I’ve always loved Christmas. I love the Christmas trees, the decorations, the look, and the distinct smell of a Christmas tree. I love the songs and the lights that seem to warm up even the coldest of days. As a child, I would sit in front of the Christmas tree that we would have in our living room, and every morning before I left for school I would turn on the lights and watch them flicker and take in as much of the smell as I could before being dragged away to have breakfast and be on the school bus by 8 am. My family would come from other ends of the country and gather around our tree, it was fun.

The holidays have always been interesting for me. I have spent more than one Christmas in the hospital and once I went home on an IV antibiotic over Christmas because the doctors in the ER didn’t want a young kid to spend Christmas in the hospital. They stuck the IV in my arm, showed my parents how to administer the dose and let me go home to where the Christmas tree should have been. My dad went out that day and got a tree, and it was being decorated the next night. I was there helping with the IV in one hand and decorating with the other, it was as if nothing changed. Christmas threw up in our living room like it does every year, the lights went up, the tree went up, presents were gathered under the tree, and Grandma brought cookies. Christmas still came.

I might’ve only been 8 years old at the time, but I realized right then that no matter what hell rains down, the lights will go up, the tree will be decorated, and there will be presents and there will be family.

Everyone stops for one moment at Christmas, the bad becomes a tad less important and the good takes places. We try to remember what’s important at Christmas and it will come again and again for centuries to come, and each time the good will out way the bad for one day.

Be grateful this Christmas, you never know what you have that others would die for. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!