Tower

It is the day before Christmas and I am sitting beside a tower of used Kleenex. I don't know how I get a bug. I did recently use an ATM and I have read that the buttons on an ATM are infested with an army of germs. I always wash my hands when I get home but I must have touched my nose or my mouth before I got home. Still things are not so bad. I have more than enough food in the house and I can stay cuddled in my blankie and watch the snow that is beginning to fall. I have everything that I need to make onion soup and that is my next project.
Christmas will come and go. It has never been one of my favored holidays. I used to wonder how people would feel if on their birthday, people gave presents to other people.
I was once married to a Lady that really knew how to keep Christmas. There was an Advent calendar and cookies and a sumptuous meal and reading of "A Christmas Carole". Each member of the family got to read some passages and that was Christmas for me. The Christmas presents were unimportant to me. That was a disappointment to the Lady I was married to as I always forgot to get something for her until the day before Christmas and it was usually something small and cheap that happened to be left in the store.
I have often wondered why I feel this way about gift giving. The only reason I can think of is that I was raised in a family that did not do a lot of gift giving. There was never much money to do much gift getting. On my birthday my Mother would make a strawberry shortcake for me and I still treasure the memory of that.
The only day that had mandatory gift giving was my Mother's birthday. Several days beforehand, my Father would take my Brother and I by the ear and parade us to a store, open his wallet, and make sure that we got her a present. He was a wise man and knew better than to give us the money and tell us to go get something. We would have gotten her some small trinket and something nice for ourselves. She would have ooohed and aaahed over the presents and still loved us very much but his life would have become very stressful.
And so the spirit of Christmas still lives in my heart. The Advent calendar and the cookies and the groaning board and Charles Dickens are there but I don't remember much of what was inside the fancy wrapping.
I do fondly remember Clownie and the Lady that knew how to keep Christmas and a certain gingerbread house. Gifts come and go and are soon forgotten but not the love that surrounds a family at Christmas.
I do not know how many more Christmases I will see but I do know how many I will remember. All the ones where the Lady spread her warmth and joy all through the house.