Kicking off the Christmas Season

I wonder if anyone else feels that Christmas has crept up from behind while they weren't looking. Wasn't it only yesterday that autumn was lingering for weeks? It only became cold enough to seem like winter in the past week, and there's been more rain than snow so far. So it came as a surprise to get out for a drive after dark and find that many of my neighbours have lights indoors and out, Christmas decorations up, even a few Christmas trees up. And it's not December until tomorrow!!

Around here, the season includes suppers and craft sales, so it was fun to get out and work with my sister at her bookshop sale table in one of the towns nearby. Children's books, craft kits and lovely handmade comforters are nice enough to sell themselves at times, and everyone who reads loves talking about favourite children's books. It's lovely to have family members with the talent to create crafts as I am not gifted that way myself, but love the handcrafted things.

A look into the stores is a bit depressing, with tons of plastic junk from China and aisles of gender divided toys. The all pink aisle for girls and the camouflage soldier stuff for boys make me feel a bit down - does nothing ever change?

On the plus side, there are two weeks of no school coming up, and my son looks forward to that as do I. No alarm at six in the morning will be a welcome break. It's often still a bit dark when he goes out to wait for the bus. Yesterday he startled a deer when he went out, heard hoofbeats thumping down the wood path across the road, a favourite hangout for the whitetails. Other than crows, the birds haven't been around much lately. Perhaps waiting for me to get out shopping for a new bag of birdseed for the feeder.

In spite of it all, I do like the holiday season and look forward to more family time. I have begun to decorate in my own small way, put a very nice fir wreath with bits of pine and cedar up on my front door today. It's the real thing, not plastic, and handmade too, by my sister, not by me. I added the red bows, as Martha Stewart as I'm about to get. Later there will be another wreath for the cemetery, remembering other Christmases when all of us could be together. And so it goes on the island as we move into December.