittery holiday spirit. I live for this time of year.

Nothing makes you love and appreciate the over-done American holiday hoopla more than a couple of years abroad...and then to be back and finding yourself beginning new traditions with your new family...and remembering and re-creating old ones...

I've bought my delicious holiday magazines, my favorite being Martha Stewart Living. I live in it's pages. I want to make every peppermint bark and brittle and sugar cookie and pie and carry them all home for Christmas in little vintage decorative tins! The holiday season is much too short for the souls out there that thrive on the holiday creativity.

My mother always makes Christmas special in my childhood home. Her excitement and longing to keep the true magic of Christmas alive in our hearts was what made it so memorable. To this day she still gives everything that special touch. I've never sung along to the sweet I'll be home for Christmas tunes and truly understood what it felt like to yearn to be 'home' for the holidays, as I do this year. I feel so thankful that I'm able to bring Washington into the beauty and magic of what my family Christmases are like and share them with him....

Setting up the snowy village on the dining room mantle. Imagining myself living in one of the glowing ceramic cottages watching families ride home in sleighs carrying their trees and wreathes. Cheerio Mix. Hanging shimmery snowflakes in the windows. Decorating the tree listening to Uncle Joey's family essential Christmas mix tape. Spreading out the plastic holiday table cloth to roll out sugar cookie dough on...decorating with Giana and Joe...saving the scraps of extra dough to make Santa's giant special cookie heinously filled with sprinkles...leaving carrots for the Reindeer. Balsam candles lit and glowing in every corner the house. Dad's famous nativity displayed with the manger hand-built by him sitting in a desert of sand. Sledding until you can't feel your fingers and toes and coming in to be warmed my hot chocolate and a Christmas movie on TV. Always receiving a doll that belonged to Mrs. Claus as a child....Sifting through our boxes of sacred little ornaments...each one having a story behind it.Watching and reciting lines from Prancer and other favorite Christmas movies....

Don't you wish you could go back to the way thing felt when you were little and the world was still so small and glowingly sacred, and nothing else mattered but being able to finish your homework in-time to play? 
I say...you can still keep that feeling alive..........