A Christmas Umbrella

Merry Christmas!

You may be wondering, Who in the world is Bird Lover’s Musings? This is a fair question. You probably subscribed years ago, or perhaps you stumbled upon this post by chance.

In a phrase, this is an adventure blog! I’ll make a couple more posts elaborating on this later, but for now I don’t want to keep your from your Christmas celebrations. Instead, let me send you off with a little anecdote about my favorite Christmas ever. More specifically, my favorite Christmas tree…a blue umbrella.

We Needed a Christmas Tree

My 5th grade year we had moved to Florida. For the first few months, we lived in a sparsely furnished apartment. It was so temporary that we didn’t even set up a Christmas tree.

This will not do at all, my ten-year-old self thought. We needed some sort of Christmas tree.

I looked around the apartment a substitute. My eyes landed on the blue umbrella waiting by the door. That will do! Defying the karma gods and their bad luck, I flourished open the umbrella and set it in the middle of the living room. On each of the spokes, I hung little stockings.

Now Santa will know where to put the presents.

As any young child, I had confidence in Santa’s ingenuity. Still, just in case, as I lay in bed Christmas Eve, I sent Santa mental suggestions on all the different ways he might break into the apartment.

Evidently, Santa received my messages. The next morning, wrapped gifts waited under the Christmas umbrella. It looked so perfect that I could only wonder why Christmas umbrellas weren’t a widely-used tradition.

It’s Still My Favorite Christmas

Even now, this Christmas holds a special place in my heart. My siblings and I will occasionally pull out the Nintendo DS Lite’s we received that Christmas. Though we’ve outgrown the Dora the Explorer game, MarioKart remains a classic and brings to light our competitive spirit even now.

But it wasn’t the Nintendos that made that Christmas extra special. It was my family.

Without many of the materialistic aspects of Christmas, family time and prayer became the only purpose of the holiday. The true spirit of Christmas.

This Christmas, I hope you all experience that same peace and joy! Whether you have a twelve-foot Christmas tree or a small Christmas umbrella.

I look forward to sharing many more adventures with you! I hope you look forward to reading them as well. And with that,

Merry Christmas! And to all a good night!