With Thanksgiving past, I began to think about Christmas today. Usually our Thanksgiving takes the whole weekend with large family gatherings, and I almost never realize the first Sunday of Advent is on its way until it is already upon us.
I've frequently dragged my feet on decorating, enough so that our younger daughter began taking things into her own hands when she still lived at home. I don't think I've put up the tree since Mom died, but that first year after she died, the ceramic tree I brought home from her house stayed out the whole year.
It will come out again this year, but for now, my main goal was some kind of arrangement for advent candles. Ours will be votives this year, on a tray with some artificial greenery and some shiny strings of beads. I'm burning them tonight to use up the bits of old candles and will clean the glass for fresh candles to be ready on Sunday.
We enjoyed our first Christmas gift today, a virtual
John McCutcheon concert on
Mandolin. This is a platform that allows artists to still sell tickets and perform during a pandemic. We don't have our TV screen linked to our computer, and the better speakers are at the computer anyway, so we moved some comfortable chairs over to the computer desk to watch.
I did take a picture of the screen while he was singing, but I don't know that it's permissible to post that. We do post stage shots from Winfield concerts, but this seems different somehow. At any rate, it was a sweet and quiet evening listening to many songs we'd heard before, and also some new ones. Christmas in the Trenches, and Calling All the Children Home, and of course, How Can I Keep From Singing, all still are achingly beautiful favorites. It is such a bittersweet thing to hear these alone at home instead of in a crowd, in the dark, singing along and wiping our eyes.
Another sweet thing today was a zoom time to celebrate the birth of another child in the Regier family. There have been three this year during this time of separation. It was good to see faces and hear voices and laughter again.
Tomorrow evening is small group. We trade leadership responsibilities and our leader for tomorrow has sent us a preparation list giving rise to the anticipation of a very special Thanksgiving celebration, so I'll likely not be writing a post tomorrow. Stay safe, and enjoy your weekend.
Comments