Happy Christmas

Hello my lovelies! I'm just dropping in during a break in feeds/nappies/cuddles to wish you the happiest Christmas full of good cheer, love, peace and joy. All is well here; baby Anna is one week old and lovely, Lulu is coming around to the idea of her - gave her her first kiss yesterday after ignoring her since she came home! I am textbook tired, slightly emotional, prone to crying at anything sentimental especially this ad ( I just did again as I found it on You Tube!)

Anyway, I wish you all the very best for Christmas, thank you for reading, thank you for your sweet comments on Anna's arrival and thank you for being there and enjoying my musings. I've never met you, but you mean the world to me, my beautiful strangers!

If you've got a few minutes, listen to this as you potter about today. My Dad has put this on at home for every Christmas Eve of my life and now I'm playing it for my kids. Lovely life repetition...

Enjoy.

xxx

Ellie Loves...Christmas

What do I love about Christmas?

Well, let me tell you...

I love the text that my brother still sends me early on Christmas morning to see if I'm awake. When we were small we used to have adjoining bedrooms and would whisper to each other. As we got older we took up this tradition by text and even as we live separately in our own houses; we still do it. It warms my heart like you wouldn't believe.

I love that nothing much has really changed in our Christmas tradition, bar us all being taller, older, wiser etc. The routine is the same, the music is the same, the food is the same and always wonderful. It is a blessed ritual - a security blanket like no other.

I love seeing my parents pull together in the run up to the day as they create, as they always have, a special Christmas for our little family.

I love that we don't go anywhere on the day itself; we batten down the hatches and enjoy the familiarity of it all.

I love the Christmas Cracker jokes and hats.

I love the fact that there are two more people at our table, my Ivan and Lulu.

I love thinking that one day there will be even more...

I love that now, I am Santa.

I love that we still have stockings.

I love knowing that we always will...

I love the tin of Roses chocolates, the pudding, and the real fire that eventually gets so hot it makes us all sleepy.

I love how hard we all try to get presents to really please each other, even on ever decreasing budgets.

I love that it still makes us excited.

I love the busy anticipation of Christmas Eve, the stillness of Christmas Day and the lazy contentment of St Stephens Day.

I love that even as a 35 year old mother of one, I will not be able to sleep tonight!

Merry Christmas one and all.

x

Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus

To my dear and lovely readers, thank you for supporting me and my musings in this blog for the past six months and I wish you a happy, healthy, joy filled and beautiful Christmas. Please take a few minutes to read this wonderful letter below, written by 8 year old Virginia O'Hanlon to the editor of The New York Sun in 1897. To me, this is Christmas..... enjoy.

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Red Alert

I am addicted to anything in a true scarlet tone at this time of year. It is just pure Christmas to me. So here's a few things to get you in the red...

Cute red dress with a perfect red lip and undone hair....lovely.

Chanel nail polish in Dragon... one of the ultimate classic reds.

I always hang hearts on my tree and we have a family tradition where we give each other a new heart for our respective trees each year. So when we're old, our trees will be made up of gifts from our family.

A red lip. It's the perfect Christmas statement. Keep the eyes neutral and the skin glowy and get in the red! If you've never tried it - now is the time!

*** please vote for me to win Best Irish Blogger here***

thank you.