Autumn comes, time to pull out the decorations

 
Autumn is my favorite season of the year! Probably because it symbolizes warm pumpkin pies, steaming curried lamb soup, hot chocolate and tea, snuggling under the covers with a good book, cold air blowing on your face while the rest of you is toasty inside a snug jacket. . . I love cool weather, because then the other people out there decide to wear some real clothes too.

There is just a feeling that comes with the fall weather that reminds me of something I can't quite put my finger on. The sun seems to be at a funny place in the sky, all of the orange and yellow makes me relax and think of hibernating. When I was a kid, my brothers and sister and I would be outside raking leaves into piles and running through them. I always tried to jump in them like the kids in books did, but I never really saw the point. They weren't really a soft landing. Running through them, however, was great fun. Crackling them up into tiny bits in my hand was even better.

I like to decorate my home with the change of seasons in order to savour the atmosphere more. Bright flowers and vines (fake of course) get strung up around the windows and at the tops of my drapes during spring-time, garlands of golden leaves take their places in the fall, while shiny pumpkins, dried corn, and plastic squash decorate other parts of my home. In the winter, evergreen boughs and cinnamon scented pine cones appear, along with red and golden plaid fabric. The summer is a bit tricky, but then, it's so hot that no one really cares around here;)

Simple little things like that can really enrich a home and a life. All of the changes the earth is going through really come alive when we utilize changes in what we see, taste, smell and feel. This is something that Holy Mother Church recognizes as well. When people make fun of us traddies for "lingering after the smells and bells" of the Tridentine mass, I don't get mad at them, I feel sorry for them. What an empty, joyless and sparse existence they must put up with day after day. We humans were given five senses for a reason. Each sense enriches our atmosphere, it helps our brains actually realize what is happening. There is a limit to what fact can enable us to understand, and the senses take up where fact leaves off.

To be good wives and mothers, we need to take the time to enrich our homes with these kinds of symbols and things pleasing to the senses. Our homes should be a wonderful place for our husbands to return to after work, a place they'll look forward to retire in each evening. It should be a pleasant wonderland for our children. A lot of women, myself included, get so wrapped up in what's going on during the day that we feel we must prioritize, only doing what's important to keeping the family running. Some of us even feel guilty if we take the time to do something that doesn't seem to have value to it, so we just keep our houses clean and that's that. No silly primping and setting things up that will just catch dust. I tend to think though, that even if your knick-knacks will catch dust, it's not too hard to clean them up later, especially if you get a child to help you. The joy a pretty home can bring you and your family is well worth the extra work, methinks.