Christmas is About Giving, Not Getting

Happy Holidays to All of You!

When I think about the holidays, my memories are of the people who made these days special. With few exceptions, do I recall the gifts (really only my figure skates) I received and I’m grateful for this.

The best part of Christmas is having the family get together … and yesterday realized with my new daughter-in-law, I can’t say when the boys are combing home. Now it’s the kids (makes me feel old) coming home and this year we’ve got a busy schedule even if it’s starting a little later:

• Ryan flies home from Norfolk, VA where his ship (USS Carr) is based.
• Jason and Emily fly home from Orlando, FL where they live.
• Ted is singing at Portsmouth, NH’s First Night … with the Seacoast Vocal Union (barbershop).
• Wedding in Atkinson, NH on January 2nd … bride is the daughter of a college friend.
• Sunday, January 3rd … all 5 of us fly to West Palm Beach for grandpa’s 95th birthday party.

When my boys were younger, I found projects where we could help others in order to teach them about giving at a young age, so I thought it would be fun to share some of these memories:

• Every year we had a gingerbread house party with the boys friends, and their families.Probably the most interesting ones were when we lived in Tokyo as finding the molasses was a challenge, and mixing the batter without my Kitchen Aid was tough work.
• Many years we’d go grocery shopping together. While I bought for our family, each of the boys filled up their cart with nutritious, and sometimes just yummy, food for families we would adopt each year.
• Being the oldest, my children had lots of younger cousins. Each year I asked them to pack up a box of old toys they’d outgrown, so we could give them to their cousins. OK, I also told them Santa knew how much room they had for new toys so this was important.
• While my mother baked 100s of holiday cookies, I didn’t inherit the baking genes. Many years the boys helped me make banana bread with walnuts and cranberries, which we would wrap up as gifts for friends and neighbors … and they could give these to their teachers too.