Many of the american writers of the blogs I read are heading into Thanksgiving weekend. I wish them a lovely feast and celebration with their families and friends. I love reading about the customs and traditions.
Tara at eyeblog mentioned expectation. I started thinking about my own expectations of the Christmas season. We love Christmas. We love the anticipation of the season. The Nativity Fast has helped form and solidify the fact we focus on the actual feast of Christmas - and these days now are all about preparation.
I love getting out the Christmas lights and celebrating the first time we turn them on. Stringing the indoor lights up in my kids' rooms. I love opening the box of Christmas music and hitting play for the first time in the year. I love unpacking the ornaments and remembering. I love getting up early and in sitting in the quiet light of Christmas tree. I love baking cookies that we only eat once a year. I love wrapping teeny, tiny gifts for stockings. I love picking the flannel fabric to make the pyjamas. I love picking up a new ornament for each of my children for Christmas eve. I love the menu planning and thinking about cheese. I love cheese. And oranges - and gingerbread. And hauling out my archived boxes of December magazines looking for inspiration.
For me it really is all about the anticipation. And you? As we head into this last month before the feast - what is it that you love?
7 comments:
I love that you love thinking about cheese!
This past weekend we got the Christmas book up from the cellar, and that's a favourite tradition of mine. We usually do it the first of Advent, but this year I couldn't help myself...
Are you celebrating Thanksgiving? I wish you a great night if you do. And if you don't!
BOOKS. Books. There's at least fifteen of them.
mmmmm, it is definitely about the anticipation for me too. i love the coziness of being with my family and the quietness of winter. it feels quiet and overflowing with joy.
I like many of the things you like. I love making cookies. I love it when the lights are up. I love sitting with a cup of tea in the glow of the Christmas tree lights. Awesome.
I love Christmas too; some of my favourite memories are sitting in front of the Christmas tree with a Christmas record playing and it is dark outside...
I am hoping to have a Christmas Eve lenten feast, like they do in Ukraine and Bulgaria, except that I will not do all 12 dishes the first time around... hoping to have a Christmas party in the 12 days after Christmas as well.
For this I am glad I am on the Old Calendar so I can celebrate Christmas twice - first with my family in the States and second with my church family and freinds here in Ottawa...
LOVE the picture you posted BTW...
Believe it or not, I think you are the me of the future or I am the you of the past... reading your blog I find we are strangely (and wonderfully) alike in many ways, though colourfully different in others.
This inspires me! We've had all of our christmases with family on extended visits in the last few years and I'm still fumbling towards having our own little family traditions and ways of preparing in anticipation...
I like the idea of a new ornament for each year. This is the first year that John Samuel will really know what's going on, so I really want to do something...
Speaking of anticipation, today is our first day of snow! It definitely sparks a little twinge of it for me...
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