Merry Christmas!

Tonight my office is having their Christmas party. While it seems ridiculously early to be doing such holiday activities, the reason behind the early-ness is that I could be unavailable soon and they wanted to make sure I would be there. A much-appreciated nice gesture. To make matters even more accommodating, we aren’t leaving town. At 6:30 we will have dinner at a very nice restaurant. After we have eaten more than we should we will transfer our festivities to one of the attorney’s homes wherein we will eat more food and possibly play some games.

I fully expect that tonight’s celebrations will put me in the mood to set up my Christmas tree and decorate for the holidays this weekend. Hubby has been holding me back for a while, but once the Christmas parties start I really see no reason to hold off any longer.

Christmas for me is a much-loved holiday. I know most people feel that way too, but one of the reasons I love Christmas so much is that as a young teenager, my family and I sold Christmas trees for a number of years. It was hard work, but we enjoyed it so much. We would drive hundreds of miles to Michigan, pick up a load of precut fresh trees, haul them back across 4 states and then unpack them. My brother and I spent hours outdoors in December unwrapping each tree. Dad would prune them to perfection and then we would haul them out to the display fences in our large front yard. People driving along the highway would frequently stop and look over our selection. Very few people drove off the yard without purchasing their own perfect tree. We never had an angry customer. They were all so friendly and sweet and cheerful. It was just downright fun to help people select their most important holiday decoration. Somedays we sold more than 30 trees. Years later we moved and stopped selling the trees, but I still remember very fondly bringing so much holiday cheer to complete strangers.

I encourage all of you to begin celebrating Christmas in the near future. Truly this holiday doesn’t last long enough and the good things that come along with it should be practiced as long as possible.