{"id":871,"date":"2011-12-08T19:00:38","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T00:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/?p=871"},"modified":"2011-12-08T09:41:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T14:41:00","slug":"early-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html","title":{"rendered":"Early Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most people haven’t even finished their Christmas shopping yet, but we have already had Christmas with two of our grown children and their families.\u00a0 I really had to scramble to get everything bought and wrapped so early.<\/p>\n

It sounds crazy, but once it’s in motion, Christmas can be celebrated on any given day of the year.\u00a0 All you need are a few basics, a Christmas tree, a pile of presents, and some family and friends.\u00a0 A few twinkling lights and some Christmas cookies, and we are ready to party.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Christmas is always more fun when there are children around.\u00a0 I was so happy to have six of my nine grand kids here all at the same time.\u00a0 We had a huge pile of gifts and everyone had a ball opening up their surprises.\u00a0 The boys had ‘hot wheels’ all over the floor.\u00a0 The girls were coloring in their new books.\u00a0 The parents were visiting and doing ‘Black Friday’ shopping on line.\u00a0 Grandpa was sitting in his recliner recovering from his recent knee replacement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was sitting in my recliner enjoying all the commotion.\u00a0 I love to just sit and watch my grandchildren at play.\u00a0 It is fun to watch them interact with each other.\u00a0 It can be especially entertaining because they don’t see each other often and Jonathan has identical twins boys, 4 years old.\u00a0\u00a0 Matt’s 5 year old daughter was always asking, “Now which one are you?”, and the twins became more aggravated with each question.<\/p>\n

Little children are such a wonder to me.\u00a0 I love them dearly.\u00a0 I have taught 3-7 year olds for over 45 years, between Sunday School and regular school.\u00a0 They are so alive and energetic. I wish I could still keep up with them, but alas,\u00a0 age takes it’s price from each of us.<\/p>\n

So our first Christmas of the season was wonderful.\u00a0 We still have a least 3 more to do with the rest of our family and one night with close friends.\u00a0 It’s nice spreading out the celebrating for a longer period of time.\u00a0 It gives more time to visit and less stress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most people haven’t even finished their Christmas shopping yet, but we have already had Christmas with two of our grown children and their families.\u00a0 I really had to scramble to get everything bought and wrapped so early. It sounds crazy, but once it’s in motion, Christmas can be celebrated on any given day of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":420,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,36,30],"tags":[29,46],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-just-for-fun","category-memories","tag-family","tag-holiday"],"yoast_head":"\nEarly Christmas - Small Town America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Early Christmas - Small Town America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most people haven’t even finished their Christmas shopping yet, but we have already had Christmas with two of our grown children and their families.\u00a0 I really had to scramble to get everything bought and wrapped so early. It sounds crazy, but once it’s in motion, Christmas can be celebrated on any given day of the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Small Town America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-12-09T00:00:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-12-08T14:41:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/files\/2011\/12\/IMG_0502-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dhanny\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Early Christmas - Small Town America","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Early Christmas - Small Town America","og_description":"Most people haven’t even finished their Christmas shopping yet, but we have already had Christmas with two of our grown children and their families.\u00a0 I really had to scramble to get everything bought and wrapped so early. It sounds crazy, but once it’s in motion, Christmas can be celebrated on any given day of the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html","og_site_name":"Small Town America","article_published_time":"2011-12-09T00:00:38+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-12-08T14:41:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/files\/2011\/12\/IMG_0502-150x150.jpg"}],"author":"dhanny","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html","name":"Early Christmas - Small Town America","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/files\/2011\/12\/IMG_0502-150x150.jpg","datePublished":"2011-12-09T00:00:38+00:00","dateModified":"2011-12-08T14:41:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/#\/schema\/person\/8903397417d1ce94982f0403797aedbe"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/files\/2011\/12\/IMG_0502-150x150.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/files\/2011\/12\/IMG_0502-150x150.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/early-christmas.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Early Christmas"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/","name":"Small Town America","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Diane Hanny","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/#\/schema\/person\/8903397417d1ce94982f0403797aedbe","name":"dhanny","description":"john3:16","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/author\/dhanny"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/420"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}