Holiday Happiness Starts Now

I love the holidays with all my heart. I wait all year, anticipatory as a child, to be able to play Christmas carols without apologies. Truth is, from November through New Year's, my life takes on an incandescence undreamed of in the rest of my work-a-day year. Music, decorations, lights, tinsel, a lifetime's worth of carefully-wrapped treasures -- all find their way out of attic or basement and into a house made magical by the memory of Christmas Past. Right after Thanksgiving, we chop down a tree at the local farm, then pray for snow and enough nippy New England nights to keep it going through New Years. And invariably the moment the tree is trimmed and I'm alone with it, teacup poised, the rich aroma of winter cinnamon and nutmeg making my head swim with memories, I have a vision of my mother and father, as they were when I was small. Young and shiny, full of life and laughter, as when on long ago Christmas mornings they'd stand, sleepy-eyed and open-hearted, watching me exult in the presents they'd saved to buy, then attributed to Santa's benevolence. Is it the tree that has the power to reach across the years to draw these ghosts of Christmas past, I wonder, or is love a cosmic Time Machine that transcends all boundaries? All I know for sure, is that somehow the seeds of joy my parents planted long ago, sprout anew each November and carry me all the way through January. In good years and in bad -- and I, like you, have had both -- the remembered love has sustain...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news