December is here now, the end of the year. I love it that we end the year, when the days are dark and cold, with so much festivity. I love the lights that appear everywhere – on houses and trees and lining streets – to light up the dark days. We decorated the inside of our house on Monday. We put up the garland and wreaths and set up Nativities and other decorations. Now all that remains is to put up the tree and the stockings. We’ll do that later in the month. We don’t get our tree until the fifteenth. It sits in the bay window in the living room which is close to the wood stove. We get our tree late and take it down the day after Christmas for fear of it drying out and becoming a fire hazard. I think we love it more because of its brevity.
The big event last week was Daniel’s arrival home. We drove up to Rochester yesterday and picked him up at the airport. He had a great time in Italy. He’s been telling us about the place and the people and all that he did there. It was a great adventure for him. We’re glad he’s home. He brings a lot of energy and noise to our home. The Christmas excitement is growing even stronger now that he is here.
We received a nice email from Josiah’s mission president last week telling us what a good missionary he is. It included a photo of him. He looks good. We’re proud of him for being good and diligent in preaching the gospel.
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| Elder Howe. |
We keep a lot of traditions at Christmastime. For me, the traditions are what define the holiday. We decorate the house with ornaments we’ve treasured for years and even for generations. We eat special food. We sing and listen to special music. If we try to skip or forget one of these traditions, we feel its loss. There is one tradition we have let slip away at our house – Christmas cards. There was a time when we made homemade cards and sent them out every year. For many years I drew them and the children colored them. Then as the children got older, Miriam took over drawing them for a while and then Geoffrey used his computer skills to design them. Then after the children got even older and were gone from the home on missions, at school, and married, we stopped sending cards. I think in the world in general, the Christmas card is slipping away. We still get cards, but fewer come each year (probably in part because we don’t send any). The ones we do receive get hung up as decorations. We’ve saved examples of all our old cards and I spent some time looking back through them. It made me feel that odd happiness tinged with sadness that always comes to me at Christmas.
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| Christmas cards over the years. |
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| More cards. |
We did not go to church today. It was Stake Conference and the stake decided not to broadcast the meeting to our building. We were just in Palmyra yesterday at the temple and in Rochester to pick up Daniel and it was too much for us to make the five hour round trip to attend today’s session. I’m sorry they’ve chosen to stop broadcasting meetings to the far-flung branches. It makes the Sabbath feel strange to not go to church.
So we are home all day. We’re enjoying each other’s company. It smells like something really good is cooking. We’ll have lunch soon. Then I think we might start watching Christmas movies. There are so many we love to watch, we might have to watch two today.
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| My Christmas cacti. |
