The other day I watched my daughter cut some shimmery red velour and sew it into a beautiful Christmas dress for my youngest granddaughter, who wore the dress the next morning in her preschool Christmas program. From fabric to dress in just a few hours! I may have had that kind of energy in my younger years when I annually sewed matching holiday outfits for my kids, but these days I'm happy to watch the young people get creative.
This time of year my husband likes to wear the holiday ties I made him from the same fabrics I used for our children's festive clothes. Ties get less wear than children's clothes and he's never going to grow out of them, so they'll be around a while longer. My daughter, on the other hand, used leftover fabric from her daughter's dress to make new Christmas stockings for my husband and me, since ours are so flimsy that they can't even be hung up any more. As much as I value holiday traditions, I won't be sorry to see those old chintzy stockings go and replace them with stockings decorated with a chickadee and a chili pepper.
On my Christmas tree I can see some of my late mother's delicate porcelain ornaments hanging near twirly plastic ones my daughter produced with a 3-D printer, a lovely juxtaposition of old and new. Today we're looking back on the day 39 years ago when my husband and I tied the knot and drove off into the sunset in that 1970 Dodge Dart, while we also look forward to the day two weeks from now when we'll move out of the Jackson house and reunite under one roof back at Hogue Wild.
Old and new, past and future come together at the holidays. We might not have known where the journey would take us when we hopped into that Dart 39 years ago today, but we gained something new at every turn in the road, and it's delightful to see the next generation continuing some of our traditions while always bringing new things into our lives. Here's to the next turn in the road!
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