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Showing posts from December, 2012

Mounds of Snow

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When you're a little kid, giant snowbanks are so much more. They turn into whatever a young imagination wants them to be. That's the way it was when growing up in the country. Of course the only shovelling we did was when digging tunnels into snowdrifts, linking one to another and maybe another. With fields all around there was enough space and more than enough snow for each of us to have our own snow home complete with a snow bed and if the consistency of the snow was just right-a supply of snowballs ready to go when needed. Older kids would entertain younger ones but it was built into the playing going on instead of thought of as taking care of them. Out came sleds and wooden skiis as drifts became mountains to slide down or roll down. And when there weren't enough sleds, ripped cardboard boxes worked just fine! We'd spend hours outside. Even with wet mittens and boots full of snow we never felt cold. We were too busy turning those mounds of snow into whatever w

The Silver Ladle

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  The house where Santa Claus came on Christmas Eve when I was growing up was situated beside a lane on a street with a bit of a hill. Whenever a snowstorm came blasting out of the north, the street would more often than not, be closed. And if school was closed too, that street would become crowded with kids and sleds and toboggans. It was a great place to live when just a youngster and the place I look back upon fondly when thinking of hanging my Christmas stocking with my brother on the taped-together, heavy cardboard fireplace our parents brought down from the attic a few weeks before Christmas. We loved the fireplace. It looked real once the flames were plugged in. The flickering effect for some reason made me feel warm and cozy. Sitting on the black cardboard mantle in the same spot every year were a plastic Santa and Snowman. Once turned on, they’d light up. The snowman became a green or blue or red snowman-depending on the little bulb my mother chose. We always had a r

A Plastic Santa in His Sleigh

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Every Christmas a big, smiling, plastic Santa Claus sitting in his sleigh with his reindeer hitched up and ready to go hung above the intersection of the two main streets of the downtown where I grew up. When the wind blew really hard off the river the sleigh appeared as if it was in flight. And when it was snowing many of the shoppers in a hurry slowed down to catch a glimpse of the jolly old man waving at them through the snowflakes. Looking back I believe what mattered to those rushing by was the fact that Santa and his sleigh were right where they had been for as long as most could remember. That Santa and that sleigh and those reindeer were a holiday tradition in the community. I loved going Christmas shopping downtown. My aunt would take my cousins and me on a Saturday. We'd spend the day-having lunch at a favorite spot of all the locals. It had plastic tablecloths and big glasses of chocolate milk. Conversations were friendly. Everyone knew everyone. Families caught up w

Rudolph, Frosty, Charlie Brown and The Grinch

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It's the Season once again for great TV Specials-the kind of television programming that you sit down and thoroughly enjoy because you've sat down and thoroughly enjoyed the same Christmas specials year after year. It doesn't matter that you remember every word and every scene of each of the 20-some minute long specials. It makes no difference if you know Lucy and Linus and the others will rally around Charlie Brown's forlorn little tree and Rudolph will lead the way and Frosty will be back again some day and little Cindy Lou Who will melt the Grinch's heart. None of that matters because these characters with their flaws and defects are woven into your childhood and when it comes to Christmas we are all children once again in one way or another. We appreciate the snowman and the reindeer and little boy and selfish grinch in a deeper sense. Their presence on our TV screens affirms a meaning to Christmas that can not be bought. There's no price tag on the Christ