Yuletide

Christmas.  Not feeling it.  I am used to being behind the season.  Even after tulips have come and gone I still feel that it is winter.  It is not until we are well into May that I put the boots and jackets away.  It usually takes me until it is high time to carve the pumpkin before I have given up the hope of summer.  But Christmas? I am nearly always the first on the block with the tree. I look forward to December first when I can dial the car radio to the all-day Christmas music station. But this year? I feel no compulsion for any of this.  

I even went out to window shop.  The tree is up in the square, there are lights and decorations everywhere.  Christmas music plays in all the shops. But when I got home, I was actually relieved to find no sign of Christmas in my house.  I wonder what it is that draws me into the spell of Christmas year after year that is missing for me this year.

I’m a reader so when I want inspiration, I look to books.  I browsed the Christmas books at the bookstore. I saw all the old favorites, religious and otherwise, but nothing new.  At first, I was surprised. But as I thought about it, I realized that Christmas is all about the old. The traditions, the repetition of stories.  Ebenezer Scrooge, Jabez Dawes, St. Nick, Jesus.  

Stories are repeated in family and friend gatherings too.  We get out the old ornaments. We set the table with Grandma’s dishes.  We make Grandpa’s fudge. We sing songs, light candles, and remember.

Maybe that is what I am unwittingly avoiding.  The old. But I value these things. The sounds, the smells, the comfort of the hygge. The repetition of story is what binds us.  It nurtures us and solidifies bonds. But for some reason I find myself bowing out.

Well, this just might be the way of things this year.  Without all the familiar trappings of the season propelling my thoughts to the past, maybe I will catch sight of something new. Maybe out of this season, or this “not-season” will come a new story.