Have a very Berry Christmas!

Well, it's Christmas Eve. Hopefully, all your presents are bought and wrapped, your cookies are baked and decorated, your halls are fully decked and you are set to enjoy the magic of Christmas.
If not, well... I wish you the very best. :)
I know for me, Christmas Eve means watching 'A Christmas Story' at least 3 or 4 times and enjoying tasty cookies and snacks. Growing up though, this day meant something very different. As a kid, my siblings and I would spend the day planning out our Christmas morning adventure. Usually this included trying to find all the booby traps my father set in his attempts to catch us in the act of extra early morning spying. Over the years, my old man had gotten pretty clever. Once he lifted the carpet on the stairs and installed an alarm button, that when we stepped on it, triggered a warning in their bedroom. Another year, he hid a microphone in the tree so he could hear us whispering when we snuck out to it. Needless to say, no matter how well we planned, we always got busted. But it was fun to draw our maps & plan our attack anyway. And it killed time until we went to our family Christmas party. This was always a good time. Lots of delicious food, hanging with the family that we only saw a few times a year and singing carols around the piano. The night always ended with reading "The Night Before Christmas" and on the drive home, my dad would say we needed to hurry and get to bed before Santa came or he would have to skip our house. To prove his point and speed up the program, he would point at the red light on one of the towers and say "Uh oh, that's Rudolph right there, we'd better hurry." Of course, we didn't know that it wasn't really Rudolph and Santa, so we got to bed lickety split. But it was a short term fix. Within an hour, we were all piled into one of our bedrooms, maps in hand, ready to outwit our dad. Thus insued a night long mission to catch Santa in the act and of course get the first glimpse of our gifts. These are the memories I treasure the most. Looking back, I realize the magic wasn't the actual gifts (although, don't get me wrong, getting the Strawberry Cafe was quite exciting) it was more the traditions and spending time together that has stayed with me all these years. But times have changed, and so have my traditions. I still miss the old ones, but I treasure the new ones I've made with my own family and look forward still to new ones in the future. Christmas may change as we grow older, but the magic doesn't have to. We can still enjoy time spent with loved ones and even sing a carol or two, even if it's just while you're alone in the car. The point is, Christmas is what you make of it, so make it magical.
Hug your loved ones, play with the kids, donate to charity, sing carols at the top of your lungs and rock that fabulous holiday sweater. It only comes once a year, so make it count.
I hope you all have a blessed and beautiful, very Berry Christmas. XOXO