All Things Transcription

Yesterday my daughter and I got out the Christmas decorations. My daughter loves Christmas and the main reason is the decorations. I promised her that this year we would get them all out, so we did. We toted them all up the hill from the storage shed and proceeded to look through them.

Follow up:

Some of them we haven't used in many years so it was a lot of fun to open containers and come across some of the older things. Since we only use them once a year anyway it was like having all new decorations in some cases.

For me, my favorite is the nativity scene I have had since I was 3 years old. I don't remember it but the story is that I was with my mother and grandmother when I saw it and threw such a hissy fit for it that my grandmother said, "Oh go ahead and get it for her." (This was unusual behavior for a woman who raised 13 children. She didn't lean towards indulging the whims of a child throwing a temper tantrum.)

The traditional figures are porcelain, but they are housed in a wooden structure that looks much as one would imagine an inn of that time would look. There is even a tiny hay loft with a ladder leading to it. I can remember taking all the "hay" out of it and laying it around the animals to feed them.

I have been told that I was always very careful while playing with it. None of the figures are broken and they look brand new. Of course, the "hay" has been replaced many times. My daughter is fascinated by this story even though she doesn't have the same sentimental attachment to it that I do.

Tradition is very important to me and I set out to make my daughter's Christmas memories good ones. Evidently I succeeded because she just adores the holidays. Even at the ripe old age of 14, you can tell how excited she is. This year she was a willing helper and worked hard dragging all the stuff out and making decisions about where to put things. It is still a joy to watch her light up as the big day gets closer.

Recently I gave her an assignment to write a short essay about her earliest Christmas memory. She doesn't know I am using it in this post, but I was just so thrilled with what she chose that I cannot resist. She was 3 years old when My husband and I did this for her.

It was actually snowing. That in itself was a Christmas miracle, thanks to the wonderful weather of the South. Plastic icicles hung light-heartedly, dangling, tempting all those of the feline persuasion in the house to try and pull the entire tree down. Christmas was here, finally, and having to wait for my parents to wake up somehow felt longer then the actual eleven months I had waited. I was thrilled, jumping to the tree in excitement. However, I saw that something was…amiss.

There were footprints. Mom’s feet weren’t that big, and while they were boots, Dad didn’t have a pair like that. They started at the Christmas tree, and I followed them curiously. Who had been in the house? However, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw where they actually started. I squealed with glee, jumped up and down, and got more excited then I had been over the idea of presents.

Two snowy prints were on the fireplace, where somebody seemed to have crawled down the chimney. Did this somebody have a beard? Dressed in bright red? Worked only one day out of the year, yet worked very hard? Yes, yes and yes! Good ol’ St. Nick had paid my house a visit, as he always did, but he had apparently forgotten to wipe his feet before entering the house. However, they started at the fireplace, and ended at the tree. No returning footsteps. Perhaps his boots were clean? That sounded reasonable enough.

When the snow melted, the prints stayed the same. It was magic snow, clearly. I didn’t care that they didn’t go away, I liked them too much. I didn’t really want them to melt. . I didn’t care they just stopped at the Christmas tree, it meant somebody went from the chimney to the tree. It meant that Santa was there. Even when I learned that Santa wasn’t real, I loved the idea of those prints. I would pay any sum of money to get that feeling back again; no matter how brief it was.

Actually, they were her Dad's boots that I used as an outline. He took one step at a time while I sprinkled a mixture of baking soda and a little glitter around them. The look on her face was absolutely priceless! There just isn't anything like seeing that kind of joy and excitement on a child's face.

I am so glad that this feeling does linger for her in some measure for her. (I think she did a pretty good job writing that too.)

I hope all of you have a happy and safe holiday season and that you can remember some of the joy and excitement from childhood.