CHRISTMAS THROUGH MY EYES By Lori A Alicea

Christmas through my eyes is a holiday stroll thru an old vintage Christmas card that tells its story through the sweet faces of children when the scenery of a simpler home encouraged peacefulness and allowed you to catch your breath during its festivity celebrations because the pace of the clock in its time slowed you down.

The Victorian Christmas tree lit with candles and ornaments sparsely decorating the freshly cut spruce, yet a seasonal announcement of joy and loveliness as the children in awe of it.

Brothers and sisters skate on the afternoon ice, with little girls keeping their delicate hands toasty warm inside a soft muff of velvet fur.

The winter’s gentle wind kiss a child’s face during their joyful sled ride down a hill dusted from an early morning snow.

Bonnets and bows and swirls of curls adorn all those angelic cherubs of Christmas.

 

With children fast asleep in their dreams, imagining the gifts that Christmas morning will bring them.

While a vintage Christmas card is only a dream portraying Christmas back in time, I love the innocence and calm of a simpler life where the hustle and bustle of our holiday hadn’t found its way to theirs.  That small tokens of a parent’s affection ignited a child’s delight on Christmas morning the way I believe it was supposed to.  Maybe I’m the child dreaming, but a simpler Christmas feels like the gift we’re all meant to open.

Continuing that Christmas stroll through a timeless vintage card, I find my gifts beneath the tree in my grandchildren wearing their old fashioned pajamas.

Three of them still in diapers and all four dressed back in the day when horses pulled carriages and fireplaces heated your home, my vintage Christmas card through a grandmother’s eyes come to life.

Another grandchild living far away completes this vintage card of cousins enjoying an old fashioned Christmas.

Maybe I’m showing my age or that the music of my heart stills plays from an antique Victrola.  But Christmas through my eyes will always be that walk through a old vintage Christmas town where the slowed life of the season is framed around time with family and children.

 

As the years passed by and new grandchildren found their place in the Christmas card, the old fashioned pajamas the others outgrew were passed on to them as heirlooms.  New Christmas wear was ordered though for those whose vintage nightclothes didn’t fit anymore yet still wanted to match their siblings.

 

Victorian children or not, each child strays from their “picture perfectness” during Christmas.

As words to a holiday song we sing,
“You better watch out”.

“You better not pout”.

 Santa sees all the good little boys and girls.

YOU’D BETTER WATCH OUT.

As grandparents of that first vintage holiday card, we hold dearly the memory when our Christmas children were small.

The hands of our Christmas clock continues to move forward in the seconds, minutes and hours.  Yet how we wish Father Time could hold back the hours a bit longer when Papa’s Christmas babies still fit in his lap.

We delight though when we see the tree crowded again from the new gifts in our grandchildren of Christmas present.  Just when you believe your heart is full to capacity, God opens a new chamber for more love to beat from.

 

While an old vintage card might stir up Christmas in the little girl through my eyes, it’s the sacred love and magical wonder of Christmas that truly lights up a child’s eyes come Christmas morning.

Though the vintage pajamas our ten grandchildren once wore and pictured in our holiday cards are now packed away in the drawers of Christmas past.  I continue to keep the old fashioned spirit of Christmas alive during the holiday season, aspiring to the calm and innocence of a simpler Christmas as family portrayed on a Victorian Christmas card.