A Recipe for Christmas Spirit

Ingredients:
A Few good and close friends and family
1 warm fire
A plate of Christmas cookies
2 or 3 Christmas CDs (a mix of old and new: Some Bing Crosby, a little Rosemary Clooney, some Nat King Cole)
1 6ft tall Bushy Noble tree
3 cups. Memories
1 cup painted walnut shells, strung popcorn and cranberries
2 cups candy canes
Pinch of ribbons
Dash of handmade children gifts
Enough Lights in a variety of colors to cover
1 Angel or Star for the topping

Directions: Put Family and Friends in front of fire, add music. Mix in the Christmas tree, set out the memories to reach room temperature. Together put on Lights, walnut shells, popcorn and cranberries. Sprinkle on memories, candy canes, handmades and top with Angel or Star. Finally switch on lights, and turn off the lamp. Bring family and friends to the tree. Grab sugar cookies mix with Friends and Families and enjoy the Tree. Laugh, Remember, Listen and Watch.

To gift or regift? That is the Question

Through out the year we walk to and fro along crowded sidewalks, with hardly enough space to breathe. People focusing on nothing more than the next cup of coffee, work, or their finances. In today's world when credit cards are a dime a dozen. Receiving enough fake plastic in the mail to decorate a Christmas tree. Temptations creeping into the mind like nuts in a peanut cluster. Why is it so strange that gifts have become so important? Whether to buy name brand...how much to spend, are you spending enough, is that too cheap? Curiously questions arise of what to do with those totally needless terrible gifts you receive from Aunt Laudie or Uncle Claud. Should one regift? Isn't regifting a form of free commerce and capitalism? Or is regifting an ungrateful extension of materialism. Affluenza symptom: regifting those gifts that just don't jive with your tastes. Rude? Or Enterprising? Look to the wisdom of your Elders: My Grandmother Juanita was an avid regifter. She literally regifted everything she was ever given. She only kept what she bought herself...but the trick was in her old age, was not regifting the same gift to the person who gave it to her. Now that was a mighty tough task when you are 83 and have 6 children, and numerous grand and great grand children with a slight bit of senility. I on the other hand often forget what I have for breakfast and have to write all birthdays and anniversaries on the calendar know the answer to that question is: No regifting. Yet all the papers, bows, ribbons, buttons and tissues of bright ruby and emerald....I reuse so that I can call my self a Green Elf....so that all our future generations my enjoy the Holidays.

Hope, Joy...Financial Woe?

Thank goodness, there are very few times in my life when I can look back and say my family forgot their holiday spirit. We are not the Lampoons or the Family down the block that use 2,000,000 Christmas lights to cover the house with holiday cheer. We are usually the family who waits to mid-December before putting up a string of lights down the fence, around the bay window and up the banister of the back steps. We are the family who must schedule the tree pick up because we are all running 3 separate ways, but we are also the family that always trims the tree together. Unfortunately this year, the house seems to be covered with a haze of the Scrooges and Ba humbugs. Its been a hard year financially for all of us, but it seems that is all anyone can think about. Sorrow becomes me, because I can't figure out a way to pull them from the depths of despair to hot cocoa and cookies. I've come out with an idea. That is truly revolutionary, well...at least in my family. The idea...to have a Christmas with no presents. I want to invite our entire family for a meal, coffee, a yule log and some festive music. At this Christmas party the only gift to be exchanged will be Christmas cards, kind words, hugs, kisses and smiles. I'm tired of feeling as though the world has been turned upside down because of gifts. What do you think Masters and Geniuses of Cyberspace? Do you find this idea invigorating and enlivening for the true Christmas season or do you find it a drag?

Tis The Season For Thought...

Have any of you watched the American sitcom Golden Girls? It's what the younger generation refers to as an old show. (Golden Girls: re-runs on daytime and late night TV) Tonight I watched an episode. It really made me think. The episode was about the girls going to a homeless center to look for a lottery ticket. Disturbingly, it really made me think about how much we ignore the needy. IN the USA we think of homelessness as a problem that is at the root of it a personal problem. Our answer is to prescribe 'pull yourself up by your boot straps' or occasional charity. Really, How dare we sleep in our warm houses every night and shrug off helping those who need it. The least we could to is give our time in volunteering or donating money for shelters, medicines, hosing, job training, life enrichment programs. The majority of homeless in the US is Mentally ill and Veterans of the armed forces. How dare we turn our backs on them? During this holiday season...give more than just one glance when you see a chance to help. No matter how small the act, everything counts. A warm blanket, a cup of coffee, a few cents or just a small smile, Give dignity and respect to all. You think your so different, that just in one minute you could be sharing their circumstances. We are all fellow servants on the journey of life.

Little Gems From Mistland

Winter Wonderland! Natural Symmetry? Perfected Asymmetry?
I love these very simple, yet very complex distinct snowflakes. Each one is different, like a fingerprint. How many fingers does Jack Frost have? This is my tribute to an amazing man. Mr. Wilson Bentley. On January 15, 1885, at the age of 19 years,Bentley took the world's first photomicrograph of a snow crystal.
Bentley had an irrevocable love of snow. He wrote:
"they came from that mysterious and then but little known cloud and mistland above, so seldom entered. How unique their place of origin and how strange it seemed, and indeed seems yet, that solid crystals in such immense quantities should form unsupported, up above, within the thin gas we call air, and come to us from on high. What worlds of mystery, truly how much of mystery enshrouded their origin and life history and manner and habits of growth. There seemed to be a delightful and gem-bestrewn realm of nature awaiting exploration and discovery and sure to richly reward the investigator. So I marveled not only at the exquisite loveliness of form and interior of these peerless gems from cloudland, but equally so at their almost universal habit of assuming the hexagonal form and dividing into six. What magic was there in the rule of six that made them conform so rigidly to its laws to divide into six and made these crystals from mistland conform so rigidly to its mandate?"
("Marvel of the Snow Gems" (1910), Technical World Magazine, 13, 24-27. By Wilson A. Bentley)
http://www.bentley.sciencebuff.org/BentleyWritings.htm
Let it Snow, Let it Snow!!