Somehow Christmas Always Comes

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope your day is filled with joy. Ours is a bit different than we anticipated. Little Taylor, our granddaughter, has the flu as does my sister-in-law, so they were not able to have Christmas Eve dinner with us.

We all gather next door at my in-laws house since they have the big table. My mother is visiting from out of town so we needed another setting. Our daughter was going to bring her "guy" for the first time and everyone was excited. My father-in-law set the table, adding another setting but then received the call about Taylor's illness. That was three down so he rearranged the settings. My daughter called later and said she may come out alone. He quickly added the setting back to the table. Well, Taylor wanted her mom to stay with her, so Becky cancelled afterall. Then my sister-in-law fell ill, so another place setting down. By this time he is a bit confused so he just added place settings at each chair, just in case.

We're creatures of habit. By the time whoever was coming arrived and dinner was ready we filed into the dining room and sat in our regularly assigned seats. That left my husband's mother two or three settings from the next closest person to her right. How would we pass the food without flinging platters like Frisbees? Then came grace. My daughter always leads the grace but she was not there. Who was going to lead grace as well as Becky and Taylor? We somehow muddled through but I have to say Becky gets the gold star for graces. We should have put our cell phone on speaker and called her.

It is Christmas morning and everyone else is still asleep. I'm up feeding the cats and catching some coffee before church. There's not going to be the patter of little feet as Taylor makes her run to her Christmas stocking this afternoon. We had expected to have her here for the night but not today. We will have her stay with us next week while school is out and my husband has time off to watch her. We'll open her gifts and have a wonderful second meal.

So Christmas was not exactly what we expected but that is only the presents and merriment side of it. It will still be Christmas regardless of kids, treats, stockings and cranberries, just like in Whoville (Dah who dor-aze). As one of my Facebook friends wrote, "It doesn't matter if your tree is real or artificial, somehow Christmas always comes."

Merry Christmas to All.