Happy Holidays?

Let me just start by wishing everyone who reads my blog (the handful of you) a very, very happy and joyful holiday. I have trouble wishing people a Merry Christmas simply because it seems presumptuous of me to assume you celebrate Christmas simply because I do. I grew up in an area with a fairly large non-Christian population, and to be quite honest, I think I may have understood more about Hanukkah than I did about Christmas from a very young age. It’s not that I didn’t understand what Christmas was… it just seemed as though it was… I don’t know… polluted, I suppose, long ago and seemed to lose it’s luster in the commercialism that Christmas has sort of become. While I enjoy the idea of Santa and would like to believe that we all have a little bit of the St. Nick spirit living inside us, I don’t subscribe to the idea of populating my home with oodles of red-suited do-gooders with sacks of toys upon their backs. Nor do I have a home filled with mangers and nativity scenes. To be quite honest I’m not really sure what I believe. But I do celebrate Christmas. Perhaps because it’s easier to do so than to stop, or perhaps because it’s traditional.

Tradition plays a huge role in holiday celebrations. I have no family besides my husband and I find holding onto family customs both comforting and depressing. My family LOVED Christmas. I, to some extent, have inherited their passion for the holiday, though work and life seems to have dampened the joy somewhat. Tonight I downloaded a new Christmas cd — “Holiday Spirit” by Straight No Chaser (thank you Scott) and listened to it as I cleaned up after dinner. My mother would have LOVED this music. I found myself crying, not out of sadness per se… just because she’d have loved it. The holidays make us remember things that were joyful and sad. The holidays seem to bring out the memories even in those of us who fight to keep them at bay. I miss my mom, but I know that she would have loved Christmas at my house. I just wish sometimes that I could have shared my Christmas with her. I never got to be a real adult while she was alive and I’m not sure she’d recognize me and my holidays now… I hope she would. I hope she’d cry from joy.

Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Festivus. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. I wish you all the most joyful new year and that 2009 is a year filled with happiness and prosperity.

Much love — ChollaChick.