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Christmas traditions

Driving back from my aunt’s and uncle’s house after Thanksgiving — in the same little pocket of Wetzel County where I used to spend every Thanksgiving, Christmas … Sunday … at my gran’s house — I found myself this year looking eagerly for the homes that would already be brightly lit with Christmas decorations. For as long as I can remember that was the official start of the Christmas season for me, pleasantly stuffed and drowsily staring out the windows in the back seat as we wound on up the road to home with either me or my sister occasionally saying, “Ooh! Look out my side. Look at this one.”

This year was no different. And it was a comfort to me in anticipating this Christmas that is not much like Christmases past to be able to smile (this time looking through the windshield) and say to myself “Some things never change.”

Thank goodness.

Christmas has a way of reminding us there is still a 5-year-old inside, someone who is free to find comfort and joy in colorful lights and sugar cookies, shiny wrapping paper and getting to put Baby Jesus in the nativity scene on Christmas Eve.

For me, those seasonal comforts include the hanging of certain ornaments (which have been wrapped in the same tissue paper for decades and yet somehow never lose their luster), consuming the second round of dried beans (leather britches, for some of you) after the first had been consumed for Thanksgiving, singing “Silent Night” by candle light and reading Luke’s version of the Christmas story.

Oh, and the making of “the cheesecake” — a once-a-year effort.

There is also the annual viewing of a very different “A Christmas Story,” which includes a father at which my own dad always chuckled, while the rest of us rolled our eyes because he never realized how much he WAS that character.

It’s funny, I’m probably not far from the age of Ralphie’s mother in that movie, but I identify much more with the kids. I think probably most of us do. Christmas can make us forget — just a little — that we are grownups in a mostly-not-Christmas world.

Thank goodness.

Imagine what the world would be like if we didn’t get that reminder once a year. Imagine if we didn’t remember how much we need to give, to see and share beautiful lights, to love and to see the world through the eyes of children. It’s just one more of the gifts we all get for Christmas.

Scottish poet Alexander Smith said “Christmas is the day that holds all time together.”

Thank goodness.

And now, because this is also the time of year on which writers discover that many others have already put Christmas into words far better than we could, I’ll borrow one more line, from “The Night Before Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com

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