Sweete Felicity

Dear Friends,

Thank you again for your sweet comments and support; they bring cheer into our lives!

Christmas day is fast approaching, and we have been blessed to be able to enjoy a quiet season (in spite of the pipes freezing for three days), full of simple pleasures~

The big Christmas cactus is in bloom~

Our sweet friends the Watts sent a box of beautiful clothes~

We had a tea in honor of Jane Austen's birthday (the 16th)~

Complete with blueberries!

And made a family of snow people in the back yard~

We've spent time reading about how the Ingalls spent their Christmases~

Mr. Graham has been portraying Jacob Marley in "A Christmas Carol" (Scaaary!)~

And of course, the dolls have been busy sending off cards and gifts to their friends!

We hope that you are enjoying winter's simple pleasures, as well; be sure to take time out to nurture your own soul, and to remember the real reason we have Christmas! Let's all work to make it a true remembrance of the birth of our Savior again :) .

Love,

Marqueta

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"The True Christmas Spirit"

by Magee Pratt

The purpose of the Christ day is this: To bring together the fortunate, happy, blessed people who have precious things in abundance, and the poor, sick, friendless, ragged, hungry ones who are despairing--the people who have no true knowledge of the best. And they meet, these two sorts of people, to make merry together, not for the comfortable to make the wretched forget their pain by their gifts and leave them, but to be happy together for Christ's sake on Christ's day. Now this can be done by those who have little money but much love, which is better. In my short journey through the world, in great cities full of wealth, or country places where a few hundred live, I have discovered streets and villages where death or misfortune had needy victims, where there were lonely, empty lives. Everywhere there is someone who would be grateful for a loving word, everywhere is a need in man or woman or child, and the Christmas season seems cruel to those who have no friends, few clothes, and poor, hard fare. Every mother out of her mother love could do a little for them, give them a present of the Christmas sacrificial good. It might cost something more precious than money, cost thought and time and love, but the good it did would be worth so much more--just to steal away the burden of pain from a breaking heart for the Christmas day.

(From the Mother's Magazine, 1909)