Happy Holidays

See below to get this holiday story for free! 

Ah, December is here and even with all the craziness in the world, I hope you have the chance to enjoy the season. Several years ago, I wrote a “short-short story” about the season and thought I would share a few parts with you. I’m sure some of you can relate to what I have experienced over the years. 

DECORATING: We found the box of lights at the bottom of everything because we had moved last summer and when we got them out, they were all tangled up and half of them didn’t even work. After buying new lights and a new ladder because ours was run over by the moving truck, we strung the lights along the house, around the shrubs, in the trees and down the driveway. Only to realize we needed five extension cords just to reach the closest outlet. 

SHOPPING: I drove around for over fifteen minutes trying to find a parking place at the mall and when I finally spied one, a little red Beetle whipped into it before I could round the corner. After taking a whole day off to go Christmas shopping, things that were on the sale flyer weren’t in the store and what I had put on layaway three months ago was now on sale for half price. And I couldn’t find the right size or the right color or something that matched the rest of what I had bought and if I couldn’t buy five of the same thing then I might as well not buy any because everyone had to have one or there would be crying. 

COOKIE MAKING: It was time to bake and my daughter made the frosting and decided that army green was an appropriate Christmas color, so Santa, the reindeer and all the snowmen joined the service that year. I wanted to make trays for work and my husband’s office and for our friends so I had to bake for several days, hiding everything on the shelf in the office closet because no one ever goes in there. But they did. 

SNOW: All the family was here to celebrate and just in time because it started to snow and the roads were closed. The kids all wanted to go sledding and build snowmen. We finally got everyone bundled up in snowsuits and boots and mittens and caps and then the littlest one said he had to go potty and so we had to undo the caps and mittens and boots and snowsuits. Much later, the cold, red noses were wiped and the hands warmed and cocoa drank and cookies eaten. All the cousins played downstairs and nobody worried when they argued because all we had to say was, “If you’re not good, Santa won’t come and leave you any presents.” 

CHRISTMAS EVE: The carolers are singing and we go out and join them before going to midnight service to hear the wonderful story about the birth of Christ. And when we come home, all the presents are wrapped and under the tree and the stockings are hung and the kids are too excited to go to sleep, but all we have to say is, “If you don’t go to sleep, Santa won’t come and leave you any presents.” Quiet descends and we sit and watch the lights wink on the tree and hope that on Christmas Day all the toys make noise and all the baby dolls bawl; that the bike and trike bells ring and the train whistle blows and the race cars speed around the track just like the instructions said they would. And on Christmas day when everything has been opened and played with and tried on, we sigh in relief that it all works and all fits and is in all the favorite colors. And now we only have three hundred sixty-four shopping days until we get to do it all over again. 

If you enjoy Christmas stories, Books We Love is giving away a free Christmas novel every week until December 25. One of my favorites, “Always Believe” is available FREE right now so visit their website at https://bookswelove.net and scroll down to the Christmas Gift to our Readers.

Another of my holiday stories, “If Wishes were Magic” is a contemporary romance about making wishes come true and is available in print or ebook format at Books We Love. 

Wishing you Happy Holidays,

Barb Baldwin 

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin 

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/

Decorating with Dad by Eileen O'Finlan

Find buy links to this book on my Books We Love author page

This Christmas will mark the twenty-second time we’ve celebrated the holiday since my dad passed away at the age of sixty-six.  My family is big into holidays.  When I was a kid the house was decorated for every one of them, even the minor ones.  Christmas, though, was the ultimate.  No one got more into the decorating than my dad.  He turned our home into Christmas Land, inside and out.

Christmas decorating got underway once we’d returned from Thanksgiving weekend at my grandparents’ home in Bennington, Vermont.  Dad was in a festive mood after several days of feasting and visiting with a houseful of relatives.

First the living room had to be rearranged.  Over the years Dad, an engineer by trade, developed a strategy for furniture placement.  One layout was for Christmas, the other for the rest of the year.  It wasn’t just the furniture, either.  Knick-knacks and whatnots all over the house exchanged living quarters with the Christmas decorations boxed and stored in the basement.

Once the room was rearranged, the tree set securely in its stand and watered (until we switched to artificial trees), the most difficult and least fun part began - stringing the lights and garland.  Extra bulbs were kept on hand since if one went out they all went out. That meant testing every bulb on the string until the culprit was found, replacing it, and hoping that one worked.  Heaven help us if more than one bulb went out at the same time.  Dad wasn’t much for swearing, but those bulbs were almost guaranteed to elicit a few words more colorful than the lights. 

My sister, Cindy, and I endured the interminable wait in order to pounce the moment Dad finished.  It was our job to help hang the tinsel and ornaments.  We delighted at seeing these old friends that had been out-of-sight, out-of-mind for a year, especially the ones that hung on the trees of my mom’s childhood.  My favorite was a set of three delicate, sparkly silver shoes each with a tiny child inside representing Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.  Mom and Dad joined in the tree trimming while we all sang along with the Christmas albums on the record player.

Once the tree was completed, we moved to the rest of the room.  The top of the huge black and white TV was large enough to hold the snow village.  Each house and the church were painted cardboard fitted with a light bulb making their colored cellophane windowpanes glow.  There were decorated pine trees and elves made of pinecones, pipe cleaners and felt.  Flimsy it may have been, but it was cherished.  A tinkerer at heart, Dad kept adding to the village.  A mirror became a skating pond, tiny lamp posts graced the “street”.  The village eventually outgrew the TV top and had to move to a new location.

A gold bell that played Silent Night hung from one doorway, mistletoe from another.  A lighted church sat on the end table on top of sparkly white cotton batting emulating snow and surrounded by Nativity vignettes.  Mr. and Mrs. Claus stood on either side of the fireplace.  The last thing to be displayed was the crèche.  I loved the smell of the papier mache figures and the soft glow from the blue light illuminating Mary’s robe.  In the weeks to come I would spend hours playing with the crèche as if it were a doll house.

Not a room escaped decoration.  Every window had a candle either on the sill or hanging inside a red wreath.  Even the bathroom had a bubble lamp and a candle in the window.

Then came the outside.  A large plastic lantern, later to be replaced by a Santa, brightened the front porch.  Dad strung colored lights along the porch railing and throughout the hedge in front of the house.  After a heavy snowfall red, blue, yellow, green, and purple lights shone through giving the hedge an otherworldly glow.

There was no such thing as too many Christmas decorations as far as Dad was concerned.  Over the years, he made tree ornaments including drums and sleds with each of our names on them.  He outdid himself the year he made a perpetual calendar.  The scene at the top was attached with Velcro and could be changed with the seasons.  Naturally, the Christmas scene was the best.  It was a miniature replica of our living room right down to the same wallpaper and the clock and candlesticks on our fireplace mantel.

 

 

With the decorating complete, our home was transformed.  Every day of the Christmas season I played in the wonderland of my own personal Christmas Village.  Every night glowed with colorful splendor.  The saddest for me was the weekend after New Year’s when everything came down, packed away in the basement, the magic gone, the house returned to normal.  It was like waking up from the best ever dream.

Since Dad’s been gone, I decorate the house.  Though my taste is a bit different from my dad’s, I seem to have inherited his love for holiday decorating. I still move furniture, to give the tree pride of place.  I miss the smell of papier mache from the long lost crèche, my current one being made of sturdier material.  I love to sit in the living room in the evening, gazing at the lights on the tree, the one remaining Wynken, Blynken and Nod ornament always prominent.  I can feel Dad’s presence in the quiet of the evening.  Our styles are very different, but unlike me, he was decorating for kids.  His joy came as much from the glee his efforts brought to us as from his own enjoyment of the holiday.  I think he is smiling with me as I create my grownup version of Christmas Land.  And I’m certain he would appreciate the invention of pre-strung lights on the Christmas tree.