Alright, ya big candy cane!

I found this on September 15th, believe it or not.  It stood out in bold relief against all the black, orange, and purple that was available for Halloween.

I don't know about y'all, but when Christmas rolled around we had the tree that we always decorated, and mixed in with the bubble lights, the Kansas City Chiefs ornaments, and the tinsel garlands, there were usually about a dozen candy canes.  I don't care so much for candy canes now, but when you're a little kid any candy is good candy, and those candy canes never made it to December 25th.

Oh, decking the halls was one of my favorite things when I was a kid.  Sometimes we started immediately after Thanksgiving, and sometimes we waited until the first weekend in December, but regardless of when we started the routine was the same.  Mama would light sweet-smelling candles, bust out the cookies and the Coca-Cola, and we'd all get to work.  To get us in the spirit Daddy would play appropriate music, and since his favorite thing to do was think outside the box, the music we listened to was usually Manheim Steamroller or Christmas carols played on a glass armonica.  Yes, I said "glass armonica," not to be confused with "harmonica," an instrument that I'm not enamored with.  The glass armonica is an instrument invented by the one and only Benjamin Franklin, consisting of specially tuned glass bowls on a rotating rod.  To play the thing the player wets his fingers and gently taps the bowl to get the desired note...I think that's how it works.  "Silent Night" was my favorite piece played on the glass harmonica, while "Deck the Halls" was my favorite Manheim Steamroller piece.  A couple'a times my sister and I spent more time dancing to the music than we actually did hanging ornaments!  I basically just wiggled my hips and waved my arms, but my sister was a pretty good dancer when she was little.  But that's for another blog post...and probably my sister would kill me if she knew I was telling everyone about it!

My maternal grandmother usually (politely) recruited us to help her with her Christmas tree too, since God forbid that Uncle Man-Child get off his lazy a$$ and help.  Heck, he didn't even stay up front to talk with us!  And he wonders why my sister and I don't have the bond with him that we do with Uncle From St. Louis!  Uncle From St. Louis didn't live at St. Louis at the time, so he was right there with us, cracking wise, tossing lights on the tree, and making sure we kids didn't break anything.  Grandma's tree was a big tree, way bigger than the one we had at home, and it too had plenty of stuff to go on it.  In addition to the Nutcracker-themed ornaments there were several shaped like small lanterns, a few that had potpourri inside, and a strand of old-fashioned lights that also looked like tiny lanterns.  Unlike the lantern-shaped ornaments these actually lit up, and they were always my favorite part of the tree.  Oh yeah, and we had candy canes hanging on the boughs of this tree too, and they never lasted, LOL.  But I can remember one evening, long, long ago when I was maybe two, after we'd put up the tree and eaten dinner.  The rest of the family was in the back of the house where the TV was, but I was up front with the tree.  All the lights were out except for those on the tree, and I stood there for a long time, lost in the soft beauty of the lantern lights and regular lights and the sparkling ornaments.  After awhile Grandma came up front looking for me, and when she found me she pulled me onto her lap and we sat for awhile, chatting and drinking in the atmosphere.

That to me is Christmas.  No rip-roaring parties or long-distance trips, just family enjoying time together, doing little things like baking cookies or decorating the tree.  And yes, I do have a cookie-baking story to share too, but I'll save that for another time.

Hugs and peppermint,
RagingMoon1987