While most of us perhaps have happy memories of Christmas, particularly from our childhood years, and many of us may still experience a Christmas season filled with family members and friends, too many of us also know Christmas as a time when we remember those who are no longer with us, either through death or separation. Christmas is an unbearably sad time for many people. During my twenty years as a paramedic, suicides were not an uncommon call over the Christmas season. One year, working in a town of just over two thousand people, I responded to four suicides or attempted suicides during the few days surrounding Christmas. I love my wife, and she will be with me this Christmas, as she has been every Christmas for the past fifteen years. But each Christmas, the happy memories that I have from my childhood are touched with sadness, as my parents have been gone for many years now, and I remember them always during this time of the year. Most people fifty or older have experienced losses during their lifetime, but I pray that each one of you is also aware of the gains. As some people leave our lives, others enter, and as long as we have one person who cares about us, I think we can be happy, even if that person is the one who we see when we look in the mirror. I wish you all a very merry Christmas. Although I'll be doing other things as well, I am sure that I'll be popping in to the forum from time to time on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I wish you all the best over the Christmas holidays.
Merry Christmas to you also, Ken. I too will be on and off during the next few days but I'll wish everyone on this great forum "Merry Christmas" now.
I agree Ken I am now well into my seventies and have lost many and there are very few of my families generation left, Christmas is a time for celebration for most of us, but I feel there is excess at times as well, while older lonely people often suffer more than usual, being left out of the family get-togethers. A Merry Christmas Ken and all of you who have made this forum such a friendly supportive place to be.
The thing I miss most at Christmas, besides the family who are gone, is the smells. For a week or two before Christmas our house smelled delicious. Mom, granny and Aunt Marian would be baking tons of cookies. Mostly sugar cookies. Mom and granny had a big cardboard box in the attic, full of tin cookie cutters, with a wooden knob on top in the middle, that served as a handle. All shapes and sizes. They would haul that box down to the kitchen, wash the cutters and get busy. Some cookies were plain, others decorated with colorful sprinkles or frosted. I understand cookie cutters like those are highly collectible now. Granny made a cookie she just called 'filled ' cookies. She made them by cutting out a round of cookie dough, placing a dollop of mincemeat in the center, placing another sugar cookie over it, crimping the edges with a fork and baking them. They were like a miniature mince meat pie. The mincemeat we used was the chopped or ground up raisins, currents and apples. She couldn't make enough of these. The women baked bread all the time but in the holiday season they baked the fancy kind. Nut bread, raisin bread, pumpkin bread and bars, and candy. Yummy. Fudge plain, with nuts, white fudge, divinity or something like that, they called it. And pies. Pumpkin was a favorite, mincemeat pies, apple, cherry and all. The cookies and candy was hid away until the appropriate time. The stuff that wouldn't keep long was made before needed. The kitchen lights burned far into the night the few days before Christmas. I remember going to sleep at night smelling food baking and waking up next morning to the smells of coffee, bacon and eggs. Holidays are different now. They just don't smell the way they once did.
Wishing Everyone A Very Special Christmas and a New Year filled with Much Love, Happiness and Smiles. ♥ Thanks for the forum, Ken....it's really appreciated.
Thanks for a wonderful forum to belong to. Going to be 62 next year and yes have seen some people gone now forever and yes I do wish things were different. But one can't go back to another time physically, only in memory. I past some time with many that passed and wishing them a Happy Christmas in heaven. Wiping a tear or two away, took a deep breath and lifted my eyes to heaven and smiled as if to see all of them in a cloud in the night sky. You know belonging to a forum like this makes life nicer. Thanks one and all! image from http://www.babble.com/celebrity/christmas-cards-where-to-find-online-send-an-e-card/