Happiness Within

When joy of Christmastime is upon us I always reminisce about the holidays when I was a child.

As my parents put up the Christmas decorations and set up all of our Christmas finery, the first night we would light up the artificial tree with all the old fashioned big bulbed lights, stick on window cling decorations with spray on snow on our big window and the best part was the tinsel on the tips of the plastic, prickly tree branches.

The reason why the tinsel was so fun was not only did it make the tree shimmer enhancing the lights, but you could take a single strand of the tinsel and hold it on one of the large, very hot bulbed Christmas lights and it would stretch and melt. Kind of naughty I guess, but it didn’t seem naughty enough for Santa to notice, but I had to make sure my mom or dad did not.

My most treasured memory was every evening we would turn on the tree and the faux cardboard fireplace, with the fuzzy red and white plush Santa stockings that were push pinned into the faux mantle, and all of a sudden it looked magical…it looked elegant.

I started a secret little tradition, I think I came up with this when I was around six, where everyday when the magical lights were illuminated, I played my Christmas albums on my portable green and white battery operated record player, two favorites were a Disney album and The Ventures Christmas album.

I would set up my record player on the carpet near the illuminated Christmas tree, I was sure that Santa would hear my Christmas music and that it would make ‘him’ smile.

During that time I concocted many very entertaining dances that I’m sure looked a little ridiculous in person, but in my pretend world it seemed well choreographed and very professional.

After all I thought, “He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake”.

“He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake”.