Oh Holy Night

Anyone who has spent anytime with me knows I am a Halloween Scrooge (early costume trauma), a Thanksgiving Scrooge (cook bland white food all day, eat it till you're stuffed, then spend the rest of the day cleaning up the mess - can someone please tell me what is appealing about that) and an Easter Scrooge (crappy chocolate, crappy weather). But I love Christmas!! I am the anti-Scrooge. I love the decorations, I love the lights, I love the Christmas tree, I love the Christmas cookie baking tradition, I love the family time, and I especially love Christmas carols. As soon as Thanksgiving is over - and I mean the day after - the Christmas carols start ringing away in our house. That is until we moved to South Africa.

Warm sunny days just do not go with Christmas. I see the decorations at the mall, I hear the carols, I see the big Christmas trees, and just don't feel it. It does nothing for me - no stirring of Christmas spirit, no happy thought of pulling down the boxes of Christmas decorations, no desire to sing my all time favorite carol, Oh Holy Night (nothing better than actually falling to one's knees while belting it out at the top of your lungs.) Oh Holy Night just doesn't sound right when you sing it while wearing a tank top and short slip of a skirt.

But tonight we did go to the Pridwin Carol Service. And I must say I was pleased to feel twinges of my old Christmas spirit as we stood and sang Joy to the World, The First Noel, Oh Come all Y Faithful. (No "Oh Holy Night" which is probably just as well as I would have felt compelled to fall to my knees and people just don't know me well enough there to appreciate my particular love for this song). It was a rainy cool night requiring long pants and sweater and this no doubt tricked my Christmas spirit into peaking out.

So how do I choose to spend Christmas when the usual doesn't work? Last year we spent Christmas Eve and day at the Cheetah Game reserve with sister Quince. This year we will spend it with my mom, and two sisters at Lions Valley Game Reserve driving around in an open vehicle looking at animals which I still find miraculous - the rhino with its prehistoric head that is so huge you don't know how it holds it up; the gently elegant giraffe; and the industrious dung beetle which has soared into my top 5 favorites. No Christmas carols, not a decoration to be seen, no tree to trim. Feels just right.