SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14 - IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2024 - IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

Ah, yes - it is Christmas Time.  Of course some churches go bigger on Advent and then sing Christmas songs after Christmas.  

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I was listening to a Pandora Christmas station and hear this family song:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go
Take a look at the five and ten, it's glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes that glow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in every store
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door

A pair of Hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben
Dolls that'll talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go
There's a tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well
It's the sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon the bells will start
And the thing that'll make 'em ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart

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I like this traditional song. It’s fun and bouncy.

But I always need to catch up on the lyrics.

Who remembers the “five and ten”?  (I do).  In Cedar Rapids, we had Kresges on Third Avenue and Woolworths on Second Avenue (both Five and Tens) - and you could go out the back door of one, across the alley, and into the back door of the other.

I like shopping at Dollar Tree, which changed its prices to $1.25 about this time last year. We also have a “Five Below” store, where everything was five dollars or less, but now things are also higher priced.

Or “Hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots” - Hopalong Cassidy was a movie cowboy good guy and then a television show in the early 1950s.  I’m pretty sure my kids and almost anybody under 60 know who Hopalong Cassidy was - and why would you want his boots? And, definitely not politically correct - a pistol that shoots!!  I had a cap pistol.  You loaded a roll of caps (tiny powder, maybe even a small amount of gun [powder).  When you pulled the trigger, the mechanism moved the next cap into the firing area, and it went “bang” - and smelled like gunsmoke.  

Dolls that will talk go for a walk - I don’t think dolls are a big item anymore.  There also was “Betsy Wetsy” - a baby doll with a diaper that needed her diaper changed if you specially squeezed her.  Maybe that’s not politically correct again.

I’m not sure about Holly on doors.  There are wreaths around, but most are of artificial pine needles. 

Most items.  We also have a “Five Below” store - where everything was to be five dollars or less, but now things are higher priced.

Two Christmas trees are mentioned - one in the Grand Hotel and one in the park. Most homes have Christmas trees anymore - and some homes have more than one - and many are artificial trees.  We have a Christmas Tree lot - run by a Boy Scout troop - where you can get real trees.  Real trees smell right - but they drop needles, need water, and eventually need to be thrown out.  (I’m not in the Christmas spirit yet, but I have one three-foot-tall white Christmas Tree I must dig out of my closet and put up.)  

All, but all is well with singing - “And the thing that'll make 'em ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart”.

Yes, let’s sing "Santa Baby." I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, the Chipmunks, and  Grandma, who got run over by reindeer.  

I’m ready to sing Hark, the Herald Angels Sing; Oh Come, all you faithful; Joy to the World; Oh Little Town of Bethlehem; Oh Holy Night; Angels we have heard on high; It came upon a midnight clear; - and all the other spiritually based Christmas songs.  I’m looking for a Christmas Eve service where the traditional songs will be sung (and, no, not a “Midnight Mass” (or service); I don’t stay up that late.

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Yes - without beating a dead horse, Christmas has a spiritual meaning to it; but I can tolerate most of the contemporary Christmas songs.  (The stations even play “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow” - my part of Texas has a 0.1% of having a white Christmas).  

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However we do it, it is Christmas time - let’s enjoy it!!

LOVE WINS

LOVE TRANSFORMS

Karen Anne White, December 14, 2024