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Blogs by J P Lane
When Christmas Past and Present Become One 1/4/2012 12:51:15 PM
It's hard to believe a year has passed since I wrote my post about the Twelve Days of Christmas. I'm as die-hard a traditionalist as I was then, so my Christmas tree will remain up until January 6th, which marks the Feast of the Epiphany also known as Twelfth Day and Three Kings Day. As it stands stalwartly awaiting the official end of the Christmas season, my tree is missing a few ornaments that were removed by my two-year-old grandson without any protest or rebuke from me. As my son observed my calm with great surprise, he remarked, "I think what they say about grandparents must be true. Had that been me...well, it wouldn't have been me because you wouldn't have allowed it." I smiled not choosing at that moment to share the secret of my new found holiday serenity. When my son was two, the shatter-proof clones of shiny glass ornaments hanging on my tree did not exist. Thus, in those days, a mother's protectiveness toward her Christmas tree far outweighed her understanding of her child's desire to pick the forbidden fruits and, with not a small amount of pleasure, watch them shatter into smithereens on the floor. As I watched my grandson remove icicles that had hung from my parents' tree when I was little older than him, the joy and excitement of it all floated back to me from a Christmas past when I too once reached out to pluck a shiny glass ball from a pine branch.
