My husband once bought me roses for Christmas. He learned that while at most any other celebration roses are great but that at Christmas we want poinsettias---that's the symbolic flower or "bract" since the showy part is called a bract. Merry Christmas!
Below find a camellia. It will bloom at Christmastime and it is the name of one of my grandchildren.
Symbolic images of Christmas are all around but sometimes just the words evoke as much feeling as the images. Why is it that so many enjoy learning how to say "Merry Christmas" in every language? We are social beings and we use words to communicate with others. It seems that our souls need the spirit of Christmas. We need to see the symbols of this spirit along with the words to communicate what we feel. So I am paying homage to the symbols and the "words" of Christmas!
"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." -- Norman Vincent Peale
“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!” Dr. Seuss
“Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making. ”
― Leigh Hunt
My attempt at making my own
hand-carved and painted Vintage Santa:
"A Christmas Day, to be perfect, should be clear and cold, with holly branches in berry, a blazing fire, a dinner with mince pies, and games and forfeits in the evening. You cannot have it in perfection ---Leigh Hunt
"Was there ever a wider and more loving conspiracy than that which keeps the venerable figure of Santa Claus from slipping away, with all the other old-time myths, into the forsaken wonderland of the past?"
-- Hamilton Wright Mabie, My Study Fire
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas, how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith, then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished." -- editorial in the New York Sun, December 1897, in response to an 8-year-old girl's inquiry letter
"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home." -- Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836
These poinsettias were from Bob's Garden Center in Egg Harbor Township. Met the owner in a visit in 2013----a beautiful woman with real Christmas Spirit.
Partial view of my own tree:
Angels we have on heard high
Sweetly singing ore the plains
And the mountains in reply
Echoing their joyous strains
Gloria in excelsis Deo
Gloria in excelsis Deo
At Bob's:
Christmas Words:
At the Love Park in Philadelphia:
Have you been naughty? Yes, I remember when a young
relative of mine actually got a lump of coal and
then a delayed single gift---must have been traumatic.
Vintage photo of me under the tree in the 60's:
Sharing my friend's blog here. You will find a photo below of the
delightful owner of Bob's Garden Center. The photo was taken by my friend Peggy Sooy.
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