Every year I can't help but compare the current Christmas to past Christmases when I was much younger. These days it seems Christmas shoots by and is gone in a flash and I no longer know how to savor the holiday. It isn't what it used to be.
To me, Christmas is Washington, Pennsylvania. It's my boy cousins wrestling with my uncles in the living room, snow falling on the other side of the electric candles in my nana's windows, my little sister banging on the piano keys harder than necessary. It's dancing in my nana and pap's basement with my cousin and sister in matching pajamas with our American Girl dolls (also in matching pajamas of course). It's sneaking into my nana and pap's bedroom with them late at night, all the lights in the house off, so we can watch the deer eating the feed in their yard, not 10 feet from us. It's building snowmen and sledding down steep hills and taking walks with my dad through the old forests he used to play in as a kid. It's barely being able to contain the joy and excitement trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve and listening to every little creak of that old, warm, familiar house, just knowing one night I would hear Santa. It's nana's cookies and bird watching. It's candy and presents and magic.
As an adult, I now know that Christmas is much much more than a fairytale holiday where I wake up to presents and Christmas music and snow. It's about the birth of our Jesus Christ, and as an adult I now realize the impact of that and that it is a much grander thing to celebrate. But that doesn't stop me from missing the childlike innocence I once had and sometimes wishing I could go back to that. I've always seen things through a haze of imagination and hope and sometimes I wish I was ignorant to the fact that not everything is sugar plum fairies and cupcakes.
Don't read this the wrong way, don't think that Christmas doesn't still make me ecstatically happy, because it does! It always has and always will be my favorite time of the year! And I'm so incredibly thankful that I get to spend it at home with my family. Sometimes I just have to relive my childhood Christmas memories to remember that magical feeling.
To me, Christmas is Washington, Pennsylvania. It's my boy cousins wrestling with my uncles in the living room, snow falling on the other side of the electric candles in my nana's windows, my little sister banging on the piano keys harder than necessary. It's dancing in my nana and pap's basement with my cousin and sister in matching pajamas with our American Girl dolls (also in matching pajamas of course). It's sneaking into my nana and pap's bedroom with them late at night, all the lights in the house off, so we can watch the deer eating the feed in their yard, not 10 feet from us. It's building snowmen and sledding down steep hills and taking walks with my dad through the old forests he used to play in as a kid. It's barely being able to contain the joy and excitement trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve and listening to every little creak of that old, warm, familiar house, just knowing one night I would hear Santa. It's nana's cookies and bird watching. It's candy and presents and magic.
As an adult, I now know that Christmas is much much more than a fairytale holiday where I wake up to presents and Christmas music and snow. It's about the birth of our Jesus Christ, and as an adult I now realize the impact of that and that it is a much grander thing to celebrate. But that doesn't stop me from missing the childlike innocence I once had and sometimes wishing I could go back to that. I've always seen things through a haze of imagination and hope and sometimes I wish I was ignorant to the fact that not everything is sugar plum fairies and cupcakes.
Don't read this the wrong way, don't think that Christmas doesn't still make me ecstatically happy, because it does! It always has and always will be my favorite time of the year! And I'm so incredibly thankful that I get to spend it at home with my family. Sometimes I just have to relive my childhood Christmas memories to remember that magical feeling.
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