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 ![]() As the year comes full circle, it comes time to make ready, once again, for the Christmas holiday season. In a sense, the preparations have gone on for months and, for suppliers, the planning may have started years in advance. Holiday catalogs close up tight in the spring; the Holiday rush to order merchandise shows up in July, even though it seems earlier each year. Hallmark was the retailer that broke the traditional holiday tradition by promoting their Christmas Stocking Stuffers in July Sale. Promotionally now we are hotfooting it to the stores for early specials even before the Thanksgiving turkey grows cold on the table.
Emotionally, however, the holiday spirit moves at a more deliberate pace, in a gathering torrent of delightful anticipation. The memories of past holidays come flooding into our minds bringing smiles to our faces as we go about our daily lives.
The warmth of the kitchen with the holiday cooking of jellies and relishes bubbling on top of the stove, with gleaming gift jars ranged to receive them. The "may I lick the spoon?" tastes of the spicy, fruit-stuffed batters of fall, mounded into loaf pans or onto cookie sheets to be baked as Unique Christmas Gifts. The oven itself, the kitchen's heart, with the special once-a-year foods taking shape within it, adding their unique scents to an atmosphere already becoming electric with excitement.
The Germans originated Advent calendars to honor the month prior to Christ's birth by opening a new door each day. This custom spread to America in the early colonial days. The thrill of opening a tiny door each day on the Advent calendar builds anticipation for the upcoming holiday. Starting on the first of December the first of a succession of surprise pictures gradually increases in size and splendor to the wonders of the December 25.
The stifled giggles and whispers behind closed doors when the delivery of mysterious parcels in plain brown boxes that were rushed up the stairs to the secret hiding place (which, it turned out years later, everyone knew about). The mystery of those brown boxes ending up in the trash can but nothing new has appeared in the house. Once the Artificial Prelit Christmas Trees are up and decorated the packages suddenly appear and the shaking and clever investigating to see what must be inside starts.
In the days of our blissful belief, when we were very young, our adrenalin would be in overdrive by the time we had to go to bed on Christmas Eve—leaving cookies and milk, or perhaps an orange, near the fireplace for Santa Claus with a last written reminder of what we wanted most to find in the Christmas Stockings hanging limply from the mantel.
Once in bed, we would toss and turn, then sit up to listen for the tiny hoof beats of Santa's reindeer landing on the roof. Sleep seemed as if it would never come and the sound of talk and laughter would float up from downstairs. Why did the grown-ups take so long to go to bed? Santa couldn't possibly come while anyone was still awake.
Eventually, of course, sleep come and we wouldn't even know it until that magic moment when our eyes suddenly blinked open and rushed to see what Santa had brought us.
So Christmas comes again and despite all the changes we have made in it, and the commercial advantages we have found in it, we cannot remove the loving spirit from this dearest of holidays, nor abate our sense of awe that this splendid celebration had its beginnings so simply and humbly in a stable with a tiny baby lying on a bed of hay.
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