All I Want for Christmas

I am noticing that a lot of my blog titles are song titles or parts of songs. This is not on purpose in case you were wondering. Anyhow, that is just a small aside which has nothing to do with this post.

Did you know that I love Christmas? Well, I do. The photo above is one of my Christmas tree last year. It is not the best photo, but you get the idea. I am lucky to have a photo of the tree at all as the lights on that tree were the lights from hell. Yes, you heard me right. I said hell. I mean a strand or two seemed to go out every single hour and this is not a joke. I would buy new lights and the same thing would happen. Now, I am a perfectionist admittedly, but I finally had to reside myself to the fact that I was going to have a fully decorated tree with lights that did not work as the light situation was truly making me loony. Now this was easier for me to accept considering that I was out of town on Christmas day and for several days both before and after.

When I was moving back in August several of my friends, who assisted, kept saying that I had more boxes labeled Christmas than anything else. They may have been correct. Honestly I am not sure what was in each box as I do not collect kick knacks or the like. However, I do have a lot of ornaments. I collect these. People have been giving me these ornaments as gifts for years which makes it even more fun. I have the NYC taxi cab to represent my internship and time in the Big Apple. Then there is the Gingerbread Man with the AIDS ribbon on his chest to remind me of my time in Africa. There is the Christmas tree that my best friend gave me that is broken in the least visible of places and it reminds me of my time in New Orleans. See that is where that tree was broken. It fell on the hardwoods of my house there as I was putting it up.

Getting the Christmas decorations out every year is one of my favorite things. I love decorating my house and taking the trip down memory lane that many of my ornaments offer. Unfortunately, since all my stuff is sitting in a 10x15 storage unit this Chritmas I am missing doing this. Somehow, it doesn't feel quite like Christmas for me without such traditions. Then I recall several other years that I did not go through the motions that I mentioned above. There was my time in the Peace Corps where there was no traditional Christmas celebration for two years. I recall that I spent my second Christmas there seeing the Indian Ocean for the first time.

So this holiday season as I am missing parts of my traditions I am reminded that none of these things are truly what make Christmas Christmas anyhow. Everytime that I feel some tiny bit of longing I recall all that I truly have to be thankful for.

What traditions make it seem like Christmas to you? What are you most thankful for this year?