Sentimental fool

Sentimental doesn't EVEN begin to describe it. And this time of year is the worst (or the best, depending on how you look at it!) If it has anything to do with Christmas as a kid, then you better believe it is part of my season now.

Even though I am well on my way to the big 4-0, I still can't get enough of the Christmas specials of yore. I not only watch all of them, I have taped them and transferred them to DVD! Charlie Brown is my favorite. My sister and I had the record when we were little. The album cover actually had a book with all the lines in it incorporated into the design. Hence, I have the whole thing memorized and recite it ad nauseum when it's on (hey, it's just me. And the cat doesn't care). I also love Rudolph ("I want to be a dentist!"), Frosty ("(Santa) spoke fluent rabbit") and all of those claymation shows....even the really hokey ones, like Nestor the Long Eared Donkey.

My Christmas CD collection also reflects my childhood more often than not. I don't know of many people that own Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis and Barbra Streisand (yes, the JEWISH Barbra) holiday recordings. For the longest time, if I heard a "regular" Johnny Mathis song on the radio, it made me think of Christmas. Because that's all he does, right?? I have added some more modern favorites.....I have two Amy Grant cds and two Garth Brooks cds. But my favorites will still always be the oldies but goodies. And listening to them brings me to.....

Christmas cookies. We would always have the Christmas music playing full blast while cutting out the traditional cookies each year. The recipe is from my Great Grandma Barnett. It isn't specifically a Christmas recipe, but it's the only time we ever made them. My sister and I would cut out cookies with our metal cookie cutters and cover them with red and green sprinkles (which would promptly fall right off after baking). The kitchen was a mess of flour and a combination of too thin or too thick cookies. I think I'm the only one that keeps this tradition up. I even went to a flea market a few years ago and found some of the same cookie cutters. I paid far too much for them.....but they are priceless!

And I simply love to sit on the couch looking at my tree and try to recapture little snippets of memory of Christmas' past. Like the green and red foil-like wrapping paper my grandparents used, or the wooden decoupage ornaments my mom made, or loading up the car to drive to my aunt and uncle's for Christmas Eve, or the smell of the Xerox'd (?) sheets they handed us in music class for each year's Christmas pageant (you know the ones....typed up with that purple ink!), or the trip through the North Pole and all the animated characters on the way to see Santa (I don't know where we were living at the time.....but they did Santa at the mall up BIG)

I hope Christmas is always a fun trip down memory lane for me. I can always get my nostalgia fix for the entire year in one short month! Now, time to hunt down a Christmas cookie or two....

Age 2, Grandma and Grandpa's, 1972 (I wish you could see the revolving color disk pointed at the tree....classic!)