I hope that life will treat you well in 2025.

Actually, I hope that life will treat you well always.

As I sometimes like to do, I spent a moment or two last night over thinking the marking of the new year and how it all seems pretty insignificant to me. Now I'm not trying to be a radical about that 😂 ...just that, it is just one day and then the next and there is no difference from one to the other and it is just a way humans mark time. Yes I know it covers a time of rotation and cycles and seasons and.... why not?... but still, for everything else, animals, plants, things and existence, it's not a "thing".

Truly.... the thought wasn't meant to be negative or a "bummer".... just that, there is nothing really to it but to humans marking time....or that is what it seemed like to me when I turned it round and round and upside down.

My Christmas was ok. No bad stuff, but old family traditions that always excited me about it don't really exist so much anymore, so, although I went through the motions of all that was available, I just couldn't quite get super excited about it and if you only knew how wild I've been about all things Christmas in my life and all the fun family things that previously went with it, you would know that saying I wasn't very excited would previously have been crazy talk for me. Yes, you would have KNOWN I was losing my mind. BUT... my family is getting older and as life requires, many things have to finally change.

I still pulled out lots of my fun Christmas decor. I've always found that no matter what mood I was in before Christmas, if I still decorated, it always brought me up.

When I was a child and before all the artificial trees, my parents had cedar trees for our Christmas tree. We used the large stringed lights as that was before the "mini" lights came out, Mom would loop garland, silver most times as we kept all the decor to use the next year. Then we would add the ornaments and icicles. Our trees always had icicles. I randomly happened across a FB short where some folks put up a HUGE, beautiful artificial tree, put strings of the large white lights and then icicles...a massive amount of icicles and that was all that was on it. No garland swagged around, no ornaments of any kind and it looked amazingly stunning ! It made me long for icicles as I had not used any for many years. They are quite a pain to take off of artificial trees, but if you don't do that each year, they will tangle in the fake needles and look terrible. For that simple reason, I hadn't included them.

Still, I longed for a hint of it. I decided to cut a tiny tree that was growing too close to my back porch and would be taken out in the spring by the landlords if still there. I put the tiniest string of white lights, which for some reason I already had here. I then covered it with icicles..... which I also had here as I had bought a few boxes some years back on an after Christmas sale, thinking maybe I would use them on day. This year turned out to include that day. Amazingly, it worked, even being small, the real greenery with the sparkling silver icicles did indeed touch some deep memories. The trees our family had back then always had multi colored lights, but I didn't have a short enough string of those to use. (This time, the tree was so tiny, the outer parts of the limbs were too delicate to hold up the lights. That is why they are in the center instead) I sat it on my Great Aunt's vintage dresser and it made me want to smile every time I saw it.

Funny how it only takes a hint of a thing to carry you back. I do believe I will do this when Christmas comes again. I may even look for a shorter string of multicolored lights to try and who knows, maybe it gets a little bigger next year. Time will tell.

Alas too, all the fun, decorated Christmas Cookies are gone for another year. One more thing that delights the deep recesses of my brain. I've told before, but my Mom would bake the cookies and she and Dad would ice them and make sure each of us had the same amount to decorate. Then we children would get to put the decorations on. They were always SO amazing..... and they still are.

I usually leave my Christmas decor up and out way into the new year. I have already put away two things. LOL ! TWO ! ....but most of it will stay out a while longer. I don't have a date or rule on that, just till I get ready.

I never make resolutions and for now, I don't have any special plans to carry out in the coming year, but that doesn't mean I won't do something fun. Maybe I should claim it as "2025, the year of FUN" and then see what I can think up to make it THAT.

We'll see!

May 2025 be all that YOU need it to be.

Love you !

Jacey