Holding Hands and Beholding Lights!

About nineteen years ago I accepted a Saturday night date with a boy I had taken a shine to about three months earlier. I chased him until he caught me...hee hee...not really, but it is funny to say! We really chased each other...it was a mutual thang!

Our first date was dinner and then a trip to a town about forty miles north of us where each holiday season a Christmas light extravaganza took place. A piece of property not far off the highway was completely made over in lighted homemade Christmas scenes, the air was filled with taped Christmas music blaring from speakers set high in trees and there was hot chocolate and marshmallows for roasting. We went there with a group of mutual church friends, but by the time we left, we were a couple. He held my hand as we walked through the gate and nineteen years later, it is still fun to walk around, looking at Christmas lights and hold his hand.

We continued this tradition of going to this particular place for a few years even after we were married and then sadly it closed due to a failing economy and some ne'er do wells who vandalized the place time and time again. My hubby and I were quite sad. We had always pictured bringing our children to the place and telling them each year how "this is where it all started." Torturing them with a yearly trek back in time to our younger days.

When our sweet Hannah was about one, the Christmas Light fairy smiled again upon our family and a similar piece of property opened up about half a mile from our home. We went the first year and the second and the third and now tonight...the fourth. Santa is there, there is a hayride through a forest filled with lighted Christmas scenes. There is hot chocolate and marshmallows for roasting, Candyland for the children to play and a Christmas Tree Maze that boggles the mind. It is a new family Christmas tradition, with roots deep in our old tradition.

Tonight as we rode along, the cold wind in our face, the shouts of an excited little girl sitting between us, my husband and I reached out at the same time and grabbed each other's hand. We had the same memory, at the same time of a long ago December night, when the cold wind forced two young people to huddle close and hold hands for the first time. No matter how tough life can get, no matter how hard marriage is, there is indeed something to be said for being able to reach out and hold the hand of someone who holds all the same memories!

Here is the child of that couple who walked hand in hand so long ago...talking to the man who is gonna hop down the chimney in a few days and make all her wishes come true...And here is that same child who will one day meet her own Prince Charming with a hand to hold, ride away and break her daddy's heart!!
But until that day comes, I am confident that we will continue to take her to this place (or one similar!) and torture her with our story...year after year!

Living Happily in the Holiday Moments!
Beverly