Celebrate an Old-Fashioned Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Thought I'd post my column I wrote for Two-Lane Livin' magazine's December issue.

Celebrate an Old-Fashioned Christmas 

 by: Janet F. Smart

What Christmas carol is a favorite of parents? Silent Night!

Celebrate an old-fashioned Christmas with all its sights, sounds and smells.

Add some old-fashioned Christmas sights to your house by popping popcorn and making strands to string on your Christmas tree. Hang cookie cutters on your tree, string them across your mantle or use them as napkin rings. Sprinkle powdered sugar on large pinecones and make a small grouping of ‘snow covered pinecone trees’ to set on a placemat and put it in the middle of your kitchen table.

Add some old-fashioned Christmas sounds to your house by hanging jingle bells on your front door and playing Christmas music on your radio or CD player. Light your fireplace and listen to the crackling of the warm fire on a frosty morning.

Add some old-fashioned Christmas smells to your house by baking sugar cookies, lighting cinnamon scented candles, making cinnamon dough ornaments to hang on your tree and, of course, putting up a piney smelling Christmas tree.

Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, said, “Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.”

You can visit a neighbor and present them with a plate of cookies or read a Christmas story to a younger family member or friend. Some good holiday books are:

Berenstain Bears Old Fashioned Christmas, The Polar Express, The Night Before Christmas, The Berenstain Bears and the Joy of Giving, God Gave us Christmas, A Christmas Carol, Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, Olivia Helps With Christmas, Snowmen at Christmas and Bear Stays up for Christmas.

The spirit of Christmas lives in your heart. Give the gift of love and friendship. Make homemade gifts; share your voice by going caroling in your neighborhood. Have a family fun night each week. Pop some popcorn and watch a Christmas movie.

But, most of all, remember what Dr. Seuss said in The Grinch That Stole Christmas. He puzzled three hours till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before, “Maybe Christmas,” he thought…“doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps …means a little bit more!”

And what happened, then? Well, in Whoville they say – that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!

Merry Christmas!

Posted by Janet F. Smart on Creative Writing in the Blackberry Patch