My seasonal song this morning is ‘My Favourite Time of Year’. This Christmas song was performed by ‘The Florin Street Band’ which was written and sung by British composer Leigh Hggerwood in 2010. His aim was to create a song with strong melodies that would match the classics and bring back the Christmas magic that he felt had been missing from the UK charts for decades.
Had I one wish to bring back something, it would be to restore the child in every adult, at least for some seasons throughout the year. Adults do tend to be too damn serious for our own good far too often, you know. There is so much happiness we can learn from the activity of young children having fun, especially when playing merrily in the snow and allowing their imagination to run riot. I also dedicate my seasonal song this morning to the child in every adult longing to get out.
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There are few activities that please small children as much as rolling up the snow into a larger ball to help dad and mum make a snowman. Children at play in the seasonal snow possess the imagination to take all their dreams and roll them up into the biggest snowball ever made. Then, with the help of a few old clothes and items which are found around the household, they wave their magic wand and produce Mr. Snowman.
With lots of imagination and little effort, granddad’s old hat is placed on the snowman’s head, dad’s scarf is placed around the snowman’s neck, a carrot is used for its nose, two pieces of coal for its eyes, and two half-moon-shaped pieces of watermelon for its mouth. To make the mouth realistic, granddad has loaned us his false teeth to use. An empty sewing bobbing is stuck at each side of the snowman’s head act as its ears, and what better use is there for mum’s old tin of buttons than to button up the snowman’s long white coat? To finish off Mr. Snowman, a cricket bat placed upside down with a glove fastened to the handle with an elastic band, makes an excellent arm and hand. Unless one wishes their snowman to be handicapped, two cricket bats will be required, and they will need to be hard-pressed flatly into the snowman’s body to remain stable. They will soon look perfect after the snow has continued to cover and merge them in with the other body parts.
Making a snowman with one’s children and grandchildren not only keeps the child happy and enthralled with the imaginative construction, but it also helps to express the child in oneself that secretly longs for every opportunity to be released into the happy adult. To ensure that we retain the child in us, adults must be prepared to both nurture and preserve the child in our children, as well as being unashamed to express the child in ourselves from time to time.
One will never make a splash in this life unless one is prepared to occasionally jump in puddles for the sheer pleasure of it! I will never forget a six-year-old child who I came across one day in Mirfield after it had been raining. Her mother was talking with another woman about ten yards away, and the waiting child had decided to occupy herself in the meantime with whatever was around. The small girl had those yellow Paddington Bear wellies on and was running in and out of a large puddle and jumping where the water was deepest. Seeing her little girl jumping in the puddle, led to her mother apologetically curtailing her conversation with her friend, and she started walking back to her child muttering loudly, “Silly girl! What are you doing? I can’t even leave you alone for a minute! Why... why are you jumping in that mucky puddle, you silly girl?” The young girl looked at her mother in amazement that anyone could ask her such a stupid question before boldly replying, “For fun!”
That six-year-old taught me in seconds, something that would remain with me the rest of my life. The very next time I saw a puddle, I remembered what the small girl had taught me and jumped in it for no other reason than to make a splash. As it turned out, that puddle contained magical properties I had never envisaged. It instantly released in me that child who had been imprisoned inside a straitjacket of adult seriousness for far too many years.
During the years that followed, I was to learn that all innocent pleasures any individual experiences go to make up the tapestry of total contentment. The pleasurable things we do today that help to make us happy now, can benefit enormously from the pleasurable things that made us happy yesterday. Our memory banks assist us in generating as much pleasure as we can from a ‘today experience’, by the mere recollection of a ‘former happy experience’ of a similar/identical event. This mental combination of pleasurable experiences from two time zones merge harmoniously in emotional equilibrium and effectively magnifies the intensity of one’s current ‘happy’ feeling.
So, the very next time nature presents you with a nice puddle in front of you, go on! Jump in it for the sheer fun of it and let the child in you out. But if you do and your partner or parents are at the side of you, don't expect anything other than a customary 'adult' response. If, however, there is a small girl or boy at your side, they will consider your action wholly harmless and fun, and automatically jump in the puddle after you and create their own splash!
We wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our family, neighbours, Facebook friends, and every child on God’s planet.
Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx