So this is Christmas

The clock is ticking. Christmas is a week from now. A little week in which I have to buy presents. My list is shorter this year. Sort of. I don’t have a lot of people for whom I feel obligated to buy things. Even still, inspiration is not propelling me to get to the store any time before last minute. 

The thing is I really like to give gifts. I like to spend the time and thought to figure out what will make a person smile, not something that will be recycled to another person six months later. I want it to mean something beyond that moment of appreciation of unwrapping paper. I would rather not give anything at all if I can’t put a genuine thought into the effort.

I haven’t been able to get excited about thinking for about five weeks now. All sorts of life’s interferences have distracted my creativity. Or squashed it. I don’t want to be a Grinch. I don’t want to succumb to the glum anti-Christmas sentiment. But I just don’t really feel like caring this year.

About stuff.

Does that make me cold and wicked? I don’t know. I can’t decide. I only wanted a dog for myself… but that wish has to go on hold now that my landlords revoked the option to own a canine. Maybe it is displaced misery over that change of events. Or maybe… I just got burned too badly from giving to people who didn’t care enough to not hurt me. 

But Christmas isn’t about bemoaning what is missing from life. It is all too easy, I think, to join that popular tide of going against the merry and the joy. Granted, a lot of that shallow sugar makes me want to vomit sometimes. But… there is a genuine effort to just stop for a couple seconds and let the world be pretty in the tree lights. Because in so many traditions, this is when the light overcomes the dark.

So, maybe I should go light myself a Yule log and snuff out this cloud of Scrooge-like bitterness. Because, the past, the present, and the changeable future are all a blessing. None of which has anything at all to do with packages piled under a tree.

Honestly, I don’t need those papered objects. I just… I just want people. My family who crowds into 31 Mt. Pleasant Street. My friends whom I don’t invent enough reasons to give them time and conversation. Other friends who have slipped out of my present, whose absence makes me sad. Friends whom I’ve only just started to know. I want people in my life to talk, to listen, to be… and in return that’s what I want to give. Really.