Celebrating Christmas or the holidays

I don't know about you, but life is so busy when everyone is home, that my enjoyment of the holidays is often caught up in the busy-ness of getting things done. This year it was complicated by shoulder surgery for my dh...

I read an article after Christmas that talked about post-holiday blues...it said to leave out some decoration or some such to extend the holiday.

I leave a lot of my decorations out in different places in the house, funnily enough. It makes it easier to put it out again.

But seriously, some is because my grandfather would 'surprise' us as Santa every year, and I have pictures of myself at age 3 with him, and with Baron, his dalmation, and the dog cart that we kids would ride in. What lovely memories. They stay out year round. And some other things. Such as the hanging display of nearly all my kids' art for Christmas.

I realized this year, more thoroughly than I have before, that taking the time to listen to Christmas music after the fact, gives me the quiet time I need to integrate feeling as though I've had a holiday into the holiday.

When I was ripping music off my CDs, I decided I would complete ripping my Cmas music, since I'd finished the rest, and I was surprised by some of the music because I hadn't heard it in a couple of years.

Today, I spent a lot of time enjoying Christmas. I had the ambiance of a couple of CDs playing in the background. And it was really nice to have the quiet time, no kids underfoot (I think they can interrupt every 20 sec no matter how old they are.) And what I played was not typical Christmas music. One was Guitar Christmas, kind of jazzy in a light way. I can't find a link to it yet.

The other was Secret Of Giving by Reba McEntire.

This one had a couple of very lovely, different ones, if you are in a country sort of mood. I liked especially This Is My Prayer For You. One of the Amazon reviews lists a mini review for every song.

Karin

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