Quiet Holidays
For all of my young life, Christmas Holidays were so full of excitement and busyness! As a child I had the anticipation of gifts at Christmas, family parties that involved dozens of people, school and Sunday School pageants... sometimes with parts to memorize or songs to learn. As I got older there were gifts to buy or to make. I remember when I was in upper grade school, we lived in a bigger town, close to the town center, and my cousins and I would "go in together" and walk downtown to buy a bone china teacup for our grandma, to add to her collection. We also had gift exchanges with our extended families... we got to the point where there were so many that we "drew names" at Thanksgiving, so each family only had to buy as many gifts as they had family members. It was fun when I drew a cousin's name... not so much if it was an Uncle! Like all families, it was a challenge to see both sides of the family at holiday time. We sort of got it worked out thoug