Blogging Melodrama

64 Days Left Until Christmas

OMG!  Where did 2K10 go?  It seems like it just got started, and here we are with only sixty-four days left until Christmas; ugh!  I haven’t even started any gifts yet, nor have I got anything on lay-away.  It just reminds me of joking words my Uncle Sparky used to start saying, about this time of year; when I was just a kid in Ohio.  Uncle Sparky’s parting words were, “Don’t forget to get your Christmas Shop-lifting done early!”

Seriously, what do we do when we have little or no money left to run the month; let alone buy gifts? 

In my family most of the birthdays happen between August 25 and November 2^nd.  Then Thanksgiving hits followed by Christmas and New Years… when the whole birthday/holiday year starts anew.  Shesh! 

Maybe my Uncle wasn’t joking after all?  Maybe he… nah!  Now days; maybe, but back in the 50’s: Jean Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Wally and June Cleaver, Superman and Lois Lane, Tarzan and Jane, Pinky Lee and Soupy Sales were all our roll models.  Real people we watched weekly at our Saturday Matinee’s and nightly on our knot-hole sized black and white televisions.  They were of a different caliber from the Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Dancing with the Stars contestants. 

People didn’t do drugs, get mugged for their shoes, or shot for coffee change in the 50’s.  There was a naïveté still alive in the country; a sense of fair play and honesty and all those out of date ideals.  Some things weren’t right, but the country had a different feeling on the whole.  There was a sense of pride in the people that has disappeared along with lots of our jobs, and a general vision for a bright future.

Maybe the main difference was through my then nine-year-old eyes, as compared to these same eyes at sixty eight.  Maybe these eyes have seen things that have shattered the newness and wonder of life.  Then again, it could just be a sense of resignation to the inevitability, that all those things I was taught as a child, just doesn’t fit in this “modern” time.  They are all like the fairy tales and nursery rhymes, the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause that somehow fade into the past and are placed lovingly into our happy trunks of moth balled memories.

Guess I need to start a new happy trunk of grown up kids, with kids of their own, who have kids of their own… and who knows how many generations these old eyes will see.  Instead of panicking over the Christmas countdown beginning BEFORE Halloween, I can use some of my innovative Mother’s hand-me-down hints and tricks.  She used to pull off moments that these eyes and this heart remember most lovingly; the ones that had no price tag except joy.

So, “Don’t forget to do your Christmas Shop-lifting early; avoid the rush!”