A sure way to get in the spirit of Christmas

Don Estep is Publisher Emeritus of The News Journal.

Now I have the Christmas spirit! After walking through the beautifully decorated rooms at Seasons Restaurant in Corbin you automatically get the spirit.

I don’t usually use the word awesome, but the rooms adjacent to the restaurant area are truly awesome.

Shea and Jason are gifted artists. They have some of the most awesome Christmas trees you’ll ever see. Also the furniture, Santas and all the other items, all are a must see. Treat yourself to tour the gallery of decorations and while you are there enjoy their delicious food.

I told my wife that I wanted to live there during the Christmas season. It definitely is a showplace.

This is a lead in to a request from a friend who wanted me to write about Christmas when I was young.

For one thing we didn’t put up our Christmas tree until we got out of school for the Christmas break which was just a few days before Christmas.. It was always a Cedar tree that we purchased from a area lot.

My sisters and I did the decorating. That usually turned into quarreling and fussing with each other because they didn’t like how I decorated. I would just throw wads of ice cycles on the tree rather than place them properly, among other things.

It is a wonder that we didn’t catch the house on fire because those big lights would get very hot. That, plus how dry the tree would get could cause a fire. I did make sure to water it every day.
Part of the joy of Christmas came from looking at the toys and candies pictured in the Mongomery Ward catalogue. We wore the pages out dreaming about getting items pictured on those pages.I could just taste the candy that was pictured.

As opposed to the many gifts boys and girls get today ours was limited to a few.

One Christmas I remember best was when I was six years old. I saw a big red scooter in the catalogue and I was hoping Santa would bring it to me. I talked and talked about that scooter, even wrote a letter to Santa.

I could hardly go to sleep on Christmas eve for the thoughts of seeing it under the tree Christmas morning. I was kinda like Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB gun in the 1940s movie classic, A Christmas Story. The scooter would be the perfect Christmas gift.

And there it was the next morning a red scooter. Oh no! The one Santa brought was much smaller and not as fancy as the one in the catalogue. My heart sunk but I didn’t let anybody know how disappointed I was and I never told my parents. I’m sure they thought what Santa left was exactly what I wanted.

At least Santa left me a scooter plus a toy or two and a stocking filled with an apple, an orange, some nuts and peppermint candy. It was the best of times and we enjoyed it very much.

The Christmas season was much shorter then than it is today. Now I like to start the decorating the day after Thanksgiving or the first warm day near Thanksgiving to put up the outside decorations.

It is a great time of the year and in 21 days it will all be over and the task of putting away the decorations will be here. So enjoy it now. Go to church, sing the Christmas songs, listen to them, attend the activities at school, enjoy parties, exchange gifts and most of all get the shopping done.

It will be over before you know it.