Our Token Holiday Decorations
The winter holiday season used to be an exciting time of the year for me, filled with festive parties and happy social gatherings with my family and friends.
I remember the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg.
The delighted sounds of my children’s laughter.
The twinkling lights and beautiful decorations.
I used to throw myself into the festivities at a feverish pitch, vowing each year to have the best tree ever, the most perfect presents ever, the most joyous family reunions. Ever.
Now our grown children are spread out all over the country, have families of their own, and are busy creating their own Christmas traditions.
Ed and I made the decision several years ago to no longer engage in the holiday frenzy. All of the hoopla just doesn’t make sense anymore for our lives. We live far from our extended and nuclear family; we seldom eat rich foods; and we don’t need more stuff in the form of presents.
Not wanting to be complete humbugs, we contribute to our community by helping decorate our poolside clubhouse, and we have hung a single strand of lights on the front patio of our desert casita.
Although it feels great to withdraw from the hysteria around us, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I think I must be lacking, deficient, imperfect.
And that makes me almost unbearably sad.
In only two sentences Marlena says she both “feels great and sad” In this holiday season. While I would like life to be simpler, I too often feel this complexity of emotions. Rather than demanding a logically clearer set of reactions to the world around me I suspect it is much healthier to allow these feelings to flow within me like the clouds crossing the sky. They too will pass.
I love Christmas, but each year it does seem like a bigger burden to carry off the expectations. I am married to a Christmas glitz Lover, though, So I try to be a good sport. He had the whole outside of the house lit up like a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Seems to me it is all about the children—the little ones and the grown-up ones!
“I am married to a Christmas glitz Lover, though, So I try to be a good sport.”
Those could have been Ed’s words about me (“Christmas glitz lover”) for quite a long time. I’m slowly (and schizophrenically) becoming enlightened!!