A Blue Christmas in the Mountains

This morning I stood at the cabin window, coffee in hand, staring out at a world stripped down to its essentials. The trees are bare now, their branches etched against an overcast sky like quiet pencil drawings. Beyond them stretches a long range of mountains, layered in soft shades of blue—the kind of blue that doesn’t feel cold so much as thoughtful. The kind that invites you to pause.

Winter has settled in up here. Not the dramatic, snow-globe kind—just a calm, gray stillness that feels like the earth holding its breath. Christmas is only two days away, and the mountains seem to know it. Everything feels hushed, as if creation itself is waiting for something holy… or at least for cookies to come out of the oven.

Looking at all that blue, I can’t help but hear Elvis crooning in my head: “I’ll have a blue Christmas without you…” It fits the view perfectly. And if I’m honest, it fits my heart a little too. Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on who’s missing from the room. I miss the noise of a full house, the overlapping conversations, the laughter coming from three directions at once. I miss the chaos—because love often looks like chaos when everyone you love is together.

But this is where gratitude gently taps me on the shoulder.

While not everyone can be here this year, we won’t be alone. Our youngest daughter and her husband are coming up to celebrate Christmas with us, and they always arrive carrying more than suitcases. They bring joy, laughter, and a happy energy that fills every corner of the cabin. The kind that makes even a quiet mountain Christmas feel festive—and somehow louder than expected (especially once games start or someone burns something in the kitchen).

They have a way of reminding me that joy doesn’t have to be big to be real. Sometimes it shows up in shared meals, late-night talks, and laughter echoing off cabin walls. Sometimes it looks like two young people walking through the door, instantly warming the whole place just by being themselves.

So yes, it may be a blue Christmas—blue skies muted by gray, blue mountains fading into the distance, blue notes humming softly in my heart. But blue doesn’t always mean sad. Sometimes it means deep. Sometimes it means reflective. And sometimes it’s just the color of a beautiful mountain morning that reminds you how blessed you still are.

From this cabin window, with leafless trees and layered blues stretching as far as I can see, I’m choosing gratitude. And maybe humming a little Elvis, too—just not too loud. The mountains deserve their quiet.

Christmas Is Coming (and Going Way Too Fast)

“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat,
Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat…”

That little rhyme has lived somewhere in the back of my mind since childhood, popping up every year right about the time I realize—again—that Christmas is coming whether I’m ready or not. One minute it’s early December and I’m telling myself I have plenty of time, and the next thing I know, the calendar is shouting at me, the stores are packed, and I’m standing in my kitchen wondering how I let it sneak up on me again.

Every single year.

Christmas comes fast—too fast. It barrels in like a runaway shopping cart in a Walmart parking lot, and I’m left scrambling to catch up. The tree goes up later than I planned, the cards don’t get mailed when I swore they would, and the cookies somehow feel more like an obligation than a joy. I always think I’ll be more prepared this year. I never am.

And then—just like that—it’s over.

The gifts are opened, the wrapping paper is piled high, the house smells like leftover ham and sugar cookies, and there’s a strange quiet that settles in. The decorations stay up, but the magic feels like it packed its bags and left sometime around Christmas afternoon. That’s when the letdown hits. Hard.

I start wishing for a do-over.

I wish I had slowed down. I wish I had soaked it in more. I wish I had paid better attention to the moments that mattered instead of the list that never ended. Christmas, that big wonderful event we build up in our minds, feels like it slips through our fingers almost as soon as we get hold of it.

That shouldn’t be how it feels.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve turned Christmas into something exhausting instead of life-giving. We rush through Advent like it’s a checklist instead of a season of waiting and wonder. We chase the “perfect” holiday while missing the holy one unfolding right in front of us.

Down here in the South, we like to say we’re going to “set a spell,” but come December, nobody’s setting anything except an alarm clock. We run ourselves ragged trying to make memories, when half the time the best memories come from sitting on the couch in fuzzy socks, laughing at something silly, or retelling the same old stories we’ve heard a hundred times. Those are the moments that stick. Not the fancy ones. The real ones.

Christmas was never meant to leave us feeling empty when it ends. It was meant to fill us—with joy, with hope, with love that carries us straight into the New Year. The birth of Christ isn’t a one-day event; it’s a reminder that light came into the darkness and stayed. If we’re feeling let down when Christmas is over, maybe it’s because we expected too much from the day and not enough from the meaning.

The goose may be getting fat, and the pennies may be hard to come by these days, but the heart of Christmas hasn’t changed. It’s still about generosity, still about grace, still about slowing down enough to notice that God showed up in the simplest way possible.

This year, I’m trying something different. I’m trying to let Christmas be quieter. Smaller. Less polished and more present. I may still be unprepared when it arrives—I probably will—but I’m hoping I won’t be so quick to rush past it when it’s here.

Because Christmas doesn’t need a do-over. It just needs our attention.

And maybe—just maybe—if we set a spell and let it linger, it won’t feel like such a letdown when the calendar turns and the New Year comes knocking.

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Sunshine my shoulder

It's s funny how something as simple as a sunny day can make you feel so nostalgic. My husband and I had just finished our walk in the local cemetery and the sun was shining so brightly. I could feel the warmth on my face and it made me happy. We'd done three laps and felt good about it so we sat down on a bench to rest. As we sat there, I closed my eyes and basked in the sun. A few minutes later, John Denver's song, "Sunshine on My Shoulder" was playing in my head. I hummed along and thought back to a special memory in 1978 (or it could have been '79, my memory is not as good as it used to be..)

I remembered being on a family vacation. We'd gone to a beautiful place in North Georgia called Lake Marvin. My family and I were staying for the week at a cabin owned by the Girl Scouts of America. My mother was a Girl Scout leader and had access to the cabin which was a blessing for us. Family vacations were expensive and we didn't have much money. 

There were many special memories on that trip, but one of my favorites was getting into a canoe and going across the lake with my younger brother. We paddled up to a beaver dam, laughing and talking along the way. We both loved nature so much and just being under the low-hanging trees with a slight breeze in the air was amazing. We stayed at the beaver dam for about 30 minutes looking for beavers and then headed back toward the cabin. As we were rowing, the sun was glinting off the water. I don't think I'd ever felt such peace. 

Paddling slowly and in tandem, we reached the shore, pulled up the canoe, and went back into the cabin. I think later that afternoon he and my dad went fishing along the shore of the lake while my mother, sister and I stayed inside fixing the meal. 

It always amazes me how past memories pop up when I least expect them. But when they do, I'm glad because it feels like I'm reliving the memory all over again. 

My brother left this Earth in 2021. I've missed him so much but I imagine, if there's a lake anywhere in heaven, he's out on a boat fishing. And if he is, I'm sure the sunshine it's just over his shoulder and he's feeling fine.