Peace and Love at Christmas

Reflections at Christmas

Can you remember the first Christmas you spent with the person with whom you chose to spend your life? For us the first Christmas came six months after we married in 1955. That Christmas magically let us recapture the excitement and joy we remembered as children. We had very little money. We cut our tree and decorated it with blue lights and a few ornaments. The joy and excitement came from just being together.

I taught school and Everett attended college so we had two full weeks to enjoy listening to Christmas music, staring wide-eyed at Christmas decorations on Fresno's then famous Christmas tree lane, strolling through stores talking about what we would buy each other if we had money, telling each other stories about Christmas's past. At night we would turn off all of the lights except our beautiful blue Christmas tree lights. We cuddled on an old second hand couch and dreamed about the beautiful future we had together.

This week we sat on our lovely leather love seat with multicolored lights on our floor-to-ceiling artificial Christmas tree and remembered those early Christmas's and how exciting it was to be together. We both agreed it is still exciting in a deeply peaceful way. Christmas can still bring back an assurance that all is well if we sit still and take in the significance of Christ's message of peace and good will.

I wish you all peace and love this Christmas!