Christmas time!

It's offically Chrismas time! YEAH! So I got up this morning (ok, it was rather around noon), looked at my belly, decided it was still really flat and ran into the kitchen to start the fun. I tore open the bags of Spekulatius and ginger bread and stuffed my mouth with it.....mmmmmhhhh....I love Christmas time. I love the smells, the food and sometimes even the cold weather.
I wrote blogs about what I love about summer and autumn. Now I'll write one about what I love about Christmas and winter since Christmas (at least the food part) might last until early February. I'm pretty strict about not starting before the first of advent but I don't have a rule about when to stop :)

So, here's my Why-I-Like- Christmas/Winter list:

I like...
- ginger bread and spekulatius (traditional German cookies)
- Glühwein (hot wine you drink in order not to get cold)
- stollen
- German christmas markets
- the smell of oranges
- all the beautiful candles in our house
- the decorated towns and houses
- reading in my warm bed
- walks in the snow (if it was there)
- skiing (if there was snow...)
- Christmas songs (at least some of them)
- family time
- Christmas day
- buying stuff for the people I love (to a certain degree)
- listening to the christmas story and thinking about the original reason why we get the eat, drink and enjoy all the things mentioned above
- seeing my relatives
- the smiles on the little kids faces on Christmas
- Santa Claus
- all the TV shows about what happened during the year (just a nice way to reflect on the year)
- New Year's Eve
-the fireworks on New Year's Eve

It makes me sad that this Christmas will be different. Less happy since Nico is still very much depressed. I miss the feeling of security. Usually everybody is happy on Christmas and we are proud of the things we achieved during the year together as a family. This year, we will have to force Nico to do pretty much everything. I hope I can do all this without crying and my parents will have the strength needed as well. Yet, there's still time for a Christmas miracle.

What do you like about Christmas?