Confession: I am a complete sucker for christmas music. i know most people of a certain age as we are hate christmas music...or at least claim to hate it. I know most of my old roommates have hated it. But I can't help it. I adore it.

I love the nostalgia of it. I love the memories that I have with it. I love the cheesy warmth, and good feelings it is intended to produce. After listening to it through the entire chrismtas season, I am ready to put it away for the year, but when November comes back around, I have to mentally decide that I will wait. Wait to begin this season when it is REALLY so supposed to be begun. Wait till Advent, or at least Thanksgiving. Nearly every day, my heart yearns to reach into the cabinet and pull out Danny Kaye singing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth", or those Andrew Sisters singing about "Sweet Angie, the christmas tree angel".(i promise I am not 80 years old)...and of course who would blame me for enjoying a little Harry Connick Jr.'s "what are you doing New year's Eve?"

Well, I love christmas. I love the christmas movies. I love the decorations. I love making christmas cookies, and christmas desserts. I love thinking about what I can give to people as presents. I love family and friends getting together. I love it when the weather changes and it gets cold. I love big coats, and leather gloves, and capes like little red riding hood, and those russian womens hats (can't remember the name) and turtlenecks, and boots.

I love having two weeks off work and going to st. louis to see my aunt and uncle (I think they are really Santa Claus and Ms. Claus, --the king and queen of christmas) I love it all. I love that Germany is the winterwonderland of christmas with their christmas markets, and nurnberger christkind, and lebkuchen cookies. I love how the little children march with their school made laterns up to the nativity scene at the top of the mountain in nurnberg in the dark....

There is a sense of wonder, and a sense of hope and belief that maybe, just maybe some sort of goodness still exists in this world. You might go on about commericialism, and bah-humbugs, but...i won't believe it. Look for that sense of good-will this season, this year, and maybe you will see something new and different. Look for the joy, and maybe you will find it.

Well, ...i still have two weeks before I will be socially acceptable with talk like this. That's okay though. Here in the quiet, where nobody is listening, I will expose it. Yes.....I shout it from the solitary mountains. Soon and very soon, we are going to see the king! Go, tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is here!

--perhaps my mood this morning is intensified by the peppermint coffee, and german holiday christmas cookies. Probably laced with crack christmas spirit--but you know. I will hide my addiction to christmas until the appropriate moment.
see ya later scrooges!