Is it too soon to talk about Christmas? I waited until after Remembrance Day to write about the festive season and for some reason I feel like decorating early this year. Maybe it’s the fact that I now live in the country and that we go chop down a beautiful tree during sunset which fills the house with fragrance (and needles). Could it be that I now have a fireplace to hang stockings with care or that everything FEELS more Christmas-sy in the country? I just don’t know, but I’m darn excited!
In the fall our small but mighty apple tree gave us over 100 lbs. of delicious apples which we made into a few desserts but mostly juiced the heck out of them. The bags of juice are now sitting in our freezer waiting to be turned into hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks and nutmeg. The though of this holiday beverage that was made from our own apples is nauseatingly festive and I can’t believe how emotional I feel about making hot apple cider.
Christmas will be a bit different this year as my one and only daughter will be travelling over Christmas; it is a happy and sad experience as I have never in 23 years been without her on Christmas Day but I see the experience and mind expanding experience that travel can bring to a person. So, while we are keeping the homefires burning, she will be jetting off to an exotic land to learn and live another culture. Mom will have to be okay with her only ‘child’ travelling overseas and not being home to open her new jammies on Christmas Eve.
Fall also brought my sweetie and I our first grandbaby which will completely change the holidays! While he is too little to move around now it still brings a sweet spirit to the holidays and certainly changes how and what we shop for. I haven’t had to look for toys or clothes or anything of the sort for years and yet we are looking for a box to store toys in for future grandson to come and play with and we have already pushed our children (his and mine) into that adult gift category while we plan what we will buy the baby.
This will be the first Christmas without my grannie and without my sweetie’s dad as 2017 brought many changes to our family with old age and illness so the extra chair will certainly be at the end of the table this year and the memories will be bitter sweet as we look around at the changing dynamic of our family. There is nothing like this holiday to drive a marker in the ground and help you remember last year when dad was around or what grannies last Christmas was like – we will all be awash with memories, I’m sure.
The excitement and sentiment is building and I know we are all getting ready for the holiday season. Please take time for you and for visits and for cups of hot cider and relax with people you love in amongst the hectic holiday planning. Revel in the joy of the young faces and gaze long into the wisdom of the old ones for Christmas is the time to enjoy one another.
Kim Wyse is a Central Alberta freelance designer. Find her on facebook at ‘Ask a Realtor/Ask a Designer’.
