Okay. I found them, stacked on a shelf in a closet for easy access. My Christmas plates and mugs have replaced my ordinary everyday ironstone, and the holiday season is now officially in session.
I don't know what it is about having Christmas dishes. It is (possibly) a wasteful enterprise. After all, why have a complete set of dinnerware that is used for only a month or so out of the year? What's the point?
It started for me with the innocuous purchase many years ago of a couple red cups and saucers. They would go with my white dishes well enough, and would add a note of holiday color to the table, I thought. Later, when I saw a couple salad plates in the same bright red, I added them. I could use them in February for Valentine's Day, too. But then, I found my snowman plates. They were white (like my everyday dishes), with blue rims (like my china!) and had red accents (I could use my red pieces with them, too!) The snowman theme made them appropriate from December through February, thus quelling my qualms of guilt. As if God blessed the purchase, that Christmas, my sister (all unknowing) gave me a set of mugs in the same snowman pattern.
However, even though I am a dish freak (let me tell you someday about my green cups with the square saucers) there's more at work here. Opening a cabinet and seeing my holiday dishes lifts my spirits. Every table setting says "Merry Christmas" and every routine cup of tea reminds me that there's something special about today. Usually that 'something special' is a to-do list of seasonal chores, but...nevertheless, there's a joy in that, too. Putting out my dishes, putting out my Christmas decorations is putting out my memories. I'm decorating my life again with all the trips, all the Christmases, all the happiness of all our years as a family. Every piece of red or green or holly-trimmed bric-a-brac has a story, and all those stories add up to today. And today, like all our Christmases, like all our yesterdays, is worth remembering.
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