Tis the Season

Its the Christmas season and for the first time in a number of years, the spirit of Christmas has infected me earlier than usual.  During a previous year, life would cruise along until that first Christmas carol came playing over the radio and the hair son my arm would bristle and I would think to myself, "Christmas carols already?  Bah humbug!"  So maybe the sentiments never veered quite as far as a scrooge, but the incessant over commercialization of the Christmas holiday, once reserved for the time after Thanksgiving (years and years ago), has now infiltrated stores as early as September.  My heckles are still raised whenever I see that first decorated Christmas tree in a store, its small lights begging you to come and stare in awe.  Like we haven't seen a Christmas tree before.  Yet, this year, come Thanksgiving time, I was ready for Christmas.  Perhaps the only thing that has changed is that my son is getting older, now a little over 2, and I was curious to see his excitement at the whole change in seasons.  While I know some people who decorate their houses depending on the season at hand, there are a good number of people, ourselves included, who only truly decorate their house for one season, Christmas.  The remainder of the year will hold only the normal decorations around the house, nothing out of the ordinary, no mass of pumpkins adorning every shelf and orifice for Halloween, no plethora of turkeys or cornucopias with autumnal leaves for Thanksgiving.  No, our house remains relatively unadorned except for the normal pictures with their thin layer of dust on the upper edge, my wife's pottery and sculptural work, and our house plants.  Even when we decorate for Christmas, we only have a few boxes of decorations that we bring out.  But I digress as I began talking about my Christmas spirit this year and have become minorly side tracked.  We got our Christmas tree this past weekend and with our son able to walk around with only minor help on stairs sometimes, it was a lot of fun.  We searched and searched for the perfect Christmas tree at a small family run place in Newtown.  It is not an enormous place, but it is cute and not crowded which is the nice part.  The trees aren't perfect, but they are unique.  We ended up picking a tree that was about 14 feet tall of which the top was perfect and the bottom was almost completely void of branches.  It was the perfect tree and we figured rather than take a smaller one, we would help out and cut down a bigger one to make room for the smaller ones to grow.  Our son absolutely loved the experience and loved it even more when we got the tree home and put it up.  The real excitement came the next day however.  After our son went to bed, we brought out the Christmas lights and hung them on the tree with our ancient star at the top.  The next morning when we brought our son down and turned on the Christmas tree, his face went from tired and groggy from just waking up to plastered with a huge smile that could barely express his wonder and excitement.  He proceeded to just stare at the Christmas tree for a while, exploring the lights and the shadows they cast between the branches, the star at the top which somehow has not needed a light replaced in over a dozen years, and on top of that, he just kept on pointing and saying "Christmas tree".  Yes, my Christmas spirit is here and its not about the presents I will give or receive, its about being with family and seeing our son's excitement.  For today, I leave you with that, for whatever it is, it is, and that made no sense so now I stop writing.