I am a day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) Christmas decorator. It's go time once my grateful heart at Thanksgiving is over, I welcome and embrace Christmas the very next day. Christmas music, decorations, hot chocolate, I love to lose myself in the wonder of Christmas.
This year is slightly different, the Hallmark Channel officially changed everything this year. October 25th began their two months till Christmas by starting Hallmark Christmas movies two months early. Thank goodness, because there is nothing on television that I am watching.
The DVR set to record and capture romantic and highly predictable Hallmark movies allows me to turn on television when I want to sit down and relax and watch something warm, wholesome and romantic.
It's October 29th and I've already watched five movies. Fortunately, there are countless Hallmark Christmas movies that fills my soul when crap on television and the news does not. Scrolling through titles and descriptions I find I always choose mountain Christmas movies.
I love the mountains. I remember the decades I used to hop in the car by myself and escape to the mountains at my grandmothers house. I would leave early enough in the morning so I would be in the mountains of West Virginia when the sun began to rise. Those mountains became a mighty wall that separated everything I wanted to leave behind. I'd stop at Tamarack for my last cup of coffee, before I crossed over the Virginia border to my grandmothers house.
It was like stepping back in time in her country home with no internet, no television, where my grandmother would laugh with joy when she saw me.
She was a mountain woman through and through. Her mind sharp, she had so much to say and share. We would ride in the mountains to Rich Patch, where she grew up in the country and she would tell stories of her life, a life so different so many decades ago. I would wake up in the morning to the smell of a country breakfast being made and we would drink Earl Grey tea together from water we collected from a fresh spring.
I would make that trip 1-2 times per year for decades. She died several years ago and I really miss her. I also miss my trips to those magnificent mountains and the country.
I'm a grandmother now and I know my joy when I see my grandbabies and pull them in my arms. I can only imagine my grandmothers anticipation of my arrival when I would come those couple of times a year. She was so proud of me and loved me so much. She would tell everyone about "my Dawn" and of our adventures together. We were grandmother and granddaughter, but we were also best of friends.
Watching the mountain Christmas movies has an nostalgia of a simpler way of life.
I know exactly where I want to go for my 1st vacation, I want to be in the mountains. A log cabin or lodge with a fireplace in majestic mountains with quaint towns decorated in anticipation of Christmas.
