What makes Christmas feel like Christmas for you

Firiel23 said:

the smells: from the pine branches we hang everywhere, the cookies baking (esp. Lebkuchen, a traditional German cookie that smells like HEAVEN), surprisingly, the inside of our barn, with all the animals living inside again after being out in the fields for summer, the Glühwein that smells wonderfully like warm wine and spices (can't say i love the taste though!)


feel better soon! I wish we could see your program 😊 good luck with that!

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You have a barn?... and with animals???** How cool! (and rustic) 🙂

**Some folks have a barn on their property but use it as an extension of their house..it might be an office, hobby shop, or "guest house" etc.....

Annatar said:

the whole family meets in harmony,

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A hallmark of our family's history.
This year is especially tough as we lost my sister... she was kind of the 'glue' making sure everybody got coordinated and gathered and such.
But we're muddling through.
She was the last of my immediate family...and the one introducing me to Tolkien so many decades ago, though it took me until 2022 to move beyond a few readings of TH and LoTR.
In fact, it was the Christmas season the family all went together to see the Hobbit and LoTR movies as they came out... one of our 'Christmas Treats' together.

Deimos said:

You have a barn?... and with animals???** How cool! (and rustic) 🙂

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yup. It's very cool, and also very rustic! Our kids love the cows and sheep we have, and we love taking care of them, even if milking the cow and scraping the poop away is sometimes the last straw. it's especially "rustic" after a long day of pouring rain, like we've had the last few days. All the pastures are incredibly soggy, and one by the river flooded. Luckily all the livestock was inside already.
It's certainly very rewarding to be able to provide literally hundreds of people with fresh clean milk, and of course the lambs in spring are the best!
We also have a small plot of land that we garden - just a few square feet for our kids to dig around in, and the manure does wonders for that.