Believe

Christy and I spent Thanksgiving with my family in Illinois once again this year. We also use this time to celebrate Christmas with my family. As usual, it was a blast. It was especially fun this year because our niece is nearly 2 years old. Watching her open Christmas presents was hilarious.

Our Thanksgiving/Christmas vacations together are always fun. We usually try to fill part of our time with going somewhere unique. This year, we went to the Festival Of Trees at the Illinois State Fairground in Springfield. Basically, it's just a big building filled with Christmas trees and gingerbread houses that are decorated in special ways. The trees and houses are judged and awarded prizes.

Speaking of gingerbread, fresh homemade gingerbread men were for sale. We maimed a few. They were delicious.

The theme this year was "Believe." Most of the trees and displays related to this theme. It was interesting to see all the different interpretations of the word "Believe" for Christmas time. There were many trees that were dedicated to believing in Santa (obviously). There were trees dedicated to believing in magic and miracles. There was a tree dedicated to believing that the Chicago Bears will win the Super Bowl (seriously). There were trees dedicated to believing that cures would be found to various disease. There were trees dedicated to believing in angels. The list went on and on.

I understand that most of those things are good and fun things to believe in. But it did make me a little sad that when the hundreds of people who were involved in decorating these trees heard the word "Believe" in reference to Christmas, the first thing that popped into their heads was Santa, magic, sports, cures, or angels.