A Note from Danielle for December ’11
Dear friends,
Wow! December! Christmas! Holidays! I love it. It is such a ‘loaded’ month, in so many ways. Loaded with plans and parties for most, family events, and also loaded with expectations. For many of us, it all begins in childhood, with Santa Claus, who is going to bring us everything we want . . . and somehow we carry those dreams into adulthood, and expect everything to be happy and perfect on Christmas—our children to be good to us, our families to be loving, and our friends joyful. And sometimes it just isn’t all we hope for and our dreams are dashed . . . or sometimes, if we’re lucky, it really is perfect. It’s a juggling act of hopes and obligations, stretched schedules and budgets, so much pressed into one month. For us, the holidays are a family time and everyone comes home. But few things in life are perfect. Fourteen years ago, we had to face our first Christmas without my son Nick, who had died that September, at nineteen. This year, we will be spending Christmas without my children’s beloved father, who passed away in February, and the memories will be bittersweet without him.
Above all, Christmas is a time of giving more than getting, of sharing and offering comfort and kindness, of remembering, and sharing tender times. So amid all the Ho, Ho, Hos! and frantic gift buying and wrapping, I hope that there will be some quiet, precious moments for you when the loving spirit of the holidays fills your heart and makes them meaningful for you.
I wish you the very happiest of holidays.
Love,
Danielle Steel