Each year I seem to reflect more and more on Christmas past....the year we moved from the snowy Kansas prarie to Houston Texas, where humidity and short sleeves ruled. The 3 older girls each received roller skates and we spent the entire day outside on the sidewalks using them. As I recall we could scarcely walk the next day. There was the Christmas of 1966, our first christmas without daddy; we had an aluminum tree with the color wheel(gosh that dates me). One boyfriend made a very memorable Christmas for me (ahhh, young love); A christmas where I got to experience the wonder of the holidays in the eyes of my oldest son. Keeping his hands off the tree proved an impossible task.  Cutting a tree down became mandatory several short years later as did going to the farm for the holidays. I was very pregnant another christmas and could scarcely waddle, that year I had asked for a waffle iron and got a diamond necklace instead; legos in the stocking became a standard for the boys, Starwars toys gave way to guns and truck keys. My granddaughter is 13 this year, quite the young lady and visiting with Nana and PaPa; all too soon college, boyfriends and career will have her in places far from here.
Mom passed away november of 2009 but she was much in my thoughts as I did my christmas grocery shopping. Mom loved to shell pecans. she could spend hours and hours literally picking them out and brushing them clean. If Mom shelled the pecans you could trust there would be no shells or piths. I recall her sitting in my living room at the table, her pecan processing station, listenuing to tv and cleaning the pecans.
In her later (and failing years) my sister and her husband kept Mom in cracked pecans. When I was young, Mom made divinity that would melt in your mouth....her piecrusts were perfect.
I have had years of Christmas chaos both merry and not so merry as we blended families. This year we had  4 generations of my husbands family in attendance...who would have thought of great grandchildren?
We have been fortunate in our family, no real tragedies to weather and endure. If I could have a christmas wish it would be this: that we could remember why we celebrate christmas, that we could  realize that the gift that matters most is  selfless, genuine love.. the giving of ourselves. I wish children could know the excitement of getting that one special gift: a BB gun, a bicycle, a beautiful doll and be happy with that one gift; I wish parents would not spend money but rather spend time....and I  wish that we could all look up at a starry sky and know we have all received the greatest gift of all......