Our Christmas wish for you: Stay positive, but test negative

Christmas is here – too soon for some and not soon enough for others!

The special food delights of the season are ready and waiting as colored lights, Santas and reindeer and for many, a display of special cards greet us although it seems we get more letters than Christmas cards these days — a delight for a writer! Ours go into a notebook to be shared with the family.

Recent frustrations in my little world were the inability to get my own Christmas letter completed, printed (and emailed!) and filed away. Computer problems, losing photos, forgetting things I wished to include, then running out of printer ink!

With everything now in place, it’s on the final run! Times like this are when I appreciate not needing to go out so much!

I understand everyone doesn’t celebrate Christmas and even those who do have their own ways of decorating, cooking, etc. but for most of the people I know, it’s a joyful season when we send out and receive notes and cards, even if we can’t gather together as much as we’d like.

Our daughter plans our holiday menu, which includes each bringing their standard favorite, but this year, our home will host only her and her family, including one of our great-grandsons born in California that we’ve only see pictures of to date.

I especially appreciate email and Facebook so we can watch from a distance to see these little ones growing. None live very close, some are in Virginia and even Spokane and Bellingham, so it’s not regular visits as we had with most of the grandkids when they were small.

However, two were in Italy, and we had to go there to visit them a few times!

Our long traveling days are over, but we have marvelous memories, and photos and journals of the various trips we’ve taken.

We had another celebration this week – 62 years of wedded bliss! The angel that tops our Christmas tree was one of the decorations from our wedding, but she wears her age well!

Our trees have tended to be a bit smaller each year, as we don’t have the children to help with decorating. Currently we’re into table-top trees.

Recently when I stepped outside, I heard a loud gabble of geese. Looking down to a near neighbor’s dock and there was a huge number of both geese and ducks. Hubby said he counted about 30 but as some move, it’s never a for-certain number.We’ve never seen that large a number altogether before, or the ducks and geese together like that.

As the year comes to an end, there are mixed feelings of relief, hope, fear, anxiety and perhaps many others.

We’ve had some real negatives and some real positives this year with Covid shut-downs, unemployment, business losses, and now news of the successful vaccines. But how long before schools are back to normal and businesses can be re-opened or started up again? Most of us aren’t making predictions, just “going with the flow” and hoping for the best. Much of what has happened has had little effect on many — maybe most — of us, just some reduction of activities and the addition of masks.

We can wish and hope for many more cheerful and positive things in the coming year, but also need to remember that our own attitudes about what happens influence our feelings and actions.

A friend recently sent his Christmas letter and ended with some good words to remember for where we are now – “Stay positive, but test negative!”