Happy Christmas= Merry Christmas, but in Scottish.
Merry Christmas everyone! And Happy New Year when we get to it, too!
Don't worry about too much to drink, don't worry about too many Christmas cookies, don't worry about people liking your gifts/forgetting your gift, whatever.
The thing is, is that it's about togetherness. You have the rest of the year to not order the extra margarita, the rest of the year to turn away your great aunt's famous cookies.
Life is short, and this time of year, it's about being together. It's about surrounding yourselves with the people that you love and that love you, and celebrating that togetherness and that love. And for those Christian readers out there, yes, of course, it celebrates the birth of Jesus. But what better way to celebrate that than to reach out to the people you love, and enjoy their company while you are both on earth to enjoy it!
Live it up. Like I said, life is short, and you probably in all reality are only going to live to be 80-90 already, giving you really only 80-90 christmases in your whole lifetime. That's less than 100, people! And if you are my age, you only have around 50-60 of them left....
And the people you love (mom, grandpa, etc)--well, you have even less christmases to be with them.....
(Oh crap, now I'm going to make myself all sad and cry. Look at how our best intentions fail!)
The point is, don't let anything silly get in the way of your holiday. I know it's hectic, I know you are probably worrying about getting from place to place for all the festivities, but instead of the mindset of "wow, I'm frazzled and this sucks. I'm cold, I'm sick of eggnog, I'm tired, and I'd love to just go and sit and watch TV and rest for a while", change it so that you don't dread the holiday chaos, but welcome it. You only have a few more times to do it.
I remember once, when I was young. I don't remember how old I was, but sometime under age 9. My parents used to take us to bed and tuck us in each night. We thought it was a special treat when my Dad tucked us in, because he worked out of town a lot and wasn't home all the time. So when he was home, he would tuck us in, and it was great. Well he tucked us in one Christmas night, and he used to make a big show of tucking all our covers around our bodies so we couldn't move our arms and legs and would holler "No! Dad! No! I can't move!" and we would of course be laughing, and he would say "Well you told me to tuck you in..."
anyways, I digress.....
Christmas night one year, he tucked me in. And then he kneeled down at the end of my bed, propped his chin up under his elbows, and asked me "Well, did you have the perfect Christmas? Was there anything that you wanted that Santa didn't bring?" I told him yes, my Christmas was perfect, and no, Santa remembered EVERYTHING.
I think about that moment a lot, especially at Christmas, when I see people crowding into toy stores, buying cart loads of dolls and legos and video games. Families aren't perfect. Parents aren't perfect. But it's examples like that, memories like that, that remind us that the point is, look how much they love us. Not because they buy a gazillion toys, not because they spend thousands of dollars, but look how hard they try to make us happy!! It really is the thought that counts. I think the fact that I told my dad that year that my Christmas was perfect--I think that made HIS Christmas perfect, too.
Enjoy it people, it won't be here forever. Merry Christmas. And to my loyal lady readers--I love you gals:) I hope you all have wonderful, spectacular, supercalafragilistic-expialadoshes holidays.
posted by ElliottPreciousPants @ 6:57 AM
1 Comments:
ah.. the christmas spirit in spam....
good reminder. i go crazy trying to get everything done, and this year, i cried because my brother offered to bring the veggie tray, said he could definitely make time to go buy stuff for it, i called to make sure he could AT NOON on christmas eve, and he told me to quit fussing, that it was taken care of, repeated that he knew the supermarket closed at 7pm, and assured me he would take care of it by then.
Later, wrapping gifts for my dad (who doesn't grocery shop or wrap gifts, but waits til i come home and has me do both...) the phone rang. it was 6:35. my bro on the other end told me there was no way he could get to the market by 7. I still had my knitting to finish, not done because my bro had duplicated like 10 gifts i got that he knew i had already purchased at thanksgiving, and i was forced to spend the day before and the morning of christmas eve purchasing last minute crap to make up for it. i was so pissed. i jumped in the car in my pjs, raced to the market, only to find that there were no more baby carrots (peeled, washed, and ready to roll), only the wash-peel-chop up kind, no celery, only one kind of dip, some pea pods, some elderly looking broccoli crowns, and orange peppers, which i love, but no green. i spent a fortune getting stuff we didn't really want, but that would do, and raced back home to finish wrapping and get dressed before midnight mass.
on christmas day, my family (which actually never argues on the holidays), went nuts that my brother- who had duplicated all my gifts and failed to come thru on the veggies, and for whom i had purchased a very expensive digital camera- wanted to leave our family right after dinner to go see his girlfriend, who has never made an appearence for dinner with us.... needless to say, everything escalated until i realized my brother was going to walk out and leave and drive almost 2 hrs on christmas, angry, and in awful weather. My brother has never de-escalated an argument in his entire life- which is why i fear for him being a cop. i followed him and asked him to go in to smooth things over, and do his best to calm down and be reasonable. HE GOES- SURE, NO PROBLEM!!! and went back in and tried to make it all better. it didn't work, and he wound up cancelling plans with his girlfriend, and i felt bad about that, but what a christmas miracle that my bro- MY BRO- attempted to act grown up, and put a lot of other people's feelings above his own. I almost forgot about the veggie tray and my unfinished knitting and all the present duplicates... my family was happy to pitch in peeling carrots and to give back their knitted gifts to be completed and shipped later. everyone drove home calmly and safely later in the evening, and there was a big happy ending.
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