Christmas Tea

I love the Christmas season.  It's my favorite time of the year.  But I also find that I am easily depressed during the Christmas season also.  I don't enjoy Thanksgiving.  I find it too sad and depressing each year as I grow older.  There are so many memories of family and those who are no longer with us.  I try to skip right past those old photos of Mom's house with the roast turkey and the family around the table.  It's just too difficult remember my grandmother and my aunts and the rest of the family.  Once I get past Thanksgiving I jump right into the Christmas season.  I start watching Christmas movies.  I break out the Christmas CD's for my car.  And I look for something new each year to make me smile.

It's all very commercial and superficial. And I know this. But I love the trees.  The ornaments.  Even the silly Santa hats.  I try to find one thing for myself each year that will make the holidays brighter.  Two years ago I bought this silly Chevy Chase Griswald's Christmas mug.  Nothing spectacular.  Just a silly mug.  Now it's part of my Christmas tradition and makes me smile each year.  It's much better than the sadness of those old photos from Thanksgiving.  We have tacky Marilyn Monroe mugs that my daughter Danielle bought me for Christmas one year that we now break out on Christmas morning each year for our morning coffee.  There are special plates and dishes we set out for our holiday snacks and sweets.   Yes there are problems in the world and in our country.  And I know I am blessed and have so much to be thankful for that it's silly to get overly sentimental on the holidays.  But something stupid like a holiday mug with Chevy Chase on the front makes me smile.

Last year I bought a special holiday tea to have in the Chevy Chase mug.  It was called Christmas Cookie.  It was terrible!  After steeping it was a cloudy grey mess in mug.  It look like dirty aquarium water.  So the mug made me smile and the tea made me gag.  Not quite the experience I was hoping for.

This year as I prepared for the day to bring out my Chevy Chase Christmas mug I was hoping to find a better tea.  I found one called Cranberry Vanilla Wonderland.  I knew just looking at the package that this would be the one.  It had Cranberry and Vanilla and came in a beautiful Christmassy package.  It was perfect.  The herbs and probably the dye turned my mug into a beautiful red cranberry color unlike the mucky dirty aquarium water from last years selection.  It had a warm vanilla and cranberry scent to it that would be great for a candle also.  So today being a little stressed with finances for the holiday this year, trying to work Christmas spending into a tight budget, I sat down to chill and reflect.  With the cranberry vanilla tea, my holiday mug and a deep cleansing sigh I am ready to forge on and plan tomorrows holiday experience.  I am so glad I found the tea.  It could have turned out much worse.