TheBanyanTree: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!

[Margaret R. Kramer]

A day before the winter solstice and It’s a warm morning.  I tried to walk
among the deer while they were raiding my birdfeeders, but they knew
something was up when I turned on the yard light.  The took off like
lightning when CoCo and I came outside.


Many years ago, I delivered newspapers.  I built up my muscles lugging the
Sunday papers around that were stuffed with Christmas ads.  We’re on the
verge of Christmas, because when I retrieved our newspapers this morning,
they were light.   Very few ads.


Last night, downtown Minneapolis was twinkling like a Christmas tree.  There
was the Vikings game (yes, the Vikings actually beat Kansas City – amazing),
the Timberwolves game (they beat Indiana),  and the next to last Holidazzle
parade of the season, and numerous concerts and shows.  The holiday energy
was high voltage and we absorbed it and glowed from it.


We crowded into Orchestra Hall’s lobby and listened to the bell ringers.  We
stuffed our coats into a locker and then went into the hall.  It was the
annual Jingle Bell Doc concert with Doc Severinson (of Johnny Carson Tonight
Show fame).  He has everything in this concert; the Minnesota Orchestra, a
choir, a children’s choir, a big band, bell ringers, and a soprano.  Plus,
he plays his trumpet.  And somehow it all works.  He mixes the old favorite
Christmas music with more unfamiliar music and gets the place jumping.  By
the time we stand for Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, we’re bursting with
Christmas spirit.


We bought Christmas flowers for my parents, my grandmother, and now my uncle
who all share a cemetery plot.  We trudged through the icy snow to their
graves.  Fortunately, we brought a shovel and were able to clear away the
snow from their flat stones.  I was able to pull out my parents’ vase, but
my grandma’s vase was frozen solid inside the gravestone.  So we put all the
flowers into my parents’ vase and hung gold garland in their tree.  The sun
was out and it was warm, but the south wind was blowing through our jackets,
so we didn’t visit with them very long.  Just long enough to say, “Merry
Christmas.”

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!
http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the
idle seashore of the mind.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow