A "Canton Christmas"

Unexpected sensory experiences can be disarmingly evocative! 

This morning, while scrolling through the morning's posts on Facebook, I was stopped in my tracks by a familiar black and white image.  The image was a photograph of my hometown of Canton, Georgia taken at a time when Christmas would have been especially meaningful to me, the mid-1960s.  (I was likely 5 or 6 years old when the photo was snapped.)

A random but familiar photo, like a familiar smell or sound, can rocket you back in time to a place, a moment, a feeling.  And so this one did me.  Although the lack of color doesn't deliver the complexity of the image, in my mind I see the silver of the tinsel, the red and green of the stranded lights, the warm, yellowish hue of the lit star (not that GARISH blue-white light that is becoming so uncomfortably common today.)  But it isn't what's going on in my mind that is so meaningful about this photo.  You'll have to move a little lower for that!

The image in this photo resides in my heart.  When I see it, I shiver from the cold, I smell the Christmas tree, I taste Mom's hot chocolate, I see the decorations over the street and, more than anything else, I feel loved the way only a child can feel loved.  It's a warm, life-affirming feeling and such a special memory!

My wish for all who read this is that you have something, a photo, a smell, a taste, a sound, that triggers your own memory of a "Canton Christmas". 

Merry Christmas!