The Christmas Season is a time of nostalgia, family traditions, and so many warm memories of the seasons passed, and each year we hope to achieve making the present Christmas season just as memorable.
Thinking back now, it’s not the presents received that are remembered, those were pretty much forgotten once the wrappings came off. What is remembered though was the nostalgia of the Christmas Season. The sights, the smells, the gatherings, the foods, and the shopping.
As a kid I never gave them much thought, but now as an adult, I realize just how much impact the sights, smells, foods and shopping have made. For those of us that are over 50, the Christmas season was much different then than it is for those younger or the kids of today. We didn’t shop at malls or Walmart, they didn’t exist.
Small town streets were decorated, store front displays lighting up a sparkle in everyone’s eyes. Shopping consisted of going store to store, from every Five & Dime, every department store, their old wood floors creaking under all the customers footsteps. Going in and out of the cold December weather, bundled up, trekking through snow covered sidewalks, toes, fingers, and nose tingling from the chilly weather, and parents wishing a Merry Christmas to every friend or neighbor they met or stopped to talk with, never worrying that saying such would offend anyone. The Salvation Army recruits, dressed in their black suits and capes, rang their bells on every street corner and a huge decorated and lit Christmas tree near the steps of the Courthouse. Even going home afterward is a memory…thinking the car would never warm up!
And home…the most memorable of the Christmas season, filled with the scents of holiday cooking and baking. The mixture of cinnamon, vanilla, anise, peppermint, chocolate, apples, raisins, and pumpkin from making homemade cookies filled the house. It’s those smells and scents that trigger so many memories of a toasty warm kitchen on cold and crispy December baking days. Even the fresh cut Christmas tree loaned its seasonal scent throughout the house and created memories all it’s own.
The memories of the Christmas season isn’t about the gifts or the presents, as those fad as fast as the wrapping is removed. Nostalgic memories last forever, and from a time and place in our lives that can never be replicated in our lives or those younger, today.
Pour a cup of coffee or make a cup of tea, find yourself a cozy spot, watch it snow, think back to your childhood Christmas seasons and warm up to all of those wonderful nostalgic memories.
Seniam Nevets
Send an email and share of some of your nostalgic Christmas memories to seniamnevets@gmail.com for an upcoming Seniam Report post. I’d love to share them.
Thank you.
The Seniam Report 
I am sure that Christmas-time today is much more commercialized than it was for those of us who are over 50. Newer traditions–or so-called progress–has set in and made the old ways “old fashioned” by comparison… Even though, the old ways were only a mere 20 to 30 years ago. Today’s generation seems not as sentimental as previous generations. The new generations are too busy making their own traditions to appreciate the old. There is hope that perhaps the old and new will mingle; while the 1st past generation is still living and are celebrating the holidays with their “new generation” children. I have hope that the old ways will continue. Because to me, the old ways meant family; and. being together with family at Christmas-time “should” mean more than all of the presents that money can buy. Memories are made with family togetherness. “Hope springs eternal” that family togetherness will stay “in style” for a long; long time to come. Happy Holidays, everyone.
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I agree with you and hope new generations will appreciate and continue family traditions too.
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