What on earth? Is it really possible?

I just realized that as I sit and write this week’s Editor’s Notebook column that Christmas is less than a week away. How can that be? Wasn’t Thanksgiving just a couple days ago and Halloween was just last week?

Remember back when we were kids and it took FOREVER for Christmas to get here? And now, it races towards us at breakneck speed.

This year we will be spending Christmas – and New Year’s – in California with our son, Nate, and his family, our daughter-in-law Sue and our grandkids Andrew and Lauren. Lauren, of course, is a native Blue Earthian, having been born in Blue Earth some 14 years ago before the family moved to California.

And before you get too jealous that we are leaving the cold and snow of Minnesota for a trip to sunny, southern California, let me just say they live in northern California, outside San Francisco, and they have been having chilly, cloudy, rainy weather.

The trip will probably bring back some memories for me, as I spent my first 13 Christmases in the San Diego area.

We had the typical Christmas celebration. We went to church on Christmas Eve where my brothers and I were often part of the service, as we attended the Lutheran school at the church, so we sang in the youth choir.

Then it was home and getting to open one and only one gift. On Christmas morning we opened all the other gifts – and got to see what Santa had brought us.

There were not a lot of gifts under the tree. And usually one was a nice toy and others might have been new clothes. My dad was in the Navy and my mother was a stay-at-home-mom. With three boys to feed, times were a bit tight.

One Christmas, when I was 12, our Christmas was a bit delayed as our mother Natalie, was busy having another child, another son. We joked that he was our Christmas gift that year.

On Christmas Day, after an early gift opening frenzy, it was get dressed and go to church. After church we went to my uncle Marvin and aunt Viola’s house for a big Christmas dinner. Marvin was my mother’s brother, and he had three daughters. They were the reason my mother went to California from Minnesota. She was sent to take care of her three little nieces when their mother was sick and in the hospital.

In California she met this sailor from Tennessee and they were married in California.

Our family traditions now are a bit different than what I had as a child. When I was growing up, there wasn’t really a time of going to grandpa and grandma’s house for Christmas. Mine lived in Minnesota and Tennessee so that never happened.

Now we try and have Christmas with our adult kids and their spouses and as many grandkids as possible. And we throw in some siblings and others as well. Sometimes our house is mighty full.

Not this year, however. At least not on Christmas Day. Our big family Christmas will be postponed until we are back from California.

Christmas Day has one other bittersweet memory for my family. My father passed away on Christmas Day, now some 30 plus years ago. So it is always a day to remember him.

And if that is not enough, all three of my children were born three years apart to the day, a few days after Christmas each time. So we had a lot of things going on during the Christmas Season. Although we did our best to make each event memorable.

That is my Christmas memories and traditions. I am sure that you, and your family, have your own memories and traditions.

Many of them are probably quite similar. But it seems like each family has a few twists in how they celebrate, and when they celebrate. Sometimes it is the weekend before, or after, actual Christmas Day.

Whatever you do to celebrate, and however you do it, I hope it is a chance for you to celebrate not only Christ’s birth, but celebrate family as well.

And I also hope that you will have at least a little time to enjoy reading this week’s Faribault County Register, which we have once again tried to fill with lots and lots of Good News stories and photos.

Each year this Good News edition is our Christmas gift to you, our readers.

May you all have a blessed, meaningful – and interesting – Christmas, no matter where you are or how you celebrate it.

Merry Christmas to all!