Tag: traditions

Posted in Thoughts

What I Love About Christmas

Posted on by Sherri

Some of my favorite things…

I love our community Christmas parade. From the time I was in high school until my children were grown, there were very few parades I did not participate in. I have been a clown and a beauty queen. I have marched with the Aurora Woman’s Club, rode on floats with clubs and my church. I have led the parade and even acted as pooper scooper behind the horses (not my favorite thing to do). I have been on a float with Cub Scouts and marched along behind rescue big strong boys from frightening clowns. I love standing on the sidelines waving at friends and neighbors. Seeing old friends in the crowd and being reunited if only with a wave and a smile. I love the feeling of Christmas, unity and joy the fills the air. The excitement of the children as they rush forward to grab candy and gifts tossed from floats and cars. I love a parade but especially our hometown Christmas parade.

Christmas lights and decorations. I love when the town-works guys bring out the cherry picker and start hanging the snowflakes about town. They are so delicate and pretty. Maybe, if we lived someplace where we had snow on a regular basis, not every two or three years, the snowflake wouldn’t be such a wonderful thing. But here in the south where snow is a luxury that shuts down everything, the pretty little snowflake lights are wistful and fun. I also love to see Ms. Lib’s window displays. She has the best window displays for every season, but she goes all out at Christmas. Ms. Lib, a local hair stylist has a salon on Main Street. Her window displays are legendary. She also has lovely decorations in her yard. The library rivals Ms. Lib for window designs and the museum decorates the fossil park.

I love Christmas cards. I love giving them and receiving them. It is one of the reasons NaNo messes me up. I enjoyed doing NaNoWriMo this year but with it being in November, it makes me too tired to do some of the other things I enjoy doing for Christmas, like my large volume Christmas card/letter writing. I used to love to do a newsletter with highlights of what the kids and I have been up to but now that we’re up to twenty grandchildren I can’t keep up.

I don’t decorate a lot at home because of work and it seems there’s just no time anymore. With a fulltime job, chairperson of the Pamlico Writers’ Group and trying to launch my writing career, something has to give, my poor house needs a friend. I do just what has to be done. Maybe a few days off after the new year will help. My favorite decorations are the snowflake Christmas lights my husband bought to go on our porch. I want to keep them up all year because they are so pretty. The first year, I think I convinced David to let them stay up to almost Easter, telling him the snowflakes could pass for flowers. I really liked those lights, especially coming home from work and the porch being lit up. I love putting the Christmas cards up on the doors, their varied pictures a kaleidoscope of Christmas. But when we put the Nut Crackers on the mantle, unwrapping each one and placing it just so, the love we feel because they were a gift from David’s sister to replace the ones he lost when our home was destroyed by fire. Somethings, no matter their price, have a value greater than money because the heart of the person who gave them. I have ornaments made by a child’s hands and collector’s items, the ones made by the children are more precious than anything money could buy.

Christmas Eve we’ll have a party with the whole Hollister family and a few extras thrown into the mix. Children will run around squealing and laughing, the adults move a little slower but laugh and sing and play. We exchange inexpensive gifts, sometimes gag gifts, sometimes stuff we’ve made, but always something from the heart. We eat, each year we do something different from quiches to soups to this year, we’ll have pizza. It’s all about being together.

Christmas morning, what children who will come and open gifts. My husband and I love filling the stockings. He buys a hundred dollars-worth of chocolate for me and the daughters-in-law. I have fun stuffing gifts into each one’s stocking, making their stocking as much delight as the rest of their gifts. We open gifts, have a big breakfast, usually it is French toast casserole, but we’ve had waffles and ice cream, and monkey bread. This year we’ll go to my uncle’s house for lunch and back home for sandwiches and a couple of games of cards (my husband and sons cheat).

What are some of your favorite things about the holidays? Do you celebrate Christmas or another holy day? What are some of your traditions?

Posted in Thoughts

Oh, Christmas Tree

Posted on by Sherri

We always had an artificial tree, although dad did insist it be green. His parents’ Christmas tree always looked as if it was made of tin foil. It could also double as an antennae for the television if you set it close enough. When I was able, I was determined to have a real tree. My first real tree was a Charlie Brown pine tree in a coffee can. I dug it up myself and put it in my bedroom. It was pitiful but I loved it. My husband and I often had real trees. He and the boys would go into the woods and chop down a tree or we’d buy one from the grocery store. I love decorating the Christmas tree but over the years I’ve had to do it alone, my husband isn’t interested. He’ll put the tree together, we’ve reverted to the manmade deal and he’ll string the lights. My dad always strung the lights, that was his one contribution to decorating for Christmas. Mom and I decorated until I was older and the whole thing became my job. My sons never got into the decorating the tree spirit. They’d help some but usually, I decorated on my own. This year, my oldest grandson helped me decorate and it was so much fun. We laughed and joked and made up a cool Christmas story. Usually I put on a Christmas movie and watch it while I decorate.
When I was a kid, we never had a set day to put up the tree. It was only after mom got tired of me begging that she’d allow me to pull everything out. It was never before December first and rarely the first week of December, usually it was about two weeks before Christmas that she’d finally relent and I was allowed to put up the tree. After my own kids came along, my oldest son begged me not to put the tree until after his birthday, so we waited until after the first week of December. Now, I put it up whenever I want.
I like to do themed holiday decorations. This is a tradition my mother-in-law started me doing. She has a different themed tree each year. She loves Christmas and decorating. One year I made native American ornaments. I researched many tribes and did Kachina dolls and fetishes for each of the larger tribes, with a native American angel I made for the top of the tree. I decorated with wildlife ornaments, pine cones and gumballs, and pewter charms I’d found with native drawings. I loved those ornaments, that was one of my favorite trees.

Posted in Thoughts, writing inspiration

Holiday Traditions

Posted on by Sherri

With a daughter-in-law who was raised Buddhist and Methodist, and dear friends who are Muslim, as well as Jewish, Catholic, Bahai and an assortment of Protestants, each with their own unique traditions and holidays, I am awed by their different traditions.
What is your favorite holiday? How does your family celebrate it? What is your favorite part of your holiday?

Growing up I never really thought we had many traditions centered around the Christmas holiday except to be home for the holidays. No matter where we were, we tried to come back to eastern North Carolina sometime during the holidays. Here Christmas might be warm enough for short-sleeves or cold enough to hope for snow. One Christmas, the year my oldest son was born, it went from high sixties to a windy freezing in a matter of hours.
As a child, Christmas eve was spent at the church across the street performing in the Christmas Pageant. As a teenager, I wrote and directed the Christmas programs, sometimes cobbling together bits and pieces from other plays and pageants to create something to fit our small cast.
After the program, Santa would arrive to the ringing of the church bells. He would hand out the gifts that had been left under the big cedar tree. Everyone in church would then be handed a brown paper bag with an orange, an apple, some candy and nuts from Joe Deal’s store and later, a gift from the church. Those who participated in the play would be given an additional small gift such as gloves or a hat.
Most of my favorite memories center around that old church and the people in it. Hayrides on the back of an old farm truck, singing Christmas carols with the youth group and a few brave adults, returning to the church to drink hot cocoa and eat hot dogs and homemade fudge and rolled cookies. I miss those days, I tortured my boys with parts in the Christmas program. Unfortunately for them, they often participated in three, sometimes four Christmas programs: my home church where I was often in charge, in-laws’ church where their aunt was in charge, my grandparents’ church were my aunt was in charge and when we started attending another church as a family, we still tried to participate in all of them until the boys staged a coup. Because I enjoyed being a part of the holiday programs, I thought they should too.