Last year, I’d been in New York overnight with my friend Jan from San Diego—and a cold front had swept in with snow and ice. Upon our return to Alexandria, we'd minced our way in total darkness down my alley—which could have doubled for Rockefeller Center in the amount of ice-covered surface it represented. Cold and tired, we reached the house unscathed. I turned to Jan: “THIS is why we bought the place in San Diego,” I said. She laughed, and not long after, we made our way upstairs, and blessedly, to sleep.
The next morning, I woke early and came downstairs. Before we’d left, I had made a mental note to bring in my two schefflera plants that had so enjoyed their summer outdoors. Like most of my mental notes lately, this one had gotten lost in my filing system, and I fearfully stepped outside to see if they’d weathered the storm. Limp and green-black with frostbite, they languished in their baskets, beyond hope of saving. My mood was as gray as yesterday’s sky had been.
Jan came down soon after and was bubbling over with excitement.
“It looks just like a Christmas card!” she said.
“What?” I replied, my head full of what’s-for-breakfast and what-time-do-we-have-to-be-where.
“Your patio: it’s like a Christmas card with the holly and the snow on the bushes,”
Now, I had just been out there, and I hadn’t seen any Christmas-card-pretty scene. All I had noticed were dead scheffleras and the treacherous ice on the flagstones and the puddle of dirty water left by my shoes as I came in the door. Just as, in New York, while Jan and two other California friends were catching snowflakes on their tongues, I was calculating the probability of train delays and the effect of slush on my shoes.
Sadly, I have the same mindset again this year. I think I need a little Christmas. As Mame says…”right this very minute.” I need to escape from the practicality and gloom-ridden everyday thoughts and worries and pointless concerns that we all fall victim to. I need to change my focus to what I have, from what I have not; from what is, to what could be; from what is wrong, to what is right in my world. It’s so easy to forget blessings, to collect grudges and to hunker down, Scrooge-like, and count them off, one by one, happy in our own misery and that we can give to those around us.
It’s Christmas!! And it is time to be a child again—to see the world as a beautiful place, full of wonder and mystery. It’s time to do things we’ve dreamed of doing—like skating at Rockefeller Center, if only for a few minutes; like walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in gale force winds just to see the view; like strolling past wondrously-decorated department store windows and gawking in awe at Brobdignagian snowflakes suspended over Fifth Avenue and trees so festooned in lights that they glow behind your eyelids as you walk away. It’s time to walk down the street and smile at people, to read our childhood Christmas books, and even watch some holiday movie classics. It is time for hot chocolate with marshmallows and Christmas cookies and eggnog, despite carbs and cholesterol. It’s time to see the Christmas card in our everyday, and to inscribe it with a heartfelt “Happy Holidays!”
It is Christmas once again, and it’s time—past time—for friends and family and lights and singing and larger-than-life living. Christians see this time as one of hope and faith, but I believe it extends beyond the doors of our churches. Christmas is a time to believe in each other again, to find that child inside, to rediscover what we were and what we dreamed of being and to once again--with a gift, a kind word, an understanding ear-- light a hopeful candle in someone’s eyes…. maybe even our own.
Merry Christmas.
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