The Gift of Giving is Really a Gift for Me!

I love Christmas. I love the music, the decorations, the smells, the food, wrapping, and my most favorite is the surprised, thrilled looks on the recipients of mysterious gifts. I cherish the wonderful pictures of a shocked and delighted Princess on many a Christmases.

I love the magic of Santa and how he really knew me when I was a little girl (He must have had an informant). Santa only brought our big gift, never wrapped and always set it up or put it together for special Santa effect. He also filled our stocking with little things and always a family traditional orange.

I love the miracles and special things secret Santas are doing for other families in need. I love the food drives, Toys for Tots, Shop with a Cop, and those Salvation Army bell ringers that are camped out at the entrance of most major chains.

I love the beautiful message of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” (I kind of relate to Imogene), the wonderful fantasy of “The Nutcracker” and the lighthearted comedy “The National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”. I love gingerbread houses, snowmen, lighted court houses, Nativity Scenes, Christmas carols, and fruit cake (my neighbor wins the prize for the best fruit cake in the world!).

I love how Christmas entwines families together from fleeting decades by weaving old traditions with new ones. Reminiscing of Christmases past with Grandparents and sometimes Great Grandparents.

When the Princess was little, I loved that she called it “Chrimas” and each year she wore a big beautiful Christmas dress (sometimes it was hard to get her to not wear it all year long). She has since decided that those billowy dresses should be reserved for Prom and no matter how much I beg she refuses the candy cane tights all together!

I love that she has about a hundred people that she wants to give a gift to. Maybe she gets the same euphoria that I get from watching displays of delight and shock…but my checkbook still doesn’t understand!