This is my favorite time of day, especially during the Christmas season. The house is quiet. Sunrise is just beginning. Aunt Grace’s Yule log is playing on the DVD:) Hank is having a post-Fancy Feast nap, and Cheeto has gone outside to play, leaving me to my solitude and my coffee. (By the way, I seem to be turning into Aunt Joyce. Dave pointed out that I have taken to drinking rivers of java, just as she did. I’m not sure why that's the case, but if it was good enough for Aunt Joyce, why, it’s good enough for me.)
I guess I don’t do the hustle and bustle of Christmas very well any more. Truthfully, I never did, but there was a time when I didn’t seem to have a choice. When I was young and single and working for a corporation, I used to dream of skipping Christmas altogether, of getting on a boat or a plane and escaping to some tropical island till it was all over. Why? Have you ever jumped waves at the beach? Sometimes, if you look away for just a minute, you’ll turn around to see a huge one coming at you—one that’s too big to jump and too close to run from. That’s what the holidays felt like to me—just an overwhelming wave of gifts to buy and parties to attend and traffic to struggle through and parking spaces to fight for and church programs to practice, and, and, and . . . Every waking minute from Thanksgiving till New Year’s was spoken for, and even that wasn’t enough time to get everything done. I longed for a lounge chair on a deserted beach somewhere in the Florida Keys. (I know. Scrooge. Bah humbug.)
It isn’t that I didn’t want to do all those things—I just hated doing them at warp speed, which is what you have to do when you’re working full time and suddenly quadruple the entries on your social calendar. What I wanted was a soap opera Christmas—time to lovingly hand-paint each family member’s name on an ornament like Mrs. Horton on Days of Our Lives. Time to sip hot chocolate and make a huge production out of putting the star on the Christmas tree like Laura on General Hospital, back when she was dating Scotty Baldwin. You never saw Mrs. Horton grabbing for electronics at Walmart. Laura never had to fight for a parking space at Target or load up on Jovan Musk gift sets just to be covered, in case she should forget one of her girlfriends and need an emergency gift. (Neither Laura nor Mrs. Horton ever had to confess, as I do now, that I did not manage to send Christmas cards this year, but I love you dearly, friends and family, and will strive to do better in 2015.)
This Christmas is, mercifully, so much quieter than holidays past. But there’s a flip side to the tranquility. I don’t miss the mall traffic, but I mightily miss watching Granny open her presents. (Whoever said “things can’t make you happy” had never met Granny.) I don’t miss all the parties, but I sure miss some of them—like an annual Christmas supper at Aunt Joyce’s, where you could count on candied sweet potatoes to die for and a big plate of fudge and divinity. I miss crowding around Aunt Mac’s coffee table, where my cousins and I would eat together before we opened our presents as kids. I miss the way that, no matter how many seating areas Dave and I tried to create for a choir party we used to host, everybody would end up crowded into our small living room because we had more fun when we were all together.
That’s the key really—being together with people you love and remembering that Christmas is (or at least should be) a celebration of God’s gift of love to the world. We need that annual reminder to be thankful for the wonderful family and friends who daily bless our lives. We need to remember what Christmas really means—that we are loved and valued and forgiven. And we need this season to remind us that love is a gift we’re intended to share and pass on.
The Christmas I described earlier—the one with mall traffic and an overflow of social obligations, the one I wanted to run from—that was a Christmas largely of my own making. The Christmas of true remembrance, of thanks for the love I’ve been given, the Christmas I very much need—that’s a gift from God.
Wishing you the love and joy of God’s Christmas this year.
[Image by Freerangestock.com]
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