White Christmas

What a beautiful time of year. Originally, was going to have to work half day on Christmas Eve. Luckily only about 10 kids would of been at our day care so we got both days off … Yeah.

Original plan was to go to my Mom’s in Texas and get their by supertime Christmas day, but that was not how it was meant to be this year. During the night it rained and froze and during the day we had accululated almost 10 inches of snow. To say the least we were snowed in. Oklahoma was breaking weather records on the news. So my sister and her family were snowed in, my brother and his family were snowed in. We were snowed in, Christmas with the entire family looked as if it would be put off for a later time.

Christmas Eve night wrapping was done and cookies and milk and carrots and ranch dressing (so that Rudolf can eat per my five year old daughter) set out to do our small family Christmas today.  I have to say it was really nice. My daughter got almost everything she asked for. Stockings were hung by the non-chimney with care and the sun came out today.

I cooked Ham, homemade  hash brown casserole, cornbread dressing, corn and brownies for dessert. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

The day consisted of laziness, laziness, and more laziness. We watched Snow White and played in the snow and then ended with hot choclate. That my friends is what Christmas is all about.

It ends up that if everything works out, we may be going to Texas after all for the weekend. Who knows… but it’s been great so far.

One of my favorite quotes from A Christmas Carol

 

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew: “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

-  Quote from “A Christmas Carol”

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897.

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Did you know …

Unlike today’s feast consisting of turkey, stuffing, cranberry and so on…, the original Thanksgiving menu probably consisited of the following items:

► Seethed [boiled] Lobster
► Roasted Goose
► Boiled Turkey
► Fricase of Coney
► Pudding of Indian Corn Meal with dried Whortleberries
► Seethed Cod
► Roasted Duck
► Stewed Pumpkin
► Roasted Venison with Mustard Sauce
► Savory Pudding of Hominy
►Fruit and Holland Cheese