The Day After Christmas
By now, Christmas has come and gone-how was yours?
By now, Christmas is over for almost everybody. I hope all of you had a great holiday celebration this year! After all the preparation, like sending out Christmas cards and/or texts (like I do) and making lists, all of the diligent online shopping is over, now just a distant memory.
So is the frantic adrenaline rush of the last-minute shopping, and getting the presents home. By now, all the presents we wrapped so carefully and the colorful, creative ribbons and bows we applied to make each a feast for the eyes have been opened by the happy and grateful recipients.
All the festive gift wrappings have been ripped and torn asunder by the eager hands of their designated recipients, usually children. The wrappings are now just an afterthought, a pile of glitter and glamor reduced to a crumpled mass of gaily colored trash. But it’s the thought that counts!
Christmas and the tradition of exchanging gifts have been around for thousands of years. It is a time-honored, always-appreciated, and beloved way of celebrating Yuletide. Everybody loves this holiday.
The preparation, the anticipation, and the realization that it is all over now are slowly sifting down into our collective consciousness. We can all breathe a sigh of relief, till next year at least.
Yet still, we linger, not quite ready to let go. It seems like only yesterday!
The day after Christmas is always a great time to show our gratitude and appreciation for all this effort by others on our behalf.
Christmas is a labor of love, a momentary stop in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, and a time to reflect and revel in our blessings.
It is a day for forgetting if at least for a while the shame of the game of the greedy world of work, of mergers and acquisitions, power plays, and being ruled by ego-maniacal bosses.
None of that matters right now. We are all still in the afterglow of all the warmth and love we just exhibited and returned and we still feel satiated.
We can still bathe in this afterglow, soak up the last moments of remembered joy and the realization of so many of our expectations.
This good feeling doesn’t just disappear like mist in the night, morning dew on a dark morning as the sun slowly rises, or a fever dream that evaporates when we awake in the blink of an eye.
It lingers on and reinforces all of our good feelings, a reminder of our willingness to sacrifice our time, our labor, and the love that we so lavishly extended to those we feel closest to.
It was all worth it, every last moment, every single penny we spent, every smile, and all the gratitude and love we manifested.
If only we could feel this way all year round! But of course, we cannot. We all know this, yet still, we have the right and ability to cherish, remember, and savor every single instant of the joy, excitement, and gratitude of Christmas.
Every time we reached out and touched someone, every moment we spent in each other’s company, every morsel of delicious food and drink we ingested were all well worth it.
They say it is better to give than receive, that happiness and sharing are the gift that keeps on giving, and that we are all the better for our willingness to spread the joy of the Christmas season.
The year is almost over now, and it was a wild and crazy year, a carousel of spinning emotions, swirling expectations, and for most of us, a well-deserved reward. Christmas is truly not for the selfish.
There were highs and lows, victories and defeats, triumphs and failures of every description and variety.
So much of life is about emotions, how we feel and deal with them, and how we can use them for the good, or squander them on foolish, selfish things. Yes, it is better to give than to receive.
That is what Christmas is all about, the sharing and caring and the feelings of closeness and love that are our birthright. Let us all linger, just a little longer, on the miracle of Christmas just passed. Life is love.
Feel the gratitude, the joy. Remember the magic moments. We are all connected…
