Everything changes in my house during the Christmas Season.? There are usually all kinds of books on and under and around the big coffee table.? It’s glass topped with metal scroll work underneath, so I keep what I’m reading and working with on the metal ‘shelf’.
Right now, it’s got books about healing, politics, spirituality, nature, etc, etc, etc.? By the end of the way, it will be all Christmas, all the time (will blog after I’m done).? I have a growing collection of wonderful holiday books, and just bought more during two trips to Joseph-Beth this past week.
I read nothing but Christmas during the season – started doing that about 10 years ago.? Not sure why – it just felt right.? Just like it feels right to come back to the regular world sometime in early January.
What I bought last week, and read last night, was a Madeleine L’Engle (one of my favorite writers (her Wrinkle in Time series is an all-time choice of mine.? I’d probably take them to a desert island.).? In the kid section of J-Beth, I saw her “The Twenty-four Days before Christmas – An Austin Family Story (have never heard of that series).
It is a charming little book, lots of sibling rivalry and reality, with the middle child angsty about playing an angel, and the Mom about to have her 4th child.? Woven in is the one different thing the family does every day from the 1st through the 24th.? I liked that concept – just one thing, not a million, plus a trip to the mall.? Written in 1984, it seems miles away from us – no cell phones, computers, television not mentioned.? A restful time.
It’ll soon take its place on the Christmas coffee table.