No Craven Christmas tree is complete, without a fancy silver spider. As a kid, we grew up with a book called "Cobweb Christmas." I loved reading this book, along side all the other Christmas books we read, to occupy our personal time waiting for Santa to arrive after we militaristically tidied up our bedrooms to be "Christmas Clean," so Dad could check them off our list of chores when he got home from work on Christmas Eve. This book was out of print for years up until 2006. When Mom died that year, she wanted all her kids to have a copy of this Children's book to share at each of our own homes with family. Mom and my oldest sister Shelly had located a bunch of these books and Mom made efforts to start making silver spiders for everyone that Christmas. She was not able to finish that project before she passed. That Christmas Shelly picked up where Mom left off and finished the silver spiders and wrote in each of these books for us younger siblings. In the few Christmas's since Mom has died, I've come to appreciate with much deeper understanding, the magic she and my Dad created at Christmas with little budget. Holly and I love putting this spider on our Christmas tree, recanting the "tale" of how tinsel on Christmas trees became to be. In the back depths of my mind, I can still see my Mom in her mu-mu dress and homemade apron, seeing to dinner cooking on the stove, and in between stirring this, or mixing that, she was throwing tinsel on the tree to ready it for the Christmas Season. I look forward to sharing these memories of "Grandma Craven at Christmas" with our daughter, and keeping the spirit of Mom alive in our minds and memories forever.
1 comment:
I will never forget that Christmas. We all balled our eyes out when we got the books and the lovely spider ornaments.
I'm glad I was introduced to this story, it will definitely be one we share with our daughter.
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