Category Archives: Holidays

Warm Christmas Tidings

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Warm Christmas Tidings

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

Before the party
Christmas sacks in place of stockings.
A pristine table
Napkins embroidered by my friend Sharon.
Christine serenaded me as I decorated the table .
Here is the happy crew, minus the photographer.
Forgottenman joined us from Missouri
He was in the place of honor at the head of the table.
Happy hands reached for truffles.
Becky took Forgottenman out to see it as well.
Sergio, David and Beth.
Sergio and David were especially delighted with their spinning, musical, light-emitting tops.
Wish I’d gotten a photo of all seven of these musical, lit-up tops all spinning together.
A few special libations.
Christine was feeling happy.
And now, the carnage afterwards.
A less than pristine table.

Warm Christmas Tidings

Christmas without frost can be merry nonetheless.
You can have the camaraderie, the company and mess.
Christmas in warm climates has all of the same joys,
and even really old kids can enjoy sacks full of toys.
Spinning tops with lights and music rounded out the night,
Sergio and David thrilling at the sight.
As old friends and some new ones met this last week of December
to make another Christmas memory for us all to remember.

 

Prompt words for today are Christmas, frost, merry, joy and sight.

Holiday Door

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Merry Christmas from my door to yours!!

For Thursday Doors.

Christmas Preparations

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Click on first photo below to enlarge all and read captions.

Christmas bags are easier to stuff than Christmas stockings.
Assembling the ingredients for green bean casserole…not as easy in Mexico! No waterchesnuts.

For the Friendly Friday Photo prompt: Xmas Preparations.

Scrooge and Your Christmas Vacation

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Scrooge and Your Christmas Vacation

Scrooge has turned surfing waves to ice and ski slopes into water.
Now he’ll ruin the rest of Christmas for your son and daughter.
He’s hacked into Kris Kringle’s map and hijacked all the toys—
the dolls and basketballs of girls, the hockey sticks of boys.
He’s eaten all the cookies—just stuffed them in his face.
The mistletoe and holly? Vanished, without a trace.

Yes, Scrooge is up to his old tricks, spreading brimstone and acid
over all your Christmas plans that seemed so set and placid.
If you want to thwart him, take your surfboards to the slopes.
Go skiing at the oceanside. Ruin all his dark Scrooge hopes.
Make merry with no mistletoe. Traditions rearrange.
Give Santa Claus a hotdog. He’ll appreciate the change!

In our modern screwed-up world, we’ve gone a bit astray.
We’ve forgotten the real purpose behind our Christmas Day.
That first Christmas was as humble as a Christmas scene could be.
No holly and no mistletoe. Much less frivolity.
The original gifts of Christmas were not placed beneath a tree,
for those first gifts that were given were not meant for you and me.

How the message has been altered as it came down the years
is that Christmas is for getting and disappointed tears
if we don’t get what we wanted. Expectations of perfection.
When we think of giving, we don’t see our own reflection.
Perhaps Scrooge brings the point across that joy is in the living.
So instead of what you hoped you’d get, concentrate on giving!

 

Prompt words today are Scrooge, map, tasteful, placid and water.

Lines in Squares: Bones and Veins

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Version 2

Life and Death–Constantly aware of this is Mexico, where one day a year the dead come out to play.

For Becky’s Line in Squares October Challenge

 

 

Interlopers

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Click on first photo to enlarge all.

“I don’t know that there are real ghosts and goblins, but there are always more trick-or-treaters than neighborhood kids.”     —Robert Brault

Interlopers

They watch the clock, waiting for dark,
impatient for their All-souls lark.
Small ghosts and goblins screech and moan,
their ghastly act to finely hone.
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,”
Mother prompts, as off they jog—
little witches in Walmart capes
with itchy tags upon their napes.

Meanwhile, other ghastly things
soar in on brooms, flap in on wings.
They’ve found that yearly secret door
under the earth, under the floor,
and creaked it open. Joining the flood
who lust for treats, they lust for blood.
Who among us might ace the task
of sorting countenance from mask?

That little vampire, newly gone—
was his blood real or painted on?
“Double double toil and trouble,
cauldron boil and cauldron bubble.”
Were those lines recently rehearsed
or are these witches instead well-versed
in brewing up a recipe
of wing of gnat and eye of bee?

Which ghoulies real and which ones playing?
Which ones begging? Which ones preying?
What other night of any year
do we open doors, devoid of fear
for such strange beings? Who thinks of this—
Hershey’s kisses or vampire’s kiss?
A silly poem. When small ghosts boo, they
offer no real threat. Or do they?

 

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Prompts for today are the secret door, adage, screech, treat and clock. Since one of the prompt words was “adage,” rather than use the actual word in the poem, I used a quote (an adage of sorts) by Robert Brault as inspiration for this poem.

All Hallow’s Eve

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All Hallow’s Eve

The children are ebullient as Halloween grows near—
the day when even scaredy cats put away their fear
and dressed as itchy scarecrows with straw stuck in their britches,
 go to meet with zombies and ghosts and ghouls and witches.

Little tiny mummies wound up in mommy’s sheet
naively think they won’t run home at the first witch they meet.
When they knock on neighbors’ doors, it is their fondest wish
that they’ll be met at once with piles of candy in a dish.

M&M’s or Hershey bars, popcorn balls or Snickers.
When their bags get full, they stuff the pockets of their knickers.
If any folks procrastinate in answering their door,
retaliation calls for soaping windows. Maybe more.

Only Scrooges turn out lights, do not hand out treats,
and when they hear their doorbell ring, sit stubborn in their seats.
So get your candy ready, for night will soon be falling
and all your neighbors’ ghoulish kids will for sure be calling!

Prompts today are falling, procrastinate, naive, ebullient and dish.

If you’d like to see a recap of last year’s Halloween in Missouri, here ’tis. https://judydykstrabrown.com/2017/10/31/happy-halloween-from-morehouse-missouri/

Christmas in October

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For the eighteen years I’ve lived in Mexico, I have watched Halloween taking over the imaginations of kids here to the point where its displays far-exceed those of Day of the Dead in Walmart. Many rue this tendency, but Day of the Dead still remains the more authentic and widely-celebrated holiday for adults and I both buy bags of candy to contribute to our yearly distribution to kids at the gate of the Raquet Club and construct a Day of the Dead altar honoring my husband, parents, friends and pets who have died.

This year, the displays of bagged Halloween candy, costumes and jack-o-lanterns was the largest I’d ever seen here and luckily, I bought my Halloween candy early, for when I returned ten days before Halloween to buy more bags for friends who are in the states and who wanted me to buy bags for them to contribute to the give-away, the huge Halloween displays in Walmart had vanished, replaced by storewide Christmas decorations!  I took these photos of the trees going up, and the next day at least six big sections were filled with Xmas decorations. Today I went back to buy a curtain rod and found this one little sad abandoned jack-o-lantern hidden away on a box in the Xmas display. What is wrong with us that we can’t even celebrate one October holiday before shoving it aside for Xmas? Pretty soon it will be Easter it is shoving aside. 

Please click on first photo to enlarge all.

Mother’s Day Gift from Yoli

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Yolanda’s daughter Yoli made me this whimsical planter with succulent in it for Mother’s Day. Thank you, sweet girl!!!! I had to display it in front of this painting given to me for my birthday two years ago by my friend Glenda, and the wooden frog wanted in on the photo as well.  Happy Mother’s day to all mothers and to all of the childless who are lucky enough to have friends and family willing to share their children with you.  oxoxoxo

Easter Morning Confession

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Easter Morning Confession

“What’s all this hoopla over eggs
and animals with furry legs?”
My father chortled every year,
just loud enough for us to hear
while we lay scheming in our beds,
visions of rabbits in our heads
and candy eggs and chocolate,
wondering just where and what
we’d be hunting in the morning,
when, early and with no warning
we’d descend the long back stair
the earliest that we could dare
and set upon the living room
in the early morning gloom
to satiate that yearly lust.
We must have chocolate. We must!

Year after year, we slipped our gaskets
seeking to fill up our baskets.
Even now, that longing swells
when I hear those Easter bells.
So many years since I, a seedling,
commenced my yearly candy wheedling.

How many days, how many nights
did we anticipate delights 
well into our lower teens
of  Peeps and eggs and jelly beans.
and, best of all, that chocolate rabbit
became our yearly Easter habit.
Sitting regally on its ass
amidst the bright green Easter grass
in the baskets overflowing
with our coming and our going,
searching out that Easter stash
of candy, chocolate and cash.
A dollar hidden in one nest
was the very very best
find of the whole Easter season,
and in fact it was the reason
why Easter Sunday was the best—
our favorite of all the rest.

Later, to church, to sing and pray,
remembering just why this day
was celebrated, though I fear
that for us, year after year
there were more than one or two
kids sequestered in a pew
who were not thinking of the prayer,
but of layer upon layer
of goodies that awaited them
in baskets filled up to the brim.
For, though our hearts were pure and pious,
they could not dispel the bias
of a child’s rumbling gut
yearning for more chocolate!! 

The prompt today are egg, hoopla, seedling and longing. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/rdp-saturday-egg/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/20/fowc-with-fandango-hoopla/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/your-daily-word-prompt-seedling-april-20-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/longing/