(not necessarily in that order)
This was our first completely unscheduled day since we arrived last Wednesday.
We enjoyed a slow morning, then spent a good part of the afternoon walking around downtown Lugano admiring the Christmas decorations.
The late afternoon and late into the evening were spent with our dear friends, the Lo Menzo’s, where a quick coffee turned into a spontaneous dinner.
I’ll hopefully have time to sort through my photos tomorrow. Now it’s time for bed.
Returning to East Sacramento feels a bit like a homecoming; everything is so very familiar.
J Street. Folsom Blvd. Trader Joe’s. 51st Avenue. Driving down U Street. Even being at the Marriott Hotel again.
We met my Dad and sister at the Starbucks on Folsom for a nice pre-Christmas visit. We sat outside so we could chat without masks, but — boy! — did it get cold after a while!
Remembering how “into it” the neighborhood was when it came to Halloween decorations, I had hoped to take photos of Christmas-decorated houses, but it got too late and we were too hungry to put off dinner.
However, I was delighted to encounter these horses behind the Rite Aid drugstore, of all places! Evidently one can hire a carriage and view the holiday decorations in style.
We wanted to create a beautiful ambiance for Ramesha’s holiday kirtan, so this afternoon we pushed ourselves to finish decorating the tree; rearrange the furniture; and establish order in the living room.
End result? The kirtan was as beautiful visually as it was musically AND our home is finally looking like Christmas is less than a week away!
By the way, isn’t that quite an impressive set-up? Getting a good quality livestream is way more involved than one would think. Luckily I don’t have to understand the technology in order to be of assistance; my job was to monitor the comments and answer any questions that came up! 😊
Back in October — irritated by my first sighting of Christmas merchandise, weeks before Halloween even(!) — I was reminded of a Sunday talk I heard at my Unity church in San Francisco, way back in the early 1990’s.
The minister talked about how much she appreciated the fact that Nordstrom made a point of waiting until after Thanksgiving to put up their store Christmas tree and other decorations. As she pointed out, Thanksgiving (gratitude) comes before Christmas (receiving).
The importance of her insight has stayed with me over the decades: forgetting or belittling the gratitude part and becoming overly focused on the receiving (or getting) part is a recipe for disaster — for us as individuals and also as a society.
We see it happening a little bit more every year, as the Christmas decorations go up earlier and earlier in order to encourage people to buy more, buy sooner, buy faster! Get, get, get! But what about first slowing down and remembering to give thanks for what you’ve already got?
I’m not big on shopping; in fact, I’m pretty sure the last time I was in a Nordstrom was to play a gig back in my days as a freelance flutist. But if I were to need to shop in a department store, I would want to give Nordstrom my business, because I so very much appreciate that they’re still sticking to their guns all these years later!
I googled it because I was curious and discovered that in its more than 100-year history, Nordstrom has never decorated before Thanksgiving. And the store has received widespread support on social media about this, with consumers praising Nordstrom for fighting the “Christmas creep.”
Now that’s something I can heartily endorse!