Christmas Belongs in December
Now we know it’s on for real as the year slips, slips slides away
December is when the Christmas season really takes off for me. Everywhere I look in my neighborhood, people are festooning their houses and yards with great, cheerful lighting displays, and the spirit of Christmas is everywhere.
People are smiling more, exchanging greetings, and feeling all festive inside even though we are all on holiday overdrive in an attempt to make every Christmas the best ever. Starting right now, with this one.
It is also a frantic time of rushing around, doing Christmas shopping, going to parties, and waiting in lines at the post office or UPS store. We are pouring out energy, cash, and good feelings every time we go outside.
It’s also the time of year when the reality of the year being almost over starts to sink in. How fast the last year flew by! Where does the time go, when we measure it so precisely each day and yet lose track of it so easily?
How quickly we have torn off the calendar leaves with all the scribbled reminders about doctor’s appointments, school assignments, and car repairs, now consigned to the dustbin of history.
Were you able to keep any of last year’s New Year’s resolutions? I wasn’t. In fact, I have given up even making them, they never work out anyway.
Do you still even make New Year’s resolutions?
We enter into them so easily at this time of year, because we are all so doggedly determined to make them happen and we feel invincible.
There is no project too big to tackle, no bad habits we can’t break, and no relationships that can’t be improved.
We vow to lose weight and improve our physical fitness. Or our mental health. Maybe get a grip on our finances or better our relationships with our family, our friends, or significant others.
We are all swept up in the holiday madness, where anything is possible and everything seems so easily doable.
And all the time, we are so conscious of the time ticking away.
Every day is another frantic, crazy day where we leap out of bed each morning full of energy and good vibes.
Only to fall into bed each evening, exhausted but momentarily satisfied with achieving our daily goal.
Yet at the same time, we are fully cognizant of the time slipping away, fast and furious, relentless and irrevocable, never to be reclaimed.
Time and tide wait for no man. Nature moves on in its slow, inexorable, inevitable way.
Snow will soon be coating our slick streets and slippery sidewalks, if it hasn’t already started where you live.
The reality of winter is setting in.
We are all caught on the horns of a classic dilemma.
Between imagining the perfect holidays we all so desperately want to celebrate and the simultaneous realization that we will never have enough time, energy, or money we need to do everything we want to do.
It can be frustrating, and many people end up succumbing to the Christmas blues. It all suddenly becomes too much, and cheerful expectations are dashed on the rocks of reality.
If you are dealing with serious health issues or financial or emotional stress, what should be the happiest time of the year can end up as an inverted period of depression.
Try not to let it. Make reasonable goals and expectations that you can actually realize. Don’t dwell on what the future may hold, just focus on the now. Right now, each precious moment is all that we have anyway.
There is no predicting the future, there is a solid curtain between the now and the future that can’t be penetrated. No matter how hard we try, wish upon a star, or throw a penny down a well for good luck.
Miracle cures happen all the time, and money is funny. There is no sense in trying to see the unseeable, to know the unknowable.
Instead, concentrate on what we know we can achieve. Set realistic but attainable goals and be happy with the little things in life.
Life is made up of a fragile, crystalline latticework of hopes and dreams, expectations and realizations, and fantasy and reality.
Enjoy what you have, and keep on living in the moment.
We all have each other. We all want to be happy. We are all connected…