The Reindeer Keeper

This past December when going to the woods for a Christmas tree, I came back home with two trees. One was for the living room. The other was for the room where Brian and I spend most of our time. We call it the Groove room. It used to be a back porch. Now it’s where it all happens; everything from singing and dancing to TV viewing and CD listening and writing and watching the leaves turn and the snow fall and the garden grow and the deer pass by. It overlooks the back yard and the fields; a rock wall where rabbits live and the old barn with a light in the upstairs window. I’d thought about putting a small Christmas tree in the Groove room before but I never followed through. Something was telling me to do it this past Christmas. So I did. Once Christmas was over, it didn’t bother me to take down the tree in the front room but that little tree on the old back porch was a different story. Brian and I weren’t ready to say goodbye to what had become our favorite little tree. So we ...

Back on December 19th I wrote a post about a Christmas tradition I started when my children were little. That simple tradition was making lopsided Gingerbread Boys following the recipe on page 94 of Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cook Book. I can't tell you when the cook book was published because some of the pages are missing and pages, like page 94, are worn down and have blotches of  stains from required ingredients. But I can still read it. I pull it out every year and make my gingerbread boys. And this year was no different except in one way. My tradition of baking my lopsided gingerbread boys and leaving them without faces; without any decorating of any kind and when cooled, placing them in old tin cans and setting them around the house and once January had come and gone, sending them off to gingerbread boy heaven followed along without a hitch this year. That is, until January was coming to a close. That's when I realized I wasn't quite ready to say goo...

Now that January has given way to February with its chocolate hearts and paper hearts and hearts on socks and hearts on cards and hearts on sleeves declaring love forever-I have finally put most of Christmas back into boxes and drawers and wherever else I can stuff it. Out near the barn there remains a string of solar-powered Christmas lights strung around a massive bush of some sort sitting by itself in the field. When it's been a bright, sunny winter's day those lights of red and green and blue illuminate winter's night. Looking out the back window when the dark sky's a bed of silver stars and the moon's but a sliver those dancing lights in the massive bush spread wonder and warmth out across the giant snowdrifts and into the hearts of anyone passing by. That alone justifies leaving them up. After all, it is the month of hearts and I'll keep them up until the month of hearts lends itself to the month of shamrocks.