Feliz Navidad, Y'all

OK...it's Christmas...

I feel weird about it. The "Christmas" feeling just wasn't there this year. I don't know why, all I know is that this year is different that past years.

So, I posted some Tejano Christmas stories below, but I guess you have to be Tejano to understand them fully.

I bought one gift this year; for Linda. All the other gifts were made. I sculpted crosses out of wood for my siblings and my mom. Each one is unique. I used wood from an old fence, and some wrought iron from an old railing I took down at the rent house. Some are decorated with pieces of colored and stained glass.

Linda took down some old paintings (from 1975-76) I never finished, and I cleaned one up and finished it for our oldest son. I then matted and framed it for him. I actually liked it when it was completed. It is one of the first large paintings I ever did - an Autumn scene of a cabin in the mountains, complete with pine trees and fall foliage. I had signed and dated it "Sept 1976." I wish I had my camera so I could take a photo of it.

I made Izzy a stick horse out of a large canvas coin bag I got from when the bank I worked at moved a couple of years ago. I cut the horse's head from the bag, sewed it up, complete with a fringed mane, and stuffed it. Then I painted eyes and nostrils on it, and mounted it on a hanger rod I had in my wood scrap pile in the garage. She loved it.

So now we're getting ready for Christmas dinner. I smoked a turkey on the grill last night. I stuffed real butter under the skin of the breasts, sprinkled it with celery salt, lemon pepper, and seasoned salt, and put oregano and thyme in the cavity. It cooked for about 6 hours on the smoker, so it's got some very good flavor. We've got enough food for a small mexican family, and it's going to be just a few of us eating here. I have no idea why we made so much food.

So all the gift-giving, food, phone calls and visits from family are just the superficial stuff of Christmas that has me a bit unfulfilled. I'm grateful for all the abundance we have, but it's reall just stuff. My real joy came from sitting down and telling my 4 year old granddaughter the story of the first Christmas. She understood and enjoyed the story as I told it to her while she sat on my lap. When I told her about the wise men coming on horseback or camels, she remarked, ""Cause they didn't have no cars! or motorcycles, or bikes..." Then she wanted to know if they had dogs. Of course they did...

Merry Christmas, Y'all...my regular readers, the few commenters I have, my family who reads me, and whoever else might stop by. This Christmas remember the most important thing is not the "stuff," it's about celebrating the birth of a Savior - the man named Jesus, whose birth was the reason for CHRISTmas. Without his birth, everything else would mean nothing.