Christmas Spirit

This is a photo from Christmas 2006..... It is one of my faves and since we have not taken our pics for Christmas 2007 yet, I wanted to start today's entry with that photo. If it does not get you into the Christmas spirit, you need to check your "Ebenezer temperature"....

I love Christmas. Plain and simple.
I love the feeling it creates inside of me as I remember every Christmas from the last 37 years...well actually, I remember every Christmas starting with 1974 (I will explain that one in a minute....) I have friends who did not have the greatest Christmas memories growing up, but I can honestly say that from 1974 to 2006, there is not a single holiday without incredible memories.... right down to the Christmas of 2000 when my mom and dad and Jess and I crowded together in my 600 square foot efficiency apartment to have our Christmas together. It was that year that I realized it is not WHERE or HOW you spend Christmas, but rather WITH WHOM you spend Christmas. All my life since 1974 there is not a year that I did not share my Christmas with my mom and dad...you see that is the first Christmas we had after Mike Rogers adopted me. For many years those Christmases were either spent with Meme and Papa Rogers in Vernon Texas or with Mo and Pa Fontenot in SE Texas....no matter where we lived throughout Texas, we always made the trip to make sure Christmas included family....a tradition that we have maintained for almost 40 years. Different people have entered (and exited) our lives along the years... but the consistent factor all along the way is one person...the one that I started out with 37 years ago...who has been the glue that has bound our family together, Christmas after Christmas...our mom.

The Christmas traditions I remember the most are around the tree....not the presents, really...but the tree. We always decorated it as a family (even the years that Mom chose her own version of a Charlie Brown Tree)... All those ornaments from our childhood came out each December.... and many of those, including the ones handmade by Meme Rogers, are hanging on Mom and Dad's tree today....And then, of course, once the tree was up and the presents started appearing underneath, J and I would beg nightly to "just open one!" Christmas eve was always the same... chips and queso, sausage balls and other snacky type foods... not sure why we started that but I can assure you that we will have all those same things again this year...30 something years later.

The GREATEST tradition that our family does is how we open gifts. Jess and Michael pass them all out and then we open them..........ONE AT A TIME. Yes, it often takes a few hours, but we will never change. It starts with Campbell (the youngest), opening her first gift..then moves to Michael... until it ends with Dad (yes, he is the oldest). And then we start again. Of course the adults run out of gifts first but we don't care. We sit and watch each person's face, each person's eyes and each person's smile as he/she opens each gift that we have picked out for him/her ON PURPOSE. It is a tradition we will never lose.

This year our Christmas will be on December 27th as Jess is at her dad's this year on the 24th, but in our family, the "date" does not matter...the SPIRIT is what we rely on.....and I cannot wait.....

And just to give you a preview of who all will be there and how much FUN we will have, check out these three links below... again, if this does not exponentially increse your Christmas spirit, then change your name to Ebenezer!!
Take a look and ENJOY! (Just copy and paste each URL into your browser)
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1423902129

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1423781408

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1423685385