I'll be honest. I'm not enjoying this holiday and Christmas season as much as I have in years past. Hopefully, this is as close to the old Ebeneezer Scrooge as I'll ever be. As I was looking for a few extra "Santa" gifts for the boys, I was still muttering under my breath. Why? Don't I enjoy this challenge?
Well, it dawned on me. I have normally had a "significant other" to shop for, and the boys' stockings to fill. Whether easy, or difficult, practical, romantic, or comfortable, I enjoy looking for gifts. It's not actually what I find, not the gift itself, but the search that seems important to me. Even if I get annoyed or cross at not knowing or finding the "right" gift, it is a challenge that I enjoy, much like I enjoy a long run. Each year before, I may have "protested too much" over the difficulty and hardship of hanging the lights, decorating cookies, finding the gifts, and filling the stockings.
I still get to do most of it this year, whether alone or with the boys. However, the missing pieces have eaten at me. Here's how weird it got. Last night, I even chose one of my Facebook friends, and decided to explore the question: "If I were shopping for her, what would I get?" This "friend" was not especially close, but still, I used what little I knew and started looking around the web, eventually finding a gift that I thought would be quirky like me, but something she'd get a kick out of and enjoy. I went so far as to fill out the order form, billing, shipping, even my card number.
All I had to do was hit "complete order." However, receiving an anonymous gift like that from some "Secret Santa" may be cool for a few. For others, it would creepy. Instead--with a sigh--I hit the little "x" in the right corner to close the window. Still, I felt a little better. I got to do my search.
Then, this morning I went for my run, and I began to feel lighter. I remembered: this season isn't in the gifts or even in the giving, as so many say. All this is meant to point to the real center. It is a birthday party. It was a birthday party with a gift given to the world expressing an undying promise. Love: there is a force of Life and Love that defies darkness, or any periods of depression and grief. ...And I was reminded of one of my favorite Christmas writings of Charles Dickens. This is one that has come to mean more to me each year.
Merry Christmas, my friends. You are all welcome around my Christmas fire!
An excerpt from "What Christmas Is as We Grow Older" by Charles Dickens:
...Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven! Do we build no Christmas castles in the clouds now? Let our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among these flowers of children, bear witness! Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with truth.
...Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open- hearted! In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the blaze, an enemy's face? By Christmas Day we do forgive him! If the injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come here and take his place. If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence, assured that we will never injure nor accuse him. On this day we shut out Nothing!
"Pause," says a low voice. "Nothing? Think!"
"On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing."
"Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying deep?" the voice replies. "Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe? Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?"
Not even that. Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we loved, among us. City of the Dead, in the blessed name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are dear to us!
