Christmas time is here!

 Oh it's been a while! How have you been, dear Blog reader? This year has been intense to say the least!

The feeling of the year

If you go maskless...watch out!

It is of no wonder after this year, I have a lovely white lock of hair.

It was a slow year, but it moved!

Lord &  Taylor forever closed it doors

And now it is winter, beautiful winter!

 Have you decorated or put anything out for Christmas? How was your Thanksgiving, if you eat turkey in your neck of the woods? 

Did you order in, carry out or skip this year? We sped through Thanksgiving with impatience to arrive to Christmas. 

It seems many people were tossing their Autumn "Thankful", "It's Fall Ya'll", "Harvest" and "Gather" in the woods with used tires. 

 I hated seeing the pumpkins in the forest but also what it represents: A "season" is a cycle that doesn't have true appreciation for the virtues it upholds.  I'm glad that Christmas isn't a season, decor or a trend.

 I hope you are enjoying some Christmas sprit to go out with a bang.

A Christmas to remember: Socially distanced with an enclosed and masked Santa. Childhood memories don't get much better than this!

Have you been decking the halls with balls of holly?

Ready to roll!

We have certainly been in the Christmas spirit, thoroughly enjoying Christmas music, Christmas movies, eggnog, and wrapping gifts bought during the year and squirreled away till now. I had no idea Bentley had such great taste in gifts for me! He's such a ham...

Good pud.

The day after Thanksgiving my true love gave to me, our first real Christmas Tree:

When we lived in New Jersey across from "the City" (NYC for those who are not from around "the City") we had a tiny little townhouse the size of a shoebox and got used to the simplicity of our Nativity set. This year, 5 years later, we got our first Christmas Tree. It is so overwhelmingly beautiful, every time I look  at it it leave me breathless. I'm in complete love with it. It's name is Fergie the Fur tree. I still haven't decided. Or possibly Christmas in New York. It looks and feels like a cold snowy Christmas walking down 5th Ave and looking inside all the fancy shop windows and displays while hearing Christmas piano jazz playing. In any case, it is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen in my life. 

Why pay oodles when a vintage angel from Goodwill makes it feel like Grandma's?

Each year we've had little traditions for Christmas. One of them for me has been buying only one ornament for Christmas for our little nativity set Christmas tree. Eventually the tiny tree got overwhelmed with ornaments and looked like a doughnut covered in colorful sprinkles. These are some of my favorite ornaments and memories:

2016: Rome

2001: Kitten's first Christmas

2019: Amish made

2009: My friend Carla has the twin

2007: New York

2003: Made with Megan

2015: Chesapeake Snoopy

My most favorite part of Christmas this year though? The Babe in the manger! Just thinking of little baby Jesus and how extraordinary it is that God became man and came as a baby fills my heart with pure delight. 

The forest animals and seashells of our Nativity waiting in anticipation.

The manger: a large seashell

I have been spotting little baby Jesus everywhere and it makes me smile. In each pregnant woman, there is a silent little child. In each new born baby, the image of Christ himself. In each priest that reaches out his hand to bless, the mercy of the Father giving us His son.

St. Vincent de Paul saw little Baby Jesus everywhere too. Pray for us, St. Vincent!

In every country, His reflection is there. 

 In each Eucharistic feast, the child who came and remains with us out of love, in the flesh. Flabbergastingly loving is the arrival of the Christ baby. 

Perhaps for this reason, my Christmas tree ornament this year spanned to 4....all nativities.

 I wanted to celebrate and see more of my sweet darling loving and sunbeam of a baby child Jesus. He is in the gaze of the silent, the heartbeat of the quiet, the worry of the homeless, the sigh of the rejected mothers, and grasps our little finger with His whole baby hand saying "I got you."