My Soul Says Yes
I have to be honest. I have not had much of the Christmas spirit. I don’t know why I am just not there yet. I am not an empty nester, but I am close to that. All of my children are adults and doing their own thing.
There is no real tradition that we have in our home. I mean we celebrate Christmas in non-traditional terms. Since my children are adults, the need to wake up at the crack of dawn to open gifts is over. I don’t have to hide things all over my house and pretend not to know that they had unwrapped packages and did a poor job at re-wrapping them. I don’t have to fuss at my husband about waiting until Christmas Eve to shop (he does this every year). I am between caring and not caring. I can’t put my finger on it, but it is liberating.
We are not having a traditional dinner. We have decided on a BBQ. I’m excited. BBQ is my favorite thing to eat. Yes, we live in Chicago. Yes, it is going to be cold outside. Yes, we know all of this. No. We don’t care. See the beauty in that? If not then you are not there yet, and that’s ok.
I start asking in September what my family wants for Christmas, and every year they procrastinate. I understand the gift of gift cards now. Gift cards are my friends.
When I was a kid, I grew up in a Catholic household. I went to Catholic school, and we did Catholic stuff. Every year we would go to midnight mass. I despised and loved midnight mass all at the same time. I loved the tradition of it but hated the crowds of people, either walking in the snow to the church or looking for a parking space so far from the church that we could have just walked anyway. I am not a fan of crowds of any sort. I do better now then when I was a kid, but I still don’t like them. I probably haven’t been to midnight mass in about thirty years. A few years back my brother and I decided that we wanted to go. Don’t ask me why. We looked up our old church and low and behold they were no longer having midnight mass on Christmas. I got an attitude. I’m laughing about it now, but I was upset then. How dare they stop having midnight mass that I hadn’t been to in thirty years. What?! Really?! Heathens!
My new tradition will be to enjoy my day not doing anything that I don’t want to do and doing everything that I do want to do. I hope that your holiday season is blessed and filled with love.
The Writer
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