Channeling Holiday Spirit
Maxwell, Christmas morning 2010
All of the sudden, it’s winter. There is no doubt. My feet are cold, I’m wrapped in a blanket and the furnace is roaring. Baby, it’s cold outside!
I have to admit that I was not really believing it was time for the holidays this time last week. While cruising around Pittsburgh in 60-degree weather, my girlfriend and I kept hearing Christmas music and being very adamant that it was simply “late summer.” I tried to feel Christmasy, but it wasn’t happening. The random house with Christmas lights, including my own, felt wrong. I scoffed at the thought of the goose getting fat.
But then I took a holiday from work, meaning I have been off since Tuesday, drinking up time with family, the Black Friday excitement around me and cheap wine. And now? Oh, it’s Christmas.
Several things have indicated this to me and moved me in the right direction. My family’s Thanksgiving dinner tradition was the usual full course with plenty of extra treats for no less than sixty at a church hall. My annual Olive Garden dinner the next night with the women in my family is tradition too, though, sadly, I missed it this year. In lieu of Black Friday shopping, I made a consolatory–and successful–trip with the older two kids today. And I’ve been filling Origami Owl orders like crazy.
But this will all melt away soon.
Soon, what will remain will be the nut of what is important. I truly believe that we begin and end this life with family, and that family should be the focus at all the points in between. I’m so blessed to have relatives that believe this and share of their time and their lives with me. I believe in inside jokes and silly traditions and shared wine. I believe in honoring memories and making new ones, in passing down our story to the next generation.
And I believe in magic. Because how else can you explain the fact that my nine-year-old daughter still believes in Santa? And that, in a way, I do, too? Because Christmas is a feeling. It’s love and silent snowflakes and giving of ourselves and our talents and our gifts. It’s remembering those less fortunate and remembering Jesus’ birth.
And it’s being with the people that make us who we are, the blood relatives and the friends that may as well be–the people that tell our stories, who populate our lives, who would carry on our legacy if fate insisted.
If you aren’t yet feeling this way, I hope you will be soon. Take a minute (and a parka, hat and gloves) to go stare at the night sky. If you’re lucky, maybe a snowflake will land on your nose. And, maybe, in time, the holiday spirit will glow again in your heart, too.
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Very nice Erin Jo. Yes it has been difficult this yea. r to believe it is actually Christmas time. I don’t know if it was the warm weather or just the stress and strain of these times. Thanksgiving is the perfect way to bring the joy of family and friends to mind and thus the reason for the season. I hope Christmas blooms in each of our hearts and Carries us through all the preparations! Let it be Christmas everyday!
We are getting in the spirit here. We have hung the cut-out snowflakes throughout the house and constantly have the radio on Christmas music. It’s so magical when you see it through our children’s eyes. Can’t wait to go get the tree.