…Merry Christmas all!
I’m sitting in the quiet of my dining room, where I always do my writing, still savoring the Christmas cheer. What a whirlwind Christmas week is. Decorations adorn the house turning it into a cozy wonderland of twinkling lights, tiny villages depicting Victorian scenes and a Frazer fir tree standing at regal attention in a place of honour in the living room. Presents started to appear under the branches of the tree, wrapped simply in brown paper packaging tied up with string (did you hear that in your imagination? Yes, a nod to The Sound of Music but for a different reason in our house) with lively writing with ‘To:’ and ‘From:’. The radio plays Christmas music in the background. It’s interesting to me how I like the contemporary music at church but have no issues singing along at high volume, much to the dismay of my family and our dog, to the old Christmas standards and some even older hymns. Finally, the smells familiar to the season started to fill the house. The baking with spices that are ‘heavy’ and ‘woody’ that certainly are used in this or that recipe throughout the year but which truly find their place in the Christmas baking – the cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice, ginger. Lights low, candles burning, we await The Day.
It rings very romantic, even to my ears as I write of it. And while it definitely warms my heart and brings a smile to my face, the truth is, the Christmas season is a time of the year that fills me with mixed emotions. As we enter into the season of shorter, more overcast days it is easy enough to feel the world closing in a bit as the plants that have died away for another year get covered in snow. The animals hibernate and the birds migrate to sunnier locations and the cold settles in. The time to plan the Christmas festivities, shop for the special present for loved ones and friends and decorate in joyful colours with bright lights and various decorations can bring on stresses of balancing expectations, schedules and bank accounts. I do experience those same concerns but December in general has been a time of both joy and sorrow for me for many years now. At my age, it is not unusual to have had the array of life experiences that I have. And truth be known, December has not had more sorrows than any other month; the sorrows have just been deeper, more impactful, more painful and the anniversaries conflict with the hustle and bustle of the season.
My mother passed away years ago at the relatively young age of 52 years. We buried her in the cold bluster of December 1st, her birthday. I remember thinking, ‘there has to be something soothing about her being heaven sent on this day and laid to rest on the same date’. That was just 5 months before my first child was born and made for a somber Christmas season that year. Nine years and 14 days later, on December 14th, my husband passed away at the even younger age of 36 years, after a very short battle with cancer. It goes without saying, that year changed the trajectory of my life and that of my children. It’s been thirty years since that fateful day yet, regardless of the activities taking place, those days around the 1st of December become quiet and subdued.
December 2nd is a day to reckon with as well. December 2nd is the anniversary of the birth of a little niece who would have turned fourteen in 2019. My niece died tragically, at the tender age of 12 years, in August of 2018. She is the reason for the nod to The Sound of Music mentioned above and the “brown paper packages tied up with string” we find under our tree the past two Christmases. Last year at this time we were still reeling from the reality of our loss. We wanted recovery and needed it badly. Somehow though, brightly coloured Santa Claus and reindeer adorning traditional wrapping paper and satin ribbon and bows just didn’t sit well. Our compromise was to celebrate in a simplistic way. We put lights in our tree but left the various wooden decorations and beautiful blown glass ornaments, collected over many years, in their boxes. It felt right, then it felt good and peaceful in its simplicity. We replicated it again this year…perhaps a new tradition for our family is born.
There is heaviness, a somberness that pervades and settles over us as a family when the November page on the calendar gets torn away and the new month is revealed. It sits on our chests like a heavy blanket. We feel it, we recognize it, we acknowledge it for its warmth and the comfort the happy memories bring but at the same time, we struggle to get out from under it when we feel the burden of it. We embrace the memories until the days pass and the mood gives way to the joy of the season once again.
There is no way to avoid the struggles. For some, it is the pressures of life that seem magnified at this time of year when the world seems to have flicked a switch changing from a battle for time and attention to one of cheer and celebration. Some can’t make the shift so quickly just because the calendar has changed. For some it’s emotional burdens of tensions and losses, for others its time and finances. Sometimes all we can do is balance the load like in a washing machine where all the heavy items have decided to congregate on one side of the drum. Like carnival workers spinning plates on tall, thin wire stands, we need to know when we have all the spinning plates we can manage because even just one more will result in the collapse of them all.
There is a reason for the season….a reason for the sorrow and a reason for the joy. We don’t all have the same mores and beliefs and even those who profess to believe in the Christian concepts of Christmas don’t all express those beliefs in the same way. But there is a reality that people around this wonderful world of ours wish perfect strangers greetings of the season. We hear more exchanges of “merry Christmas”, more “please” and “thank you’s”, more “season’s greetings” and “happy holidays”. And we see a little more acknowledgement and maybe even concern for people on the street and courtesy extended to people challenged with heavy coats, hats, and gloves and carrying awkward packages.
Does the season bring out the good in us? I’d like to think so. I’d like to think we win the battle of balancing the sorrow and joy and that JOY wins!
Enjoy….m
#JOYwins #balancingsorrowandjoy #seasonsgreetings #keeptheplatesspinning
Maggie, Here and There... 