2002-12-24 - 2:14 p.m.
"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
-Leonard Cohen
I've been pretty grouchy about the holidays so far. Usually I do better than this, but this year I've reacted to my loss of private time with a definite distaste for anything obligatory. And Christmas, for most adults, is a long intricate string of obligations.
But here it is Christmas eve, and I have just begun to feel a little glimmer of good. The key holiday event for me is when my family gathers on Christmas eve to open gifts, eat a lot, play games and stay up till the wee hours. Christmas eve is sacred. We may (and usually do) go out and spend the 25th with our extended/inlaw/outlaw families, but we always get together on the 24th. That would be: my mother, my siblings, and all of our various children, and all the significant others or friends of any or all. Yesterday, I went to my Mother's house and we cooked big pots of Italian Sausage Soup to serve tonight. It was fun to cook together, (something we rarely do because neither of us is an inspired cook) to sample the cooking sherry and laugh about our different approaches to following a recipe (she follows it exactly and I think close is good enough!) Mom has decorated every room in preparation for the family Christmas eve get-together, even creating a life-size Santa figure. She was putting the finishing touches on a special gift for her granddaughter: a book of (reproductions of) old photos and family history/ stories. This is Christmas to me.... making much of our simple celebration, getting the family together.
And last night Skootie and I stayed up late creating a gift for her aunt. We assembled a collection of funny movies and wrote our reviews of them. I made a goofy collage on the top of the box. We are hoping that the movies will give her something to laugh about because she begins her chemotherapy soon. This was Christmas, too.... making something for someone that no one else could have given.
I realize that I have missed the one aspect of the holidays that I was quick to eliminate in the face of time stress: making things. When I make something for someone, I feel as though I have really given a gift, and not just participated in a merchandise exchange. Next year.... I am going to do better.
So here at the eleventh hour, I am finally "ready" for the holidays. The Christmas cards I designed but never got around to printing up and sending, had only one word: PEACE. The holidays will always be too busy and too commercial and too phoney. But perhaps there is still some peace to be found in the small things that we do to connect with each other.
Peace and happy holidays to my readers and thank you for all your kind words over the past year.
�
