A new time

So Christmas ended with the Three Wise Kings Feast Day. It's now time to not have anymore the Christmas Tree and other decorations. Some people rush to take them on the 7 of January, others take a little everyday. If you want, you  may take the Nativity too but even better is to leave it till Candlemass.

The best thing is to have pacience and take little by little and everyday a bit more so when the weekend arrives everything is done and ready to put in the attic, basement or whatever you have - this means that last weekend everything but the nativity should be taken away but never mind if you didn't finished it yet. Everyday a little and, when you realize it, things are done.

Even if I like Christmas so much it's good to see the house going back to the normal days. There is always a feeling of new beginning in each new year and with the Christmas gone till next December we feel it even more.

This year, or I must say even when last year was reaching his final days, something came to my mind and that was: to take care of myself. 

 

This new year I will take care of myself and be very good to me.

And then I feel so strong, so able of really take care of myself and, by extension, of my house, of my home.

Yes, a new kitchen was to happen last year but, God willing, it will be this year. And also some other improvements in the livingroom and in my bedroom.

It's a new year, let's have that strenght, that conscience that we must take care of us, of our things, our life and that we are able to do it.

As I said in a previous post, let's begin.

I'm not modern

 No, I'm not modern, I don't want to be.

It's not that I want to live in the past, it's just that I feel that the revolution of the 60' robeded us from so many good things.

The tendencies were not nice, in the mental field and in aestethics.

                         

Look at the clothes, for instance. Remember how people had nice clothes till the middle of the sixties.

Remember the 30's, the 40's.

 And the 50's. And the begining of the 60's.

From there things went down.

I know we had some things nice in the end of the 80' and on the 90', some very nice, but in the whole, we lost so much.

The mentality. From being a good thing for women to stay at home, people, most of them, began thinking that it would be best towork outside.

I'm not saying that is wrong to do it, I always did, it's just that I don't think that staying at home women are less interesting than the ones who work, most time is quite the opposite.

The morals. With the passing decades things got lost, even if there is still a remnant who follow God sent rules.

I long for a return to the good times and I do believe that it will happen.

But for now, I prefer to do what I can and I try to live in the old ways. I don't mean renouncing to techologic advances, that is a thing that I like. Why not? But I am old fashioned and I like so much to be that way.

A new year - Let's begin

A New Year

Thanks be to God

So we had a wonderful Christmas, thanks God. Everything was so good: the preparations, the Christmas Eve dinner, the First Day of Christmas...I can only thank God endlessly.

Then it came the New Year, also so good. Those moments when the year ends and a new one begins were so peacefuly, so happy.

How can I thank God for so much good He gives to me ?!

I like Christmas but I also like so much the beginning of a New Year.

The Liturgical Year began in December with Advent but the common year begins now.

As my birthday is in October and for me is also a year that begins, I begin making a lot of plans. From October to the end of December it works as a kind of prelude to the new year. Then in January I feel I'm going in full steam. And it feels good.

I have this sentence in my mind since the year began, even in the end of December: Be Better.

It's not about to be perfect, perfectionism is a very bad thing, it's just about to be better and that feels good and gives me so much hope.

Be better as a homemaker, as a woman. I have a long list of "to be beter" in my mind and I feel I can do it, it's not above reach.

I want to be very good to  me, to be my best friend. Many times we forget ourselves but now I will be more careful and do what I can, everyday, to be feel calmer and happy. For instance, I will not go everyday running to do so many things in a time frame when I should only do half of it. This way I don't need to run so much. 

I will give a lot of importance to me and my house. It's ot that I don't do it now but I want to do it in a calm way, slowing down.

And I will try hard to take more care of me again. Mothers and daughters of older parents sometimes forget about themselves. I must remember that I am important too.

I want to work a lot on my sewing machine, I want to be more organised, I want to do a lot of work in my home... I do have a lot of plans.

And I want to work more on my blog.

So, Happy New Year to all !

And...

Let's begin !

A New Year - 2025

Usually I post more on Christmas time and this year that just finished I wanted to do the same and planned several posts, took pictures for that and all but being busy with all the things I needed to do, like buying presents, wrapping them, buying food, ingredients and making good things for everybody to eat, then the days of Christmas, the Eve's dinner and lunch on the Day, I ended not posting at all. Oh, well, never mind, it was a Holy Christmas, the Holy Night and the Day, everything was so good that I can only give thanks again and again for everything Our Lord and His Mother gave us. 

Now it's a New Year. Let's give thanks again for all the peace and graces we received and ask that we may have a blessed year and that we will do as St. Paul said: 

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory og God. 

Thanks be to God.

Christmas at my home - how we do it

This is how usually we do Christmas Day at my home and I hope to do the same way this year.

After a all day cooking Christmas Eve and a happy and a blessed dinner we go to bed quite late. In many houses there are the tradition to go to Midnight Mass but it was never a custom in my house, not even when we were children.

Now I'll tell you how it is Christmas morning in my home.

When is still night and everybody is sleeping - and if they are not they pretend to be - I carry a lot of bags full of presents downstairs and fill the sofas with presents. Each person has his sofa and on it they will find their presents.

Now that I haven't little children anymore, the number of presents diminished a lot but even so all the room is filled with happy colours from the wrapping papers and the bows. It's such a joy to see all that !

Then I go up again and fill the stockings already hanged on the door knobs of their rooms and I do something that is a tradition in my corner of the world, at least for some: I put a present on a pair of shoes that each of them leaves at their bedroom door. When we were children we used to believe that Jesus left the present there and in a way He did it, because it was Him who helped my family to have money to buy so many presents.

Once my eldest daughter, who were begining to grow and thinking on some things, asked me if it was really Jesus who gave the present. I explained to her that that present was not Jesus who gave directely but He gave me the possiblity to give her and most of all, Jesus indeed gives us things that we need, and that so many times in life we ask, as He directed us to do and He gives us: "Ask and it will be given to you".

After having all the presents in order, which was not difficult because they were all sorted in bags by name, it was only to put them on the sofas, etc, I will go from door to door saying Ho Ho Ho Ho, a sign that everybody can come downstairs, bringing the presents they found in the stocking and on the shoes. Then they go to the fireplace where they take the present Santa left and comment if Rudolph ate his biscuits and if Santa drunk his Port.

All this happens since they were all little children and it's a tradition that we still keep.

So in the livingroom, after unwrapping our presents amidst a lot of laughing and joy we ran to make us ready for Mass, usually with some new piece of clothes, this after picking up all the torn papers and bows which we will take to the reciclying bin on our way to Mass.

After Mass the children set the table and the lunch, which is half done, is finished and almost ready to go to the table.

While some are in the kitchen, others set the table, others put the apetizers ready for the guests - my extended family - who were almost arriving - now we don't do it anymore as my grandmother, mother and father are not among us anymore, so brother and sister do in their own homes for themselves. 

Then the work at the kitchen is almost done and after a drink and eating some little things, we all go to the table. Lunch goes all the afternoon and when it's time to have dinner nobody is ready for more food and what everybody want is to go to their own home and rest watching a little tv or something like that - I  mean, when they were alive and they and my simblings came to have lunch with us. 

Now it's only us what is not bad anyway, as times goes by and life changes but we must accept it and give thanks.

We will not have the gattering of all the family at my home but it's ok, Christmas is more than that. We have all our children, now grown up, around the table and that is so good.

At that time once again I thank God for such happy and blessed days.

May Our Lord grant us again this year a blessed, peaceful and happy Christmas to us and you all.

Advent

 

Yesterday, First of December, begun this year's Advent. It's a new Liturgical Year that begins and it's a praparation for Christmas.

We must remember that there is no Christmas without Christ.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

To every American I wish Happy Thanksgiving.

May everybody have a good lunch in good company and a lot of joy.

Good luck with the carving.

And now let's remember the First Thanksgiving in America.

"Blaring trumpets and thundering serenaded Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés as he waded ashore on September 8, 1565. The Spanish admiral kissed a cross held aloft by the fleet's captain, Father Francisco Lopez, then claimed Florida for both his God and his country. As curious members of the indigenous Timucua tribe looked on, the 800 newly arrived colonists gathered around a makeshift altar as Father Lopez performed a Catholic Mass of thanksgiving for their safe arrival in the newly christened settlement of St. Augustine. At the invitation of Menéndez, the Timucuans then joined the newcomers in a comunal meal.

Some Florida historians have argued that this feast - and not the one held 56 years later by th ePilgrims and the Wampanoags in Plymouth, Massachusetts - was actualy North America?s First Thankgiving. It was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanet settlement in the land", wrote University of Florida Professor Emmeritus of History Michael Gannon in his book The Cross in the Sand."

 (https://www.history.com/news/did-florida-host-the-first-thanksgiving)

The Christmas Tree

 As everybody knows, I can only think about Christmas time.

Now I'm thinking about my Christmas Tree, that we will put up again, as we always do, on the first day of December.

It is quite old, we bought it some twenty years ago and it begins to show its age but we like it so much that we are decided that it will be there, every Christmas, for some more years.

Then it came to my mind to post some pictures that I already posted in other years to remind me of past Christmas. 

It will  be more details than the whole tree but each one will remind me of hapy times and make me feel looking forward to see it up this year again with all the decorations that we have for a long time.

I always count on my girls to put the tree up and decorate, they already know how I want things done.

So, next 1 of December there we will be carrying the boxes of the tree, the lights, the balls, everything, to put the tree up.

I can't wait for it.