Tree Walking with Santa & Mrs. Claus

I have always been known to love Christmas, I am called Santa Lisha around my family, but it seems the last few years it takes a little bit of effort to get into the holiday spirit. Sadly as I grow older I think I sometimes lose that hope of Tiny Tim and find Scrooge sometimes within me.

Christmas as a child I knew was a stress for my parents, we were not wealthy and lived simply, but to me, they were magical.

It would be a long story but my favorite gift as a child I got was individually wrapped gourmet pickles... (Link to post on old blog about it).

Our trees were always real, not beautiful, but in my eyes that never mattered. Our gifts were small and meager but they came from the heart. I would find myself from 4-years-old into early adulthood playing with the Christmas Ornaments on the tree.

As a kid, I would take the felt Santa and Mrs. Claus ornaments my mother had made and walk them around the tree to meet all the other ornaments. It may sound corny, but it is one of my favorite memories. Sometimes the notion that those moments were just a dream come into my head... it feels like this quote from scrooge,

"Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream or not?" - A Christmas Carol

The tradition, the joy, the memories... they are still in my heart, but it takes a little bit of time to pull them out. I have seen that I am not one in finds sentiment really in objects, after all, they are what we leave behind, but as of weeks ago, I realized my mother's ornaments are one of the few things I am emotionally attached to... As I was helping her clean out some of her Christmas stuff, I found myself asking her to make sure I could get the felt ornaments in the future.

Those ornaments hold stories, they hold hours and hours of entertainment and childish conversations. They hold in them the memories I have forgotten over time but never want to let go of... Let me show you some of my favorites from childhood. I have taken pics of them over the years just to have a visual reminder.

"Some Christmas tree ornaments do more than glitter and glow, they represent a gift of love given a long time ago." - Tom Baker