Holiday Island
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    by Scott Gilbertson
    </jrnl/2019/12/holiday-island>
    Tuesday, 31 December 2019

It rained pretty much all day for a couple days. We spent way too much time indoors. Thankfully there were a lot of recent birthday gifts to keep the kids occupied. 

We considered giving the kids their new rain boots a few days early, but the nice thing about storms in South Carolina is that even at Christmas, it's warm enough for flipflops.

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The rain let up the day before Christmas. The wind and cold came in behind the storm, but it wasn't bad enough to keep us off the beach. Looking at our kids you'd never know it was cold. They'd have been swimming if we'd let them. And we would have let them if the surf wasn't so rough. They settled for running around at the shoreline exploring all the treasure the storm brought ashore.

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Some friends of ours come to Edisto for Christmas every year. When they found out we were going to be in the area as well, they invited us over for some cookie decorating on Christmas eve. It was kid sugar heaven. 

Normally this is the sort of thing I like to do early in the day and then take the kids out somewhere and let them run off the sugar. I was surprised at their restraint though. They went over the top decorating cookies, but they didn't eating them. I mean they ate their fill, but their fill turned out to not be very many. I'd have eaten the lot and been sick.

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I'm sure anyone with kids can say the same, but Christmas started before dawn. I never realized it until I had kids, but stockings aren't about gifts, they're about stalling the main present opening long enough to make some coffee. And monkey bread. Coffee is even better with monkey bread.

My favorite part of Christmas, or any other time there's gifts being given, is watching the kids give each other gifts. They have the same look of anticipation and excitement watching someone open a gift they've carefully picked out as they do getting something themselves. It's impossible to strip the gross face of consumer culture from Christmas at this point, but there's these little moments like this, the honest enthusiasm of giving and sharing, where I can see what it must have once been like, not all that long ago.

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After Christmas it was back to the beach to see what new treasures had come ashore. The sea is a little like Santa Claus. But real.

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