Reasons to Love the Season!

     The writing prompt was “Three Things I Hate About the Holidays”, but I can’t bring hate into this season!  I love Christmas!  The music, the movies, the good cheer – I love it. 

     When I was little I would sit next to the record player and put on Mitch Miller, Bing Crosby, the Christmas Is for Kids album, even How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  We actually had an album.  I can’t remember if it was the whole story or just the music, but I loved listening to the Whos in Who-ville, singing their song.  As a teenager I veered away from the classics and gravitated to Mariah Carey and Paul McCartney and anyone else that was popular at the time with a Christmas song.  I still like to hear Bieber and Gaga but I also love Tony Bennet and Ella Fitzgerald and Dean Martin.  It brings me back to that living room, that record player, and that family.  It was a good time to be a kid.

     When it was time to get the tree my dad would grab his old handsaw and we would pull on our boots and coats, hats and scarves, and if it was really snowy (which it usually was) we would have to wear snow pants or even a skidoo suit.  When I think about it now I bet we looked like Ralphie’s little brother in “A Christmas Story”.  We would trudge out to the forest behind the hill out back, looking for the perfect tree.  We always found one, and it was always the best one we ever had.  Even when we pulled it into the house and set it up and we could see the glaring holes and wayward branches.  Somehow, once the decorations were on there, no one ever noticed.  We had such old and beautiful decorations.  

My brother and I always longed for the newer ones.  Now I wish I had those old frosted glass baubles.  A few years ago my cousin sent me an ornament that our grandmother had acquired at the last minute after a Christmas Eve disaster.  Every year since, when I hang it on the tree I tell the story of how it came to be in our house, and the kids say “You say this every year!” and I always say “Tradition”.  (Huge Fiddler on the Roof fan, here)   We go to a tree farm now, no woods behind our house, but we still go out and choose and cut our tree. It takes a while, but it is still fun and everyone looks forward to it.

     My mom would slave in the kitchen for days making cookies.  Mainly sugar cookies, the kind you would roll out and cut into shapes.  After they were baked we would all sit around the table with different colors of homemade frosting and colored sugared and sprinkles (my favorite) and we kids would get to decorating.  There were four of us at the most, sometimes three and we would decorate about six or seven dozen.  Mom would make up plates of all the cookies and pass them on to our neighbors and friends.  She’d wrap them in cellophane and put bows on the top with a Christmas card.  She made cookies that were rolled in corn flakes with a cherry pressed in the center, and peanut butter balls that had rice crispies in them.  I can’t remember the other kinds.  When I got older I made hard candy that she included.  When I got out on my own I started my own baking traditions and started building gingerbread houses.  I make peanut butter balls and Oreo truffles, biscotti and sometimes Russian tea cakes.  Only no one wants food anymore.  Everyone makes their own now.  I do it anyway.

     Christmas cards were a family affair.  Dad would write a Christmas letter and we would all sign it. I tried to do one too, but I reverted to cards.  I used to write them out on Thanksgiving night, after the tree was set up (back when I had a fake one).  It was a quiet time of reflection, being thankful for the folks I was sending warm thoughts to.  Now we make our cards and it is a rush to get them out.  This year I got them to the post office on December 22.  Too close for me and not a lot of time for delivery.  I will start earlier next year.  I will be prepared.

     We have been watching some of the classics with the kids – Rudolph, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and Elf.  I’m waiting my turn at the library for “The Muppet Christmas Carol”*, which was recommended to me by my boss and a movie I have never watched.  I still watch “Miracle on 34^th Street” and “It’s A Wonderful Life”.  On Christmas Eve I even cuddle up to Alistair Sim and watch the original “A Christmas Carol”.  I know that they will keep some in their repertoire and discard others as they get older, but I hope that we are giving them some permanence in a very Bedouin type of life they were born into.

     Yes, I love this season!  People are nicer, they smile a little easier, they seem to be more considerate, and a little less hurtful.  Merry Christmas everyone, and may you keep a bit of it in your heart in the coming new year.

*Fun fact – On the news the other day they noted that The Muppet Christmas Carol taught more children about the spirit of Christmas than any other Christmas film.  They got the message.  Now I have to see it.

Dreams

   Dreams.  Ever have a dream that seemed so real that years later you still remember it?  I have several that are so vivid that I’ve never had them twice, never had to.  And what about those dreams where you need to do something, you try and try, but it just never seems to happen?  Do you have those too?

   I had one dream about George Clooney.  No, it wasn’t ex-rated.  I’m not sure if it was before or after his sexiest man alive awards or not.  I met him, he was nice and we spent a day together.  Sightseeing and hanging out.  The dream ended on a wet street, late in the evening, where we embraced and said good bye.  It was then that I realized he is a really great guy.  Very down to earth.  I remind my boyfriend of that dream every once in a while.  I don’t tell him the details, just that I met Mr. Clooney and that he really is a nice guy, and he just shakes his head and tells me I’m crazy.

   But what if we do meet people in our unconscious state?  Who’s to say George didn’t share that very same dream and woke up thinking, ‘Wow, some dream, that girl was really nice. I wonder if she is in real life’?  Of course it probably wouldn’t stick in his mind like it has stuck in mine, him being a celebrity and me being a nobody, but it could.

   After my dad died I had a dream that we were picnicking on a cliff, high above anywhere.  When I think of it I picture mountain scenes from The Sound of Music.  My dad was there, and my daughter and me and probably my sister and mother.  I started to fall off the cliff and my dad tried to grab my hand, but I slipped through.  I woke up of course, disproving the myth that if you fall off a cliff in your dreams then you die, but it bothered me for a long time that my dad couldn’t save me.  Of course, that wasn’t up to him, he tried.  I really needed to grab a branch on the way down and pull myself up.  I eventually did, but not in my dream.

   When I was a kid I dreamt of a fight.  It was the same dream over and over.  I never knew who I was fighting but every time I went to punch or kick someone a force field would hold me back and I couldn’t move.  I don’t know how many times I went through this.  I talked to my friends and asked them if they ever had dreams like that but none ever admitted to it.  One night I woke up as I kicked the wall.  I had broken the force field.  I had kicked my unknown assailant.  I never had that dream again.  Later on, when I was a little older but not much, there was a mean girl on the bus who would pick on me and my little brother mercilessly.  One afternoon she sat behind us and flicked her finger at the back of his ear.  I kept telling her to stop but she wouldn’t.  I turned around and stood up, she did too.  I’m pretty sure she asked me if I was going to hit her and I’m pretty sure I said I was.  Then I did.  Square in the face.  I don’t know if I punched her eye, nose or mouth.  I know there was a lot of hair pulling and kicking and swearing, and all I can liken it to is Ralphie’s fight in A Christmas Story.  I got off the bus and cried to my mom.  I thought the mean girl’s family was going to kill me.  In the end, nothing happened except that that mean girl NEVER bothered me or my brother again.  Ever.  I never hit someone again either.  But I think that dream prepared me for it in some way.

   When I was a teenager I attended a wrestling event at a friend’s school.  I seriously think there were people like Macho Man Randy Savage there.  It was a fundraiser and I just happened to be visiting there at the time so I got to go.  As we were sitting in the bleachers I looked around and told my friend that there was going to be a fire.  Around half time the fire alarm went off and the school was evacuated.  A popcorn machine had caught on fire.  Everything was under control and once it was taken care of everyone was let back in to continue the show.  My friend asked me how I knew.  I told her I had had a dream about it.

   I love my dreams, I look forward to them.  I’ve only woken up crying or scared very rarely.  Thank God those dreams only stay with me for a little.  I always think they won’t go away, but they do.  I think sometimes dreams try to tell us something, either about ourselves or about others.  They rationalize our fears or try to explain them and help us overcome them. It is our mind trying to make us pay attention when we’re most relaxed and receptive.

   What about your dreams?  What do you dream about?  Have your dreams helped you?  Have you seen things you never thought you would?  Tell me!  I’d love to hear about them!