Christmas is a complicated holiday for me. I know I’m not the only one.
First I learned how to have it without Grandpa. And then without Mom, and then without Grandma. This year I’ll learn how to have it without Dad. There aren’t a lot of us left anymore.
When I was small, I bought into the same stories about Christmas I think a lot of us get sold on–this image of a day of perfect happiness, with everybody you love and who loves you all squeezed into one place, with lots of lights and beautiful things and prettily wrapped gifts and, ideally, the weather cooperating for that picturesque winter landscape scene that only happens in certain latitudes anyway.
But what I’ve realized over the years is that Christmas is supposed to be about love, right? I mean, regardless whether you’re actually Christian or just celebrating it culturally, that’s the gist. And love isn’t the same as happiness.
Love hurts, because the people you love are finite, flawed and mortal, and they screw up, they hurt you, and sooner or later, you lose them. Love hurts because it’s about caring whether other people are suffering or happy. Because when the people you love hurt, so do you.
Christmas is really a day in celebration of the good days: the ones when the people you love are okay, and you can relax on their behalf. The ones when you can find a way to do something to lighten the load of someone who’s suffering. The ones when you’ve been hurting, but somebody does something for you that breaks through the misery and makes tears pop into your eyes in relief. The ones when something good happens in the world for a change, and that choking worry that we’re all going over a cliff together in a handbasket eases up a bit. It’s a day in celebration of days that don’t always happen on Christmas–even though it’s nice when they do–and in celebration of people who aren’t always the ones you’re surrounded with. Maybe sometimes it’s a day to be thankful for the days when you were.
These days, for me, Christmas is about being grateful that I’ve been fortunate enough to know that kind of goodness and love, so that I can try to pass it on.
So Merry Christmas to you from me, and here are my hopes that you have a year full of the days that Christmas is about.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1miBZmV