Happy Holidays!
It's hard to believe that the Holiday Season is already upon us! I remember when I was a child; it seemed to take forever for Christmas to arrive. Right after Halloween, the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs would arrive, and I would mark the toys I wanted with an X. I was a bit ambitious with my selections; price never crossed my mind. It never occurred to me that Santa might be on a budget.
I found out there was no Santa Claus when I was seven years old. At that time, we were living in Guam, and my mother had ordered all our gifts from the Sears catalog. Unfortunately, the order was lost in overseas shipping. Despite that, it turned out to be a great Christmas; in fact, we all went swimming at the Officers' Club on Christmas Day.
When my father retired from the Air Force in 1975, we made my mother's hometown of Alexandria, Louisiana, our permanent home. This was when our holiday traditions began. It became mandatory to spend Christmas Eve at my grandparents' house, and we would alternate hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas Day dinners among the family, which consists solely of the Carstens, my mother's side of the family. This tradition lasted from the 1970s to the early 2000s. After my grandparents passed, Christmas Eve would take place at my parents' house.
I have wonderful memories of what the holidays were like when I was younger. If you are older than fifty, I’m sure you remember making it a point to watch Christmas Specials on one of the three major television networks, shopping at the mall, and watching TV ads from RONCO and Presto, such as the Mr. Microphone and the Fry Daddy.
As I’m writing this blog, the song, Landslide by Fleetwood Mac is playing on an Amazon commercial. The lyrics: “Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’/‘cause I’ve built my life around you/but time makes you bolder/even children get older/ I’m getting older, too.” These words sum up my feelings towards the holidays. Although times have changed, my beautiful holiday memories are still with me, and I look forward to making new ones in the future.
Happy holidays,
- David