christmas past

Everybody always expects Christmas to be some special magical day.  That's how I was raised and my parents went all out on Santa even though it was, I'm sure, a financial strain.  I have pictures and vivid memories of three little farm kids growing up year by year in the red log cabin.  Both of my parents loved the season and they commenced to decking the halls right after Thanksgiving.  There was always a live tree, often a white pine that got planted and one was run over by my brother.....he and his buddy tried to duct tape it together.  There were electric candles in the windows and wreaths with bows all across the front.  There was one that daddy decorated outside until it got to be "too much."  You could see that thing all the way from my road.  They had an annual Christmas party for their friends and she would bake for days getting ready.  Everything from scratch was her motto.  That, eventually became too much as well.  I remember her having a breakdown from a low potassium on the night before a party and it was like the end of the world having to cancel.  

Like a lot of people we went from parents' house to grandma's and the aunts and uncles and them.  It was too much, really, for little kids.  We got a bunch of stuff that we couldn't enjoy much right then because we had to pack up and go somewhere else.  And by golly, we turned around and did the same thing when I became a parent to that tow headed little girl.  On her 2nd Christmas she cried just wanting to go to bed.  

The cabin sits empty now, all its' days of glory preserved carefully by my mother.  We always took for granted that we were all close by until my youngest brother moved to Virginia and had his own family.  Such is life.

Here's the thing.  Christmas is a season of joyous anticipation with a spirit of giving.  Presents don't matter.  It's who you're with.  I think long and hard of public servants who are at work on that special day and of those who are alone and have nobody to spend the holiday with.  My mother's standing joke was about her coming back to haunt me if I ever put antlers or bunny ears on her at the nursing home.  

People get sick and die no matter what day of the year.  Every holiday season is a first for somebody in acute grief.  And it doesn't end there.  Each milestone reminds us of days past.  Each of us is actively grieving something be it a person, job, marriage or any other major life change.  It is the end of "who we were" and the beginning of who we will become.

Peace on earth seems impossible in this day and time.  The vitriol and deception that we are exposed to daily tends to bring out the aggressive side of some folks.  That's why I stay in my little cave of a house most of the time.  People can be good but by golly they can be mean too.  I went to Lowe's today for lamp sockets and it took three guys to help me find what I needed.  Actually it was the one guy who knew but the other two were waiting on him to get free.  Everybody learned something about sockets today.  Just saying.

All we are saying....is give peace a chance.