It could always be counted on that regardless of what the rest of the year held, Christmas was magical. It was perfect.<\/p>\n
Regardless of what
\nthe rest of the year doled
\nif you could hold out for Christmas
\neverything would be okay.
\nHope would be restored
\nenough hope to last the whole year.<\/p>\n
It was everywhere…
\nin the giant tree neighbors and friends lovingly referred to as our Christmas bush<\/p>\n
in innumerable lights and garland<\/p>\n
in the family cut out cookies<\/p>\n
in oyster stew morning
\nin Dad’s meticulously placed tinsel
\nand Mom’s handmade gifts<\/p>\n
in genuine smiles and laughter
\nand easy peace<\/p>\n
Hope enough to last a whole year<\/p>\n
to remind us that even when we
\nweren’t our best
\nit would all be okay.<\/p>\n
Hope enough to get through Thanksgiving<\/p>\n
to make it to the magic again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It could always be counted on that regardless of what the rest of the year held, Christmas was magical. It was perfect. Regardless of what the rest of the year doled if you could hold out for Christmas everything would be okay. Hope would be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous","category-poetry-prompt-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95745,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95692\/revisions\/95745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}