"Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store..."

--Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

When I was 8 years old, my grandmother died.  She died in October if I remember right, and for Christmas that year, my Aunt Laura flew us up to her home in New York for Christmas.  How in the world my mother took three small kids through the Atlanta airport is beyond me.  

My Aunt Laura lived in Pound Ridge, New York at the time.  Around the corner lived Fred Gwynne, who played Herman Munster.  It was a nice neighborhood!  Her house was perched on a hill overlooking a picturesque creek running through the woods.  It was straight out of a Hallmark gift card. I'd never seen so much snow in my life.  I can still remember my mom waking me up to come to the window to look at deer in the back yard.  I also remember feeling like her house was gigantic--much bigger than the 1200 square feet I grew up in.  Tall ceilings.  Fireplaces.  The opulence made an impression on me.  Maybe too much of one, but anyway...

For several years after that, Laura would send us Christmas ornaments each year.  They were always one of a kind and each year of my childhood, when we put up the tree, we always talked about what year we got each ornament.  Just typing that last sentence brings back a LOT of Christmas memories.  

Of all the ornaments I ever got, my favorite was this one.

I'm not sure why it was my favorite.  I've only ice-skated once, and I held onto the wall as I went around the rink in Eastdale Mall at a blistering pace of .06 mph.  Maybe it's because I wished I could ice skate.  Or maybe it's because it represented the fantasy world that we all have in our heads--the world of make-believe...the world of what we wish we had but don't.  Wait...that's crazy... it's just a piece of wood!  Right??

Christmas, to me, has always been about wonder.  The wonder in a child's eyes as he sits on his grandparents' couch thumbing through the Wish Book from JCP or Sears.  The wonder of a parent as she waits eagerly for her son to get home from Fort Drum.  The wonder of believers who still to this day marvel at the idea that perfection would leave Heaven and come down to this dump of a place called Earth.

And every time I open the box of Christmas ornaments, I am one year older, and the sense of wonder that I feel is somewhat different than last year, but yet the same.  I wonder at my kids' wonder.  I watch them stare at the presents under the tree, eagerly awaiting the tearing open of the wrapping paper.  It's truly awesome to give.

And yet, at the same exact time, Christmas has always been slightly tinged with a smidge of sadness. It's a time in which people really struggle.  With loneliness.  With anxiety.  With sadness.  With missing a family member.  With debt.   Divorce never seems so real as it does on a holiday.  The first Christmas after losing a loved one is always the hardest one.  And God forbid that we lose someone ON a holiday...but it does happen.

So...there's wonder and amazement...and there's sadness.  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...right??

It's all about focus and perspective, really.  I have learned through hardship that God can reveal amazing things in life even through the darkest darkness.  I just have to look for the good, and once I find it, stare at it!!!

This week, there will be a Christmas parade.  It will be filled with wonder, and it will be an awesome celebration of community and Christmas.  But that's 88 hours away! What about the space between now and then?  There's wonder in all that space, too!!  The smile of a student who is having a good day.  One person giving another person the parking space.  Cookies in the faculty lounge.  Walking into the Dixon Center, and being greeted by two co-workers who tell you how they are already building storage shelves in your equipment truck.  The trash you sweep up that reminds you of family being at your house.  Trying out for a play and having a blast.  Andalusia going to the semifinals. A brief conversation with a kid you don't even know about how awesome bicycles and motorcycles are.  Your son making a great score on test he thought he'd bomb. The jokes your kid tells on the way to school.  It's all WONDER.  All of it.

We spend a lot of time and energy waiting for the next "thing" to occur or the next "time" to arrive, and wow, what do we miss in the present, and if you add that to the commercialism that Christmas is wrapped up in, well, we're just a stone's throw away from the Klonopin!! That's no way to live.  We need to re-focus.  We need to remember why Christmas is and what Christmas is.  And what it's not. We need to go back to square one and start over.  Hey, I'm all about capitalism...it drives our economy, after all, and as a state employee I benefit directly from all the tax dollars...but how's about some balance, K??


So, maybe Dr. Seuss was right...maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.  Maybe it's something more.  Merry Christmas, people!  I'm thankful for you all.