Christmas

For as long as I can remember, Christmastime has been my favorite time of the year. It may be that Christmas was reliably a time of year when the house was (almost) always clean and always smelled like something delicious. My favorite memories are all indistinct ones centered around the Christmas season; snapshots of parties my mom threw, or our Christmas tree, the smell of those sweet potato rolls mom makes or the apple cinnamon candles, the sound of Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters crooning out "Merry Christmas to you" and almost chanting the sleighbells song, and the overwhelming feeling that at this time of year things would always be okay.

That wasn't always the case. But even our very few bad Christmas seasons can't outshine the many, many good ones. There's just something about having the tree decorated and the music playing from Thanksgiving until the first of January that warms me.

I don't remember when it started, but one of my favorite traditions is going to see the Christmas lights in the neighborhood. I love when people put so much effort into making the outside look pretty too, and I love seeing all of the creativity.

Although, one of my favorite sights is still the house that is dark on the outside but through the window you can see the tree and the warm lighting and people being happy on the inside of the house.

That is the biggest part of Christmas for me. Happy people. You can ask my husband, all of my 'I'd like to' things about Christmas include making other people happy.

One of the other huge things about Christmas is all the food. It's yummy and people expect you to eat a lot. And, as I'm sure we all know,

And Christmas food LOOKS and smells yummy as well as being yummy.

Plus there's the cute foods

and the food as gifts, that's another favorite part of mine.

I also absolutely love the decorating.

I love christmas dinner parties, whether it's on fancy plates or paper plates

And I love Christmas candles

Anyway, I absolutely love Christmas, and there will be more about it later.