I get less excited about Christmas every year.
Don’t get me wrong, I still like it. It’s just that I absolutely loved it as a kid, practically lived for it. It was the highlight of the year. Not only did I love the presents – as a kid, of course, that was number one – but I was captivated by the lights, the trees, the decorations, the music. Even into my 20s, it all seemed very magical.
It still does, to an extent. But being far from a kid anymore, and not having kids, and not being married, and not being Christian – or Jewish, for that matter – it seems I have fewer reasons to celebrate the holiday season than do a lot of other people. It leaves me a little empty.
I come from a small family, so I think losing my mother 12 years ago may have taken quite a bit of the luster off of this time of year. She still liked to buy me things, and I liked to buy her things as well, but more than that she just did all the little things that help make the holiday time special. It’s still good, but it’s not the same.
So I’m a little jaded. And though I’m not religious in the traditional sense, the commercialism of the holiday season is so overblown, and so much of it is so shallow, that it adds to my disillusionment. As I’ve indicated, I have no problem with people buying things for each other, I think it’s great – as long as it’s done from the heart rather than a misplaced sense of obligation. People, myself included, subject themselves to an inordinate amount of stress this time of year, which takes more of the fun out of it.
But there are little glimmers that keep my interest. With the true time of year of the birth of Christ not really being known for certain, celebrating it on Dec. 25 was originally done as a way to attract solstice-celebrating pagans to the religion. And as someone who is more than sympathetic to earth-based spiritual traditions, celebrating “the return of the light” seems very worthwhile to me.
It’s good that the winter solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are all celebrated so close together. Though Christmas tends to take precedence in the United States, a lot of people are celebrating something or another at roughly the same time, which potentially brings people closer – it puts the focus on our commonalities rather than on our differences.
Making a big deal of giving, despite some of the negative manifestations of it, is an enormously good thing. Anything that gets us to think not only about our loved ones but those less fortunate than ourselves has to have some benefit.
I also think the lights are important, especially in northern latitudes – they break up the darkness. They remind us of the magic that can happen, not only in December but year round.
Bill Sheets is editor of the Edmonds edition of The Enterprise.
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