… though I guess when we say
Christmas we mean much more than just the day itself; more like all
the way from Black Friday (a term I dislike, a lot) to Christmas Day
and slightly beyond.
It's a pretty emotional time, huh? Is
there another time of year where we spend so much time considering
Christmases past (damn you Charles Dickens!), or the past in general?
I think it's like the entire country falls under some post hypnotic
suggestion. “When you hear your first Christmas song of the season,
you will immediately start longing for a time when Christmas was...
well, more Christmasy.”
Most of us probably don't even know
what that means, or at least, can't express it. Perhaps it's a time
when we were younger, or the kids were younger, or the World was
younger. It certainly can't be from Dickens' time. Have you seen the
way the average person dressed in those days, let alone the poor?
Please. Just eat your apple and chestnuts roasted on an open fire and
move along.
Nah. There's something else. Is it
despite the fact that most of us have so much more than we even know,
that we are constantly reminded that we need more? Need newer? Need
better?
I don't buy that (ar ar), because most
Christmas buying seems to be for someone else. The most insistent
advertising message is “Makes the perfect gift.” So, I don't see
it being about what we want or what we don't have, unless it's the
financial ability to provide “the perfect gift” for people we
care about.
The irony in that- I guess we could
call it the Christmas irony- is that, other than when we're very
young, how much do we really care about getting the “perfect”
gift? Not very much would be my guess.
Don't get me wrong, I like getting
gifts. Like it a lot. But just show me that you put some thought
into, and that would be excellent; that would be enough.
I suppose it's easy to sit back, at 66
years of age and say Christmas shouldn't be about the gifts. I have
everything! Well, I should say I have everything I want, or, more
importantly, I have everything I need.
I suppose one of the new giving trends
is giving upgrades of things: the latest tablets, smart phones,
Nooks, iPods and so on. And that makes sense. Rather than run the
risk of buying someone something they don't want, buy them something
they already have, only newer. Looking back at that sentence, it may
or may not sum up consumer greed in a handful of words. I don't know,
nor do I care. It just strikes me as a sensible gift-giving strategy.
This is the point of any Christmas
column where the writer, in this case me, goes varying degrees of
mushy to talk about what Christmas means to him or her. Know what I
mean? And there's nothing wrong with mushy. Frank Capra made a career
out of it. The word itself is a little deprecating, so how about if
we say... warm, the writer goes warm to talk about the personal
meaning of Christmas.
I think... Well, it seems... One thing
I... Nope. Can't do it right now. No mush. No warmth. This has been a
difficult Christmas season. I was too sick to visit friends and
family. I've had these stomach issues for well over a year and we
seem no closer to figuring it out than when we started.
But despite all that, Christmas remains
a wonderful time to enjoy our friends and our families. We just need
to keep ourselves centered on what is really important and we'll be
just fine. Wait, was that a little bit of mush there??! A little
warmth? It's true though. Celebrate what you have and what you need,
and you'll have more than enough stuff left over to give to others.
I had real doubts about being able to
be at all positive at this point in my journey. But, as always, when
I really think about how fortunate we've been, Sheri and I, gratitude
and positivity seem inevitable. Good for us and we wish the best for
you!
There are a variety of versions of
the story that gives this blog its name. The pony is the constant in
all of them. A man is on his way to a party when he comes across a
young boy shoveling ass over tea kettle at an enormous mountain of
manure. The man asks the child if he wouldn't rather go with him to
the party than shovel all that poop. The kid says, “No way man.
With all that poop... there must be a pony in there somewhere
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