The winter holiday season is here! Been feeling a little behind as so many houses and yards are already dressed for Christmas and I still had the cornstalk and gourds out, but I do love Fall and like to give it and Thanksgiving it’s full due. It is finally really cold here, though, and time to think Christmas. Watched my favorite Charlie Brown Christmas again, this time on TV, which seems to make it more special despite all the ads. Makes me think of when I was a kid and there were no videotapes or DVDs.
I like Charlie Brown Christmas because of the music (we own the soundtrack) and because it carries the Christmas story which I love to hear Linus tell…something about his voice. Once upon a time, I was the Christmas angel at church and gave the same speech, so each year I like to see how much of it I still remember. And, I remember how my sister and I, who many mistook for twins, used to dance in tandem in the living room, imitating the two purple-dressed girl twins. Yes, I love to bask in good old memories.
I’ve just finished reading Christmas at Long Lake, a Childhood Memoir by Rick Skwiot. If you like nostalgia, remembering the mid-1900’s, if you live in the country or in the Midwest especially anywhere near St. Louis, you will love this book! The author tells of his last Christmas living out in the countryside, when his father loses his job and the family’s future is uncertain. Harkening back to his six-year-old life in near blue-collar poverty, Skwiot remembers it to be a kind of Eden where children ran barefoot chasing rabbits through fields, played ice hockey on the frozen lake or hunted crawfish among mossy wet overhangs. Skwiot tells this meandering bittersweet story of life in the “old days” with such beautifully descriptive prose, that I began to remember memories I never had! Guess I love to bask in anybody’s good old memories.
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