A Quick 180

Alrighty then! Just a day after writing about my complete lack of enthusiasm for early Christmas celebrations / decorations in my previous article “Youltide” last week, I began throwing some decorations up in the cave and did some holiday shopping online. Initially, it wasn’t so much a change of heart as it was simply something borne out of pragmatism – I was home for the extended Thanksgiving weekend anyway…why not get a jump on things rather than put it off? Decorating can take a while and the older I get, the pickier I seem to have gotten when it comes to Christmas Cave decor and placement (which is undoubtedly a good thing).

Somewhere along the way, it became less about being pragmatic and more about embracing the moment – I put on some holiday tunes and had a glass or two of Christmas cheer. I started thinking of Christmases past – from my own youth, to when my kids were little, up to the present day. It occurred to me that over the course of the last 12 years or so, since my divorce, I had kind of conditioned myself into thinking that Christmastime would forever be “less than” – it would never be the same. Never the same when having a broken family, never the same while not having the kids with me all the time due to shared custody, never quite the same as the kids grew older and ventured out on their own. Well of course, as with everything else in life, things change and they simply don’t remain the same.

Does that mean we’re condemned to having a less satisfying life as time goes on? Should we just accept having less contentment? Should we just be always looking at the past?

The obvious answer is a resounding NO, but sometimes it’s the most obvious things that somehow elude us. Sometimes we inadvertently condition our own thinking in negative patterns, and we end up condemning ourselves to a ‘less than’ life, whether it’s during the holidays or year-round. But hey – life can be hard enough on its own without getting any help from us to make it harder.

I must say, realizing that I’ve somewhat sabotaged my holidays all these years was quite the downer at first – until it became quite liberating.

I still have a bit more decorating and shopping to do, but I’m largely done with it all, which is unprecedented for me in early December. For the first time in years, I find myself embracing the Season, as opposed to just looking ahead to the day. What a concept!

Grunt Grunt!