Christmas Fever, originally uploaded by Chris Newhall.
No matter how old you get, no matter how many times you say you can’t wait for it to be over, there’s still something magical about Christmas. The holiday season brings with it a multitude of reasons to be stressed. There are presents to be bought, dinners to plan, and to make matters even more fun a lot of people have to take unpaid vacation (as if finding the money to buy the photographer in your life a new lens isn’t hard enough…).
So there you are, it’s Christmas day and guests are just starting to arrive. Things start out calmly, your cousin Fred is going through that bottle of wine a little fast but that’s ok, you will just wait a little longer to bring out that second bottle, he should be fine. Oh but wait, is that aunt Genevieve who just pulled up? You know as soon as she walks in and see’s the glass in Fred’s hand she wont shut up about it for the next two hours. Somehow you make it through all the “happy” reunions (remembering why you only do this once a year) and now it’s time for food, hopefully you made enough.
The meal you spent the last few days working on is gone in less than half an hour. In order to avoid having your family start talking to each other again you quickly gather everyone around to open presents. This goes much faster than even the food (and leave’s almost as big of a mess) but now everybody has at least one shiny new object to keep them occupied. Over the next few hours guests slowly start leaving (should Fred really be driving?) leaving you with the biggest mess you’ve had to deal with since that time back in high school when you threw a party while your parents were away.
So now it’s 10:00, you’re sitting on your couch sipping at a glass of eggnog wondering how you possibly managed to make it through yet another Christmas, glad you have another year before you have to worry about it again. You glance over at the small pile of presents you received. A few random nick-nacks form a circle around that special gift. You know, that one item you really wanted but couldn’t justify spending the money on yourself. That should be kind of fun to play around with. And really, it was great to see cousin Fred again, even if you could only understand about half of his slurred words (heck, at the rate he’s going he probably wont even have a license and be able to drive down to visit soon so you better enjoy seeing him while you still can, there is no way you are going to make the four hour drive to his house only to find him passed out on his bathroom floor again).
You can’t help but smile as you scroll through all the pictures you took, stopping at the one of your niece opening the FurReal Friend ™ that you knew she wanted so badly. You slowly start to realize that you allowed all the stress to make you forget where Christmas joy really comes from. Seeing the one’s you care about, no matter how annoying they are, just doesn’t happen as much as it used to and they aren’t getting any younger. Taking a moment to think about others instead of selfishly concentrating on pleasing yourself is important once in a while too. Maybe Christmas isn’t so bad after all.
***Sorry, this is kind of a rough draft. Trying to tie my hypothetical story to the point I was originally trying to make almost killed the whole post (and my opinion of Christmas). I am going to attempt to clean this up and fix a few of the ideas over the next few days. Also I know it’s been a long time since I posted and I said I would every week, but I think the busy time of year justifies my lack of effort.
