Day 6 Christmas Countdown 2022

I wrote this post on the day after Christmas 2013. 

It is one of my favorite Christmas season memories and I can’t think of any better way to share it than just the way I wrote it. 

Echoes of Christmas Past – December 26, 2013

I am writing this on Wednesday evening, sitting in our family room surrounded by scraps of wrapping paper and little piles of gifts. The kid-friendly manger scenes are scattered in various places, evidence that Graham was here for a few hours. That would also explain a flower arrangement that has been re-arranged and the migration of breakable ornaments to the northern parts of the tree.

It has been a great day. Our youngest is watching basketball and starting to stack things by the door for his departure tomorrow. And I seem to have something in my eyes. They kind of water off and on. Maybe I am coming down with something….

So allow me one little memory from a Christmas past that involves this 6 foot plus adult who holds down a real job and has his own apartment two states away.

The Christmas after 911 was a bittersweet time for our nation. We were shaken and had a new kind of fear to deal with when December rolled around that year. But children seem to have a way of changing our perspective.

That year, John was in the elementary band, as were most of the boys that lived on our street. He cooked up the idea that instead of caroling, they take their instruments house to house and try out some Christmas songs they were attempting to learn.

Another mom and I walked with them to help carry stands and music. Ok,we ran with them. In a fashion that resembled more of a sporting event than a concert, they took the neighborhood by horn.

What they lacked in skill they made up for in volume and enthusiasm. Neighbors had less than a minute to answer the bell or the troubadours were high-tailing it on.

At one point, a van from a local nursing home, out viewing Christmas lights, slowed at a well- lit house down the street. The boys saw this as an opportunity not to be wasted and immediately positioned themselves on the snow covered sidewalk to serenade the surprised group of senior saints.

I laughed and cried my way around the block, knowing I was witnessing the making of a treasured memory.

Each Christmas, I can hear the echoes of those brass instruments and little guys’ voices up and down this street that has grown far too quiet. And it still makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

I hope you are savoring the special moments, all of them, in just the way they happen. They are your stories and true treasures of this celebration of Christmas 2022 as we all…journey onward <3