Skip to main content

Post-Christmas Blues


As far back as I can remember, Christmas has been my favorite holiday. As soon as I could write, I’d pen my letter to Santa.  I’d start with all my merits – obedient, kind, star pupil – then, I would hit him with all the things I felt I deserved, my purchase order list of Christmas wants.
I’d direct him to the better buys, where he could get my toy at the best price, and if that didn’t work (I knew who the real Santa was), I’d leave catalogs lay about the house, opened to the page and with the item circled in ink pen. Sometimes, I’d sigh loudly and mention that the “Barbie I want is on page 362 of the Sears Catalog.”
In the twenty-two years I lived with my parents, I never once got anything I had asked from Santa.
I got stupid things like a pink teddy bear (pink?), a neon green outfit that enhanced my sallow skin (and I looked like I had jaundice), and a second-hand boy’s bike my parents found at a garage sale when I turned eighteen (I was past the bike stage and ready for a car).
Talk about suffering from the post-Christmas blues!
It didn’t get any better after I went out into the world. I was married to a husband who for the twenty-nine years we were together only saw as far as the end of his nose.
I learned a valuable lesson in the first half of my life, and I thank my parents and my ex-husband for it. 
Christmas isn’t about things.  It’s about acceptance, joy, and family. Christmas isn’t one day out of 365.  It’s with us all year long.
When I look at it from that perspective, I can look back at the pink teddy bear and the neon outfit and the second-hand boy’s bike and smile at the memories. I can look back at all those Christmases I spent alone (even when the ex was sitting in the chair next to me in the living room) while my husband spent it on the phone talking to “business partners” and realize his selfishness was his alone and not mine.
I do not have to depend on others or hype or things to celebrate Christmas. It starts within me.  Okay, before I end with the nanu-nanu song from the cartoon version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, let me clarify that.
Christmas is my favorite holiday because it reminds me to love one another, but especially to love myself. I can do all the trappings – the tree, the decorations, the baking – but unless I love and accept myself with the same fervor as our Creator does, it is all artificial, and it becomes about things instead of what really matters – acceptance, joy, and family.  
If God (this is GOD we are talking about, people) thought me worthy, maybe I should do the same.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding My Muse

1)Because my muse has a wicked sense of humor and visits me at odd times and in inconvenient places, I have learned to record inspirations/ideas immediately before I forget them or they dissolve into nothing. I carry small notebooks, own a digital recorder, and have been known to text messages home. I will scribble on anything – old napkins I find in my glove compartment or old receipts. I even pop out of bed in the middle of the night to jot things on sticky pads. 2)Calendars are great places to find topics. I use important dates, seasons, and upcoming holidays to plan blog posts. I can also go back into my work calendar to refresh my memory about meetings, conferences, or books I have read that might be worth sharing with others.   3)I will sit with a good cup of coffee, pen and paper ready, and read the newspaper searching for topics, interesting characters, or modern trends.  News channels and other newsfeeds are just as good.   4)I love to read the TV and movie guides for titles and…
4 comments
Read more

My Thoughts and Prayers

This phrase has come under scrutiny lately, called trite, overused, ineffective, insulting.  Yet, when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in August 2017, there was little more most of us could do other than contribute money and goods, and offer our thoughts and prayers. When the lone gunman killed all those innocent people while they attended Sunday services in November 2017, there was little most of us could do other than contribute money and goods, and offer our thoughts and prayers. Very few of us are trained in rescue efforts or how to take down a shooter.If we tried, we would slow the efforts of those who can, so we help in the best way we can.We offer our sympathy and our prayers. Instead of on our knees or offering sympathy, those who make fun demand instead that we should be on our feet, marching and demanding change. Their displaced anger blinds them to the fact that as human beings we need emotional and physical support as much as we need food, water, and safety/shelter. My knees a…
Post a Comment
Read more

The Girl Who Eats Canned Spinach

I went to a Catholic elementary school run by strict Belgian nuns, and we could not leave the cafeteria until we ate everything served on our food tray. Once a week, they served warmed, canned spinach with our meal. The spinach tasted nothing like the way my grandmother made it, but I ate it. I gulped it down in three or four bites and it amazed my table mates. I told them we ate it at home so I was used to the taste. Now, my real problem began the day I ate the spinach off my friends’ trays so we could go play outside. As soon as the nun monitoring the cafeteria turned her back, my friends ate something off my tray I didn’t want, and I ate their serving of spinach. I only did it for two of my table mates, but the word spread. On the next Spinach Day, kids followed me to my table.I was suddenly very popular, and as soon as the nun marched off to the other end of the cafeteria, my friends and an army of others who only knew me as The Girl Who Eats Spinach, begged me to take their servin…
Post a Comment
Read more