This Time of Year

 It's Christmas.

For retail and online sales, it's been Christmas for months. But now it is Christmas for all. I am a sappy sentimentalist. I buy Hallmark ornaments for my kids (incidentally Classic Cars are sold out and I REALLY need one for my son...). I watch movies and even replays of Christmas episodes of sitcoms and court cases. Yes, I watched the "Matlock" episode this morning with a very young Brian Cranston playing the part of the suspect. I am fully engulfed in every silly, shallow Christmas tradition and my house looks like an alien spaceship landing site. 

I love Christmas. I love it for all the traditional reasons-the Nativity, the celebration of the Birth of Christ and all that rolls out before us in the New Testament originating with this one act. Sadly, I am a Lapsed Catholic. I miss the Advent wreaths and sermons anticipating the birth of Christ. But I left the Catholic Church, for the time being, because of a creeping wokeness that led one misbegotten member of the to use Passion Sunday to lecture the congregation on social justice. That was on top of the previous hiding of predatory priests. My husband and I were (unfortunately) married by Rudy Kos. He was the first domino to fall in that debacle. But I miss the liturgy, the music, the candles, Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with early breakfast after. I feel like it has been stolen from me thanks to COVID and social forces. I yearn for the sights and smells and sounds like an addict seeking their drug of choice. Its absence saddens me and makes Christmas difficult.

Christmas, like all such events, is a day of happy visits and sad absences. I think of Dad, who died on Christmas Day 2002. Imagine me, still a relatively young mother, coming home with three kids on Christmas night only to get that phone call from East Texas. We were heading there the next day. Instead we had to plan a funeral, driving in the dark of night with three sad sleeping children to sleep on a lumpy bed and plan. It began one of the more difficult periods of my life. It was that point I found out just how helpless my Mom was and how much I would have to parent her along with my own children.

The years passed. Christmas stayed as festive as I could measure. Mom would always be included and her needs accounted for first. My children grew into adults and adaptations to the celebration moved from Christmas Day to Christmas Eve. Our celebration of gifts and gathering became a feast of tamales, enchiladas, beans and all the Christmas cookies you could eat. Our grandchildren could share that night with us, leaving Christmas morning for them to establish their own traditions-a point I believe is important because if you always go to Grandma's house for Christmas, then the traditions you hold die when Grandma passes? Parents of adult children need to learn to allow their children the freedom to create their own traditions. 

I wouldn't lie and tell you I am giddy all the time about Christmas. I work very hard to create events that will make others happy. I don't think I always succeed. There are always misses as well as hits. My daughter is divorcing which is a source of pain for us all. My brother is estranged from the family still, although his war with Dad should've been buried 20 years ago when Dad passed. My in-laws are still somewhat overbearing and demanding. Our nation is at a critical stage with people in charge who seem to embrace evil over good. Those things weigh on me. But I am trying very hard to bear up under the disappointment and resentment that such actions can create. I'm reading uplifting accounts and reading through commentaries on Christmas along with a book of Newberry Award winning Christmas stories. I think as adults, we all seek that spark of joy and a few of us achieve it. But most of us, just like the Magi, will spend the next year searching for the Divine Spark that can delight and heal. 

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas, a blessed New Year and a 2023 that is a delivery from the burders we seem to have chained to our ankles over the last three years.