Christmas<\/p>\n
We had a blizzard (extreme wind and heavy snow) in the week before Christmas.\u00a0 But by the weekend, the sky was sunny and the roads were clear.\u00a0 Our son drove up from Atlanta, stopping to pick up a friend along the way.\u00a0 We celebrated Christmas with joy, with feasting, with gifts and games and activities and music, but our main celebration was in worship of Jesus, the Christ, our Lord and God.\u00a0 We not only commemorate his birth, but we recognize him as God incarnate (made man). Our first activity on Christmas morning was going to church.\u00a0 There we sang hymns and heard the Scripture with good friends. The bond we share in our family and friendship circle is the bond of divine love.<\/p>\n
Our house was full of people, music, and conversation. Our son brought his accordion and played it for us.\u00a0 This instrument has a keyboard and a bellows for air and a set of buttons to give chords. It is held on your lap as you play.\u00a0 You have to move it back and forth to get the air, while playing the keyboard with one hand and making the chords with the other.\u00a0 Do you know \u201cThe Chicken Dance\u201d?\u00a0 You don\u2019t need a lot of room for it.\u00a0 While I was in the kitchen I heard the music and came into the front room to do the Chicken Dance with my daughters and husband.\u00a0 When it came to the circle part we had only a few steps to circle, but we did it. The accordion is usually used for polka music, but when our son plays it, he can also make it sound like a pipe organ. Maybe it\u2019s the choice of music?\u00a0 He played some hymns in the minor keys and we sang along.<\/p>\n
The Christmas tree, an artificial one, stood in front of the window in the center of the front room.\u00a0 It was decorated with glass ornaments, some very old, some fairly new; handmade ornaments, some of which our sons and daughters made when they were children; Santa Claus \/ St. Nicholas figures; snow men figures, toys;\u00a0 a few commemorative ornaments of gold plate; stars\u00a0 of various material: Styrofoam decorated with glitter and pictures; beads; and plastic and wood; nativity scenes, mostly tiny, but one about 3 inches of ceramic; plastic icicles from the 1950\u2019s; Angel figures, and various other ornaments, each having a special history.\u00a0\u00a0 We used the oldest lights we have.\u00a0 When we were first married, oh so long ago, Grandma gave us her Christmas things, because she was no longer using them.\u00a0 We\u2019ve acquired lots more along the way, but it gives us pleasure to use the old things too.\u00a0\u00a0 After all, we remember those old times well.<\/p>\n
Our dinner Christmas Day was beef roasted with carrots, potatoes, and onions, green salad, \u201crotkohl<\/em>\u201d, \u00a0green beans, and bread and butter, and red wine.\u00a0 \u201cRotkohl<\/em>\u201d is purple (or red) cabbage, sliced and fried in a little oil.\u00a0 After it has cooked about 10 minutes, I add vinegar, sugar and salt.\u00a0 The vinegar turns the cabbage red.\u00a0 I suppose in China, this might be called sweet and sour cabbage, but I never saw it in China.\u00a0 That is, I saw red cabbage in the market, rarely, but I never saw it prepared this way in a restaurant.\u00a0 Our second daughter says it is her favorite food.\u00a0 For dessert we had a selection: chocolate mousse, pumpkin pie, peach pie, all could be topped with whipped cream. Our allergic grandchild had his own special desserts prepared by his mother.\u00a0 Our daughter and son-in-law grow grapes on a small arbor in their backyard, and make wine from these grapes, only a small amount each year.\u00a0 It is this sweet red wine that we enjoy at holiday time. Our table is an old farmhouse table, about 100 years old, passed from my aunt to my mother, to my sister, to me.\u00a0 It can be a small square or a long rectangle.\u00a0 In fact, our room is not big enough for it at its full length. On Christmas Day, the table had a white cloth, deep blue dishes, and red cloth napkins. When the wine was poured and the toasts raised, our hearts were warmed. How blessed we were on this special day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christmas We had a blizzard (extreme wind and heavy snow) in the week before Christmas.\u00a0 But by the weekend, the sky was sunny and the roads were clear.\u00a0 Our son drove up from Atlanta, stopping to pick up a friend along the way.\u00a0 We celebrated Christmas with joy, with feasting, with gifts and games and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}