Tis the Holiday Season and in keeping with spending our $$ locally Sue and I have been annually cutting our Christmas tree at a local tree farm. Unlike those folks who put up a tree right after Thanksgiving and often take it down a few days after Christmas Day or the day after New Year's Day, we have a different plan. Back in the day, you know, when Christmas was less commercial and a bit more of a religious observance, Christmas was more than two weeks long.
Several years ago, in part due to slower economic times, but more out of a desire to put our Christmas back into the spiritual sphere by de-emphasizing gift-giving, Sue and I started breaking our old habits. One thing we did was to limit the number of and cost of individual presents. After a few years we radically changed the gift-giving to our Grandchildren, we now have six. No longer do we give toys or clothes - because with clothes its too hard to get the sizes right, the kids growth so fast. As for toys, they already get so many from their own parents and the "other" grandparents, it seemed to us the value of an individual toy was lost shortly after the next present was opened. What we did was to start buying EE Savings Bonds for each grandchild, one for each birthday and one for each Christmas. So far this system is working pretty well, for us anyway.
A number of years ago my daughter Sasha, I think it was her anyway, gave me a very nice book for Christmas, 'One Hundred Saints'. I learned from this book that December 6th used to be the official feast day for St. Nicholas, who we all know now as Santa Claus. It occurred to me that the Christmas Season ought to start with a nice dinner on December 6th. I even penned a short work on how St. Nicholas became Santa Claus which I read the evening of December 6th. The next event in our season is to cut our own Christmas Tree.
Christmas Tree cutting, for us, takes place about mid-December. Cutting our own tree gives us the freshest tree, which we want to last through January 6th, Epiphany. By our
system the Christmas Holiday lasts one full month. Though we are not Church-goers, Sue and I observe the Advent Sundays and Sue reads the Advent Calendar. On Christmas Eve we read the Nativity Story and watch a Christmas movie. We do give a few gifts, a good proportion of which are food treats, but some may be DVDs, books, CDs and this year I sent a Teaching Company Course, it was a 12 lecture course and it was on sale - I referred to it as "food for the mind."
Christmas at Berryridge Farm is truly a season and it gets more fun each year.
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