Holiday Cheer - LoH contest #59

'Twas the Night before Christmas,
and all through the house,
the people were quiet,
the cat ate the mouse!
Man, I was really pissed,
I only had that mouse for a half year!!!

So I told that cat, "go out and fetch me
A new docile mouse,
And do NOT eat this one,
Or you'll be looking
for a brand new house!!!"

The grand sounds of holiday cheer
The sounds on the roof just sleigh and deer,
Quick and quiet he goes down the chimney,
The coming morning it will soon be clear;

Image by maciej326 at Pixabay

So, I am tackling both of the questions posed by

Hive account@elizabethbit this week for the Ladies of Hive contest, because as one gets older, things change drastically in a good percentage of circumstances.

The holidays are all about tradition. Our most cherished family holiday tradition has been in the past when most of our family lived within walking distance, and would get together with all the kids and grandkids and the grandparents, nieces and nephews would all come down and with all of the excitement and anticipation from the children becomes readily apparent and they were always fun to watch.

After supper and after having been together all night on the evening of the 24th, and all the little ones bugging us to open up their presents, and we would always give in (you and I know we always did hahaha) to opening one or two presents; then with smiles and full bellies everyone went to bed to endure the long night in more anticipation of all of the excitement of the morning's activities.

The next morning everyone would get up and we would have our early wakeup medicine (our coffee hahaha) and the kids had already been up for awhile by then. And then came the time that all the kids were driving us crazy, wanting to open the presents, and we would make them wait and taunt them a little. I mean, you bought all of these things for the kids, but you have to stretch it out and tease a little bit hahahaha!

So, we would finally give in, and have the everyone sit around in the living room and usually I would be Santa, and pass out the presents and we did them one set at a time where everyone would be opening up a present at the same time. Cameras flashing and lots of beautiful smiles as the adults are always, "rip and tear!" We would have a trash bag handy to toss the paper into for recycling, and there was always that one young volunteer to make sure that the paper went to the right place!

But now, we've gotten much older and the kids have moved pretty far away, we don't see them much although we talk with them, but the whole special circumstances are pretty much gone, all of the holiday madness and the closeness, and we tend to feel a little bit of loneliness setting in; I have sat here and reflected on that several times in the last couple of months. No one really knows what one has until it's all gone away, which it does in most cases eventually.

Hopefully a lot of you out there do not have to deal with the loneliness factor to much extent, it is why they say that around these days at the end of the year that depression is more prevalent than any other time of the year. That is especially true for parents who are negotiating the "empty nest" syndrome, where all the kids have left the nest and no one is around.

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2️⃣ So many shiny ornaments (and maybe some not so shiny). Show us your most treasured holiday ornament and tell the story behind it.

This is my favorite "ornament", or decoration of all time. Decoration - yes, ornament? Hmmm.

So one day when my grandparents were cleaning out all of the Christmas decorations as we had pretty much stopped having the holidays up there, they lived on one of the steepest streets in San Francisco at the top of the street on a hill. There was not much room at their house, and we had started having Christmas at my parents house. Not quite sure when this happened, I was in my teens I think.

They gave all of their decorations and ornaments to my parents to bring home and sort out the things that were totally useable from the stuff that just had not stood the test of time very well, as it always happens, hahahaha, this pile stays, and this pile goes!

So at some point after I had gotten out of the USMC my mom asked me if I wanted to keep some of the Christmas decorations, and of course I said yes. We had acquired quite a few boxes in all of those things, and several were key decorations that always had to be up. This church was one of them.

Through a little research online I found out that it is a Raylite electric lighted music box, and I saw the key on the back about 1/2 hour ago, and wondered if it actually worked. And guess what? hahahaha, this thing does work, it plays "Silent Night", very stable and solid.

The only maintenance thing I have ever had to do to this is epoxy the cross back up on the top. My grandfather had taken the wire in the back that goes to the light and repaired it at some point, and is wrapped with electrical tape. It has always been like that as far back as I can remember.

So fast forward to today. There are two decorations that absolutely need to be up. One is this church, and the other is that decoration there to the right that my daughter made when she was in grade school. It is a manger for baby Jesus made out of heavy construction paper. They always get put up side by side.

This is my favorite part, it will take any of the small/medium colored light bulbs with the 3/8" base, and lights this up beautifully. This was my favorite thing about this little church, that it was not only stunning, but now I know the music box portion of it works too!

I did research this a little bit, and they did have pictures on Pinterest of some, and they also had a couple for sale on ebay, which is really cool. Someone can buy one of these awesome little pieces of antique history. This one has to be around 50 to 55 years old or around there, as near as I can figure.