I love my Father in Heaven, the Lord, Jesus Christ.  I love church.   I love gold, silver, green and red (are my favorite colors) and I love everything shiny.  I love the fall weather; maybe because I was born in October.  I love shopping and wrapping gifts; and I am drawn to my local Hallmark store because I adore the Christmas scent that lingers throughout the year.  I love making big dinners and I LOVE cookies.  I love the smell of Christmas; the pine, cinnamon and spice.  I am prone to listening to Christmas music all year long and if you ask me what color sweater or bathing suit I want, I say “red”!  I have to admit that I will definitely be playing that new Michael Buble Christmas CD all year long for sure.  I love the trees and Oh my goodness — I LOVE decorating and sparkling lights.   But is all that I love the spirit of Christmas?  One friend recently said the SPIRIT is Jesus.  Christmas is a blessed holiday and the season is full of love and miracles… that MUST be what it is.

I am so excited!   Less than 150 days until Christmas Eve.  I start to get overwhelmed with ideas as soon as I see July approaching because for me this is the half-way mark.  And if you don’t pick your decorations, and make major gift selections now, you will be out of the loop for the “most wonderful time of the year”.

I have a storage box labeled “Christmas in July”, stored with goodies (notes, catalogs, Christmas mugs, t-Shirts, etc.) to have a brainstorming meeting with the family; that’s when we talk about how we will magically decorate each part of the house, incorporating our treasures with new items… so that each year has that “traditional look” with something timely for the season.   We plan the gift baskets and that includes the cookies that my daughter will decorate; so we look at what we loved from previous years and all her new designs … she makes most of her own cutters and designs them all by hand; she’s such an elf!  My other daughter (the fashionista) tells us what we need to be wearing in September, October, and November… as we add more glitz and glam getting closer to December; good gosh, if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t have my red coat with the shiny gold buttons and my sequin lined cardigans; she is such an elf too… she wears a huge button that says “Santa’s Helper” when she’s shopping with me!

For me, no truer words were ever said “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”; that is how I feel about Christmas. It isn’t just Christmas Eve, or Christmas day… it’s the spirit of Christmas, the very soul of the entire year.

My best memories of Christmas as a little girl were when I went to Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Spectacular… and sitting on Santa’s lap; of course, growing up in New York City I had the pleasure of seeing Santa at Macy’s and at the Daily News Building. In fact, when my first daughter could walk I took her to those same locations even though we were living outside the New York City area. But growing up in an apartment did not allow us to have a large tree or leave room for elaborate decorating; we had a fresh-cut 4ft pine tree in the center of the kitchen/dining table… but for me, it was huge. We could walk to church for midnight mass, and I was mesmerized every minute as I adored the lights that streamed down 3rd Avenue and across 42nd Street. I remember my “Chatty-Cathy” doll sitting under that tree next to my brother’s “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em ROBOTS”… they seemed enormous compared to the mini-tree. Throughout the years, I have taken all that I love and multiplied it over and over for each of my children and then my grandchildren… I want them to love Christmas just as much and hold on to these memories and valuable traditions.