Autumn Leaves

I think one of the most beautiful and enjoyable times of the year is autumn. When the leaves are turning color and the air is cool and crisp, rather than hot and muggy in the summer. Autumn is the shortest season, at least up here where the weather changes so rapidly. It really goes from Summer to Winter in about a month. Even though Autumn occupies three months on the calendar, it really can only claim the month of October. The leaves are almost gone from the trees now and on Sunday snow was in the air. Over the last week or so, I realized how the fallen leaves can bury yards and driveways. Soon the blanket of leaves will be replaced by a blanket of snow.

I am old Kris Kringle...

I'm the king of jing-a-ling!

Well now I pretty much feel inclined to post something about the history of Santa Claus, since I've always been interested in where the idea came from. On Wikipedia there is a lot of info on him; inspiration for the idea of Santa dates back to the 4th century. What I found interesting and funny was that German origins were fashioned after the German god Odin, who had a beard, hat, and spear (nowadays a staff); and his servants carried cloth bags around to capture naughty children! Think that's where the idea of naughty or nice came from?

Anyway, needless to say I am already excited about Christmas even though it's two months away. Even though it's become so commercialized I still get excited about the holiday season because I know the real reason we celebrate is not Santa Claus! Even though he has a cool red hat.

Traditions

It gets more difficult to avoid Halloween as the kids get older. They are wanting more and more to go trick-or-treating. In the past few years, the tradition has been for them to stay at Aunt Sue's and help her pass out candy while we have helped with the "Harvest" parties put on by our church. Now that we're at a new church, there is no harvest party, but the boys have continued to go to Aunt Sue's for the evening. This year they are going to be spending the night.

I think it's a great idea to come up with an alternative tradition, especially when it's a tradition that is rooted in an historical event with great significance like the beginning of the Reformation. Since Halloween is rooted in pagan tradition, celebrating it is paying tribute to pagan ideas. But we really should have no desire to commend those ideas. Instead of trying to just ignore the various Halloween celebrations that happen during this month, it would be much better to replace them with our own celebrations within the Christian tradition.

It would be interesting to post some bits of the history surrounding the various holidays that occupy the coming months. Please post if you feel inclined to.

We've seen a few lights around here. Unfortunately they're Halloween lights. How awful to celebrate death and violence and the wicked things of this world. Ugh! Yet at the same time, some people may just be ignorant of what Halloween symbolizes and not everyone is called out of darkness into the Lord's marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).

And I guess Halloween is the first of the holidays of the season. I guess. I wouldn't really consider it a holiday. I've been partial to the Catholic holiday All Saint's Day over the past many years. I look at it as the day before the start of the Christmas seaon. Also, when it comes to minimizing Halloween, I've often heard Reformation Day observed - October 31st, the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Schlosskirche. Actually, we are going to celebrate Reformation Day / All Saint's Day this year with a spice cake. I want to put a pumpkin patch on it just like Mom used to put on my birthday cakes! Maybe a pumpkin patch spice cake will become tradition. Abby would probably like the pumpkin patch.

I'm looking forward to seeing Christmas lights come out. Usually it's after this first holiday of the season. We don't get much Christmas weather here. And it's a little sad seeing Christmas lights in green yards, when it's 80 degrees, and you know there will never be snow. But we make the most of it and the lights are still Christmas lights even without the weather being as it's supposed to be.

Christmas Lights Already!

There are Christmas lights decorating a front yard on someones house on 5th Street in Superior!! How awesome is that! Sometimes when Im out and about I get that "Christmas" sensation even though the season is stil months away. Or at least a month away. I see not many people are on here yet...I have everyones email address so If you (Marc) would like, I can send them to you.

Last year I remember noting that the first Christmas decorations we saw were in September! We were in some store in some mall and walking through one of the back departments where no ever goes, shoved all in a corner were the store's Christmas decorations for that season. They had pulled them out but hadn't yet put them up.

This year it was the same timing, but the store was already fully decked out. We went to Garden Ridge last month and they already had multiple aisles dedicated to decorations: lights, ornaments, yard fixtures, huge inflatable eyesores (which Abby thought were pretty neat), and a veritable Christmas tree forest. They had all shapes and sizes with different light patterns and colors. We took a stroll through it but Abby wasn't as impressed as I thought she would be, considering her fascination with them last year.

Now I know this isn't a Christmas blog this year but I thought I'd relate that little story as blogging here again is reminiscent of last year's Christmas blog. So everyone knows, our Christmas visit this year will be from Jan 1st through Jan 7th. We are looking forward to visiting and it will be fun blogging with you again in the season preceding.

It's the Holiday Season

Since last year's Christmas blog seemed to be no small success, I thought "wouldn't it be great to have another blog this year, but instead of having it just be a 'Christmas' blog, we could have a 'Holiday' blog to bring us all together during the entire holiday season..."

So with that, welcome to the Barden Holidays holiday web log! If you are reading this, you either heard about it from a Barden, or you are a Barden that was invited to contribute to the blog. If you are of the latter persuasion, I would like you to inform me of the email addresses of those I have not yet invited to contribute. The following Bardens have not yet been invited:

Cyndi,
Eva,
Mom,
Dad

Please send an email to mwbarden@gmail.com with the email addresses so I can add them as authors.

Last year, I set up the blog with a single author "Bardens" that we all used to contribute. With each of us as blog authors, we can easily see who posted and also we can each leave our own comments without any confusion as to who posted and who left the comments.

Now, let the blogging begin!!