Christmas 2013

Halloween has just been here and gone, Thanksgiving is three weeks away, and even though I begrudge the stores already beginning to show Christmas, my internal clock is thinking, anticipating, and living Christmas. I cannot blame it on the much too early commercial promotion of the holiday so I have tried to look at my personal why?

The answer is that I am excited about potential. Christmas time for me is a time filled with creativity. A time when you can tap your inner theatrical set, exhibit, or window designer self as well as your inner chef and good samaritan to create love, beauty, and magic. A time when "over the top" is not always enough and when too many lights, and glitter, and color, and clutter, and lots of cookies and "cute" are all OK.

There is a magic is recreating and retelling a story with its accompanying tradition that is basically filled with love and sharing. Love of family, love of life, love of children. There is a magic in the retelling of the Story of Christmas, the birth of Christ, the miracle of Mary.

People really are able and do light up the several weeks of Christmas (for some beginning the day after Thanksgiving) even when for most of them a large portion of life is hurried, sad, difficult, routine, whatever. There is some truth in reminding ourselves to "rediscover our inner child at Christmas" and in "trying to make it Christmas all year long!"

For me, the small treasures placed strategically around the house, on the tables, balanced on picture frames, on the top of a toilet tank, hung on walls; bring wonder to my days. Enjoying the artisanship and craftsmanship put into creating little things representing the holiday is astounding. The idea of a tree decorated with twinkling lights, glittery objects, and years of memories is thrilling.

Then there are the traditions. Making cookies. Giving gifts (not going overboard with these but rather trying to wrap up something that will show you care.) Having friends in. Cooking special meals. Traveling to see family. Sitting near the fireplace and listening to familiar holiday songs. Or maybe singing these songs around a piano or the radio or while traveling in a car.

For a brief while, the intensity of the cold outside is matched by the warmth inside: inside your home, inside your heart, inside your mind. For Gregory and me, our Christmas begins the day after Thanksgiving and lasts until the end of January. Two months. 1/6 of a year. And with my anticipation, it lasts for almost three months or ¼ of the year!

The three foot, out of the box, already decorated and lighted Christmas Tree goes up. Dozens of Nativity Scenes are displayed. The oversized mercury glass ornaments are hung in a row on the fire sprinkler pipe that crosses the living room. Pine candles scent the bathrooms. Gregory's paper mâché Nativity scene, which he made when he was eleven years old and which his mother saved for him, adorns the table by the front door. At least half a dozen, one foot high, antique bottle-brush trees decorated with miniature antique German ornaments line the library table in the living room.

We bake cookies: butter, peanut butter, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar, and Great Grandma Barbara's German Christmas Cookies. We don't give each other many gifts but rather a few, precious small ones and of course some dark chocolate. We invite neighbors and friends in for cookies and hot chocolate. We entertain our "Jewish Family" as we have been doing (+/- 25 years) since the God-Kids were born. We entertain our "Gay Family" as we have been doing for 30+ years. We watch "A Christmas Carol," "It's A Good Life," and "The Polar Express." We listen to hours of Laurie Lines piano Christmas music CDs.

We always have our "Christmas Cry," remembering the family and friends and pets who are no longer with us, remembering the 37+ years we have spent celebrating Christmas together, and being overwhelmed at our love for each other which really does shine through all year but even more during the celebration of Christmas, and yes we do try to keep Jesus in our holiday - not bad for a Jew and a recovering Catholic  - and try to live our lives with the love and compassion that he taught.