Your Favorite Holiday
This week’s journal entry:
What’s your favorite holiday, and why?
By
Laura Black
My favorite holiday of all has always been
Christmas. I’m a Cindy Lou Who. I want peace, love, and joy for all. I don’t
want anyone to be left out. I want everyone together, to get along, and enjoy
each other’s company. To me, it’s all about togetherness with the ones you love
both family and friends. Of course, I love everything in preparation for
Christmas too. Well, with the exception of cold weather, I love everything else
about it. The weather aspect of it is what I get for living in the Midwest. I’m
bound to be stuck with cold weather. If you remember, I wrote about my least
favorite season back in February of this year. Now, back to
Christmas and why it’s my favorite holiday of all.
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| See, Cindy Lou Who. That's me! |
So…where do I start? As a child, I
remember Christmas and how much I loved it. There was always something special,
or shall I say magical, about Christmas for me. It meant family, cookies,
Christmas music, pretty decorations, stockings, pretty lights, putting up your
Christmas tree, Christmas movies, cartoon specials, and presents. When I was a
child, I even liked playing in the snow. It was the best time of the year.
Through the years, some of that has changed, but I still love Christmas and all
the fond memories I have of past Christmases.
I remember one particular Christmas
Eve where I actually believed I saw Santa in his sleigh up above. We lived in
Chicago at the time. We had been at my grandparent’s house for our family
Christmas with them. We always went to their house for Christmas Eve, which was
always so much fun. I’ll talk about that later. It’s time to get back to my
Santa sighting. My dad was carrying me through our apartment complex to head up
to our apartment to get ready for bed. He pointed to the sky and said something
along the line...“There goes Santa on his sleigh. You need to get to bed.” I
remember looking up in the sky and seeing a dash of light go across the sky. I
swear it was Santa. It felt so magical.
Unfortunately, I lost some of that
magic once I realized, only a few years later when we still lived in Chicago,
that Santa wasn’t real. I was pretty young for figuring it out, and I don’t
remember exactly how I did figure it out. I do remember my mom was washing the
dishes in the kitchen when I questioned her about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and
the Tooth fairy. For whatever reason, I wasn’t having any of it. I was on to
her and dad. What did make it fun again was my mom telling me I still had to
pretend to believe in him for my sister and brother. My sister still believed,
and my brother was only a baby. It was fun to pretend for their sake, although
it got a little old when my brother still believed well into grade school. That
kid believed forever, and he was obsessed with Santa. He had an outdoor Santa
decoration that he had to have lit up in his bedroom. I so wish I had a picture
of that.
As I mentioned before, as a child,
we went to my grandparent’s (my mom’s parents) house for Christmas Eve. My mom
has two brothers and a sister. Each of them had one child, so it was all of us–
my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and my immediate family of five -
for Christmas Eve. We always had the best time. My grandma always made
Christmas cookies, we all ate a big dinner together, and we opened our presents
around the Christmas tree. There was always Christmas music too for us to dance
to. We ate, danced, played, and enjoyed our time together. It was the best!!!
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| Christmas at my grandparents house when I was little |
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| Our VerHalen family Christmas as the families grew |
When my grandmother died, things
changed. We added new family to the mix with new marriages. We kept our
tradition of always coming together for Christmas Eve. As we all grew older and
our families grew, we had to change our family tradition to meet on the
Saturday before Christmas each year. We still follow that rule, and I always
look forward to that time with them all. Our lives get busy, so most times,
this is the only time I get to spend with them all year. In fact, we just had
our gathering on Saturday. It was fun and good to be with everyone.
Christmas Day, at our house, as a
child, was always exciting too. My mom always had us start with our stockings
filled with stuff – candy, little toys, and whatever else little she could fit
in there. After the stockings, we tore open our presents. We were always
excited to try and guess what we were getting. Once we opened everything, we
often had a hard time figuring out what to play with first. Between the three
of us, we always had something new to put together or figure out. We would help
each other figure out what to play with first.
Now that we’re adults, we have
Christmas Eve at my parent’s house every year, and we have Christmas Day with
our married families. Christmas Eve is still what my parents always made it for
us as kids with tons of food, fun, and time with the family. For me, in the
end, that’s what Christmas is all about – family and all the time you get with
them. Yes, we still do presents, but it’s only for the kids. As adults, we
don’t exchange gifts, which I’m completely fine with. I honestly don’t care
about getting gifts. For me, it’s all about giving to others and spending
actual time with them. That’s a gift enough for me.
Besides Christmas itself, I always
looked forward to everything that led up to Christmas too – Christmas music,
movies, cartoon specials, making cookies, getting Christmas cards from others
and sending them out, picking out the right present, and wrapping them. Those
are all the things I still love about Christmas today. As soon as Thanksgiving
is over, I can’t wait to start my traditions. I turn on my Christmas music to
put me in the mood. By the end of that weekend, I like to put up all my
Christmas decorations, including my Christmas tree with the plethora of
ornaments I have to decorate it. I love to write out Christmas cards, and I
love to find the perfect gift for each person. Once I have the gifts, I can’t
wait to wrap them. I actually LOVE wrapping presents. I try to do them all at
once. I turn on a Christmas movie and get to work.
During the Christmas season, I have
an assortment of Christmas movies I have to watch. My absolute favorite is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I
watch this one usually more than once. Other musts I watch each year: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Four Christmases, Serendipity, Christmas with
the Kranks, It’s a Wonderful Life,
A Christmas Story, Home Alone, The Polar Express, A Christmas
Carol, Elf, Love Actually, White
Christmas, The Holiday, The Family Stone, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty
the Snowman, How the Grinch Stole
Christmas (2000 Jim Carrey version), A
Year Without a Santa Claus, Just
Friends, and Santa Claus Is Comin’ to
Town. Some new ones I’ve added are
Office Christmas Party and A Bad
Mom’s Christmas.
As for Christmas music, I have so
many favorites older and new. I can’t even make a list for all those. I just
make sure to listen to Christmas music whenever I can during the holiday season
– in my car on the radio, on Pandora, on my iPod, too. My all-time favorite
Christmas record is Bing Crosby’s White
Christmas. I actually have the original White
Christmas record my great aunt played on her hi-fi every Christmas. I have
to listen to it in its entirety at least once during the holiday season too.
I definitely don’t like cooking, but
I do like baking. I don’t do as much as I used to, but at Christmastime, I
always bake cookies to bring to the family Christmas gatherings. My sister and
I started a new Christmas tradition last year to get together and bake
Christmas cookies with my nephews. We gather at my sister’s house and bake
cookies and play Christmas music while baking. This is what we did today. We
baked so many cookies, but it was so much fun.
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| Finishing up the cookies |
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| Working on several different cookies at once |
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| The littlest nephew watching the big kids make cookies |
Another tradition my mom started a
few years back is having breakfast at my parent’s house on Thanksgiving
morning. After we eat breakfast, we make gingerbread houses in preparation for
the start of the Christmas season. It’s fun to see hang out as a family and see
how everyone decorates their gingerbread houses.
As you can see, I’m fond of the
traditions. That’s part of the importance of Christmas to me – spending time
with family. We hang out, do things together, laugh, goof around, and create
memories. In the end, this is why I love Christmas because I get to spend time
with my family. It honestly doesn’t matter what we do. I love to be with them
and spend quality time with them as much as I can. I don’t care about the
presents; for me, family is what it’s all about. Enjoy every second you get
with your family too – have fun, laugh, cry, share memories, and make new ones.
So…what’s your favorite holiday and
why?
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