This Christmas

   If you are a writer in any way, shape or form then it's pretty difficult to view all that goes on during the Christmas and holiday season and not feel compelled to write about it. It's an all-consuming time of year, for a variety of reasons, and one's personal energy is directed towards it and very little else, for the duration.

   The whole season has a marathon quality to it; in order to successfully complete it, you must balance short bursts of energy with stretches of easier running wherein you are able to catch your breath. But you never really rest. If you are not physically involved with all that needs doing, you are at least mentally consumed with Christmas and all its preparation.
   Apart from the actual work involved, it also seems like a time of year for reflection. Christmas always for some reason brings thoughts of Christmases past. Sometimes you remember the gifts you got, sometimes you remember weather and a trip you needed to make, sometimes you recall a relative you were able to see for the first time in many years.
   Your remembrances of Christmas when you were a child are likely vastly different than the ones as an adult. Mine as a child were strictly of the magical variety--the almost unbearable excitement of bedtime on Christmas Eve, the irresistible urge to peel back the wrapped corners of presents, just to catch a glimpse of what was underneath, the appearance in the house of mandarin oranges, waking up Christmas morning to a stocking lying on the floor beside our beds, the laying out of milk and cookies for Santa and the discovery of elf footprints on the windowsills. Pretty heady stuff for a couple of young boys.
   As an adult, of course, Christmas took on a whole different significance. There is a space of time wherein you are an adult without kids and Christmas, more than anything, becomes a time when you travel back home to briefly reconnect with family. This may be only a trip across town or it may be a trip across the country. It is a time in your life when you have begun to view your adult parents as an adult yourself. This can sometimes be an experience.
   Then, at some point, you hopefully will begin to experience Christmas as a parent for the first time in your life. This is a stage when suddenly the magic around Christmas can creep back into your life, as you begin to impart it to your children.
   As you then get older and your kids have figured out the whole "Santa" thing (for you "still-believers" out there I am not going to reveal what the "Santa" thing is...) Christmas may begin to take on new significance.
   Suddenly you are trying to cram Christmas into an already jam-packed life and in an effort to maintain the spirit of the season and provide positive experiences for people, you try to accommodate everyone. When (and if) you make it through this experience, you are likely exhausted and wondering why you do this to yourself every year.
   I am at a point in my life when suddenly I am wondering whether Jesus even actually existed and, if he did, was he all he is said to be. Celebrating his birth to the extent we do has now become problematic for me.
   On Christmas Eve, I found myself in a church with friends and family, taking part in a candlelight service. My forays into churches for the last thirty years or so have been relegated to weddings and funerals so this was a bit of a different experience for me. I know what the idea was. The idea was for a couple of us adults to recapture some of the Xmas magic we remembered from growing up. Also, I think part of the idea was pass on some of it to our kids who were present.

   It was a "nice" service and probably even nicer for true believers. It was also fairly easy to appreciate the sense of community involved. At some point, we recited the Lord's Prayer. This was not a problem for the adults. We realized at the end of the service, though, that our kids had no idea what the words were. In a way, this surprised me but, in a way, it didn't. The Lord's Prayer has long since been removed from  schools and, barring regular church attendance, there is no reason that a young person would be familiar with it. I, myself, felt strange and somewhat hypocritical reciting it, due to the afore-mentioned lack of belief. All in all, it was a strange kind of experience.
   If anything, the value of Christmas for me is that it is a reason to get together. You take the time to think about your family and friends and their situations and arrange to be with them, even if only for an evening. Regardless of the reason, this can never really be a a bad thing. I think one of the best parts of this Christmas was having my two grown boys sharing the same room with us again. This happens way too infrequently and is something to be savoured when it does. Strange to think that it may have been an imaginary child from two thousand years ago that was the reason for it!