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Show Forget the perfect Christmas and enjoy the holiday season Chnstmas can be a wonderful time of year, if you just don't let the details get to you. Take Christmas cookies, , for example. You can either lock the kids out of the house and yrftatP! rnrftifq likft ihnw in thp. -magazines or, you can let the kids help. rmm um fear over the floor, the dog and the kids will eat too many broken cookies and the resulting cookies will be less than spectacular. But you know, I still remember decorating cookies at my grandmother's grand-mother's house. I don't know that the cookies were truly beautiful, although al-though I do know we loved an especially es-pecially garish shade of blue icing. But the memories are beautiful. Then there is the Christmas tree. I've seen beautiful trees come and go and they are all pretty much the same. The one that sticks in my mind is the year my mother stuck a few pine branches in a big milk jug and we decorated it with a few decorations dec-orations my brother and I had made in school. My own children talk about the year we ended up with two trees. On Christmas Eve Santa brought a second tree and set it up downstairs with all the presents under, it That was one year when the children were truly surprised. Of all the years Santa spent struggl- ing with lights that don't work and . buying just the right color ribbon, , that's the one the kids remember. Christmas gifts are another area ;fwhefrtrjiist doesn't pay to worry ""j j too much: Through the years I have been the victim of, or the instigator j of, almost "every plot known to" make Christmas "fair' ' to everyone ' in the family. I have received cash, I gift certificates, and gifts exactly like the ones my cousin received. I ? have given cash, checks, matching gifts to all, and at times totaled the. I dollar amount down o the dollar, j No matter, someone will always feel slighted. Part of the problem is that we give to others what we would have wanted for ourselves. I remember the year my mother asked me if I would rather have a practical gift like a cedar chest or another doll I said I would take the chest but she bought the doll anyhow. Later she'; said she remembered how sad she" felt when she received a watch in-; stead of a doll as a child. But, wouldn't you know it, I really wanted the cedar chest. Every year I " look at cedar chests and wonder if I should buy one for one of my girls. |