Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Does it feel like Christmas

"It just doesn't seem like Christmas."  You've said it and you've heard others say it many times. Why do we feel that way at times when there is no real problem to cause the feeling?  Is it because  memory of some past  Christmas either lightens or dampens our spirits?  I'm not talking here about memories of sad events that happened during the holidays, only about little things that were especially happy or the opposite.  I begin to recall some Christmas seasons.
                                    
                                A Christmas without a tree
                 
A few days before Christmas it was our custom to walk the woods to find the very best little pine, bring it home and place the few decorations we had on it. I was always looking for a holly with berries but while we had holly trees in the woods I never found one with berries.

One Christmas, mama said, "Let's not get a tree this Christmas but hang stockings instead.  That's what we always did, and it was fun."  So, we did not get a tree and hung stockings by the fireplace.  To all the kids, something was lacking.  We may have hung stockings in other years, but we never did without a tree again.
                        
                                 Music brings Christmas spirit

During the 20 years I edited a weekly newspaper in Homer, we took Christmas day as a holiday, but we worked Christmas Eve if it fell on a week day.  Depending on the day Christmas fell on, we would work the previous weekend, and all in all the season was a time of stress.  You can understand that throughout this time Christmas was lacking as a joyful time. Except for gifts I had to purchase early to mail, I did my shopping on Christmas Eve.  I would visit the stores around the square, make my purchases, leave them to be wrapped and pick them up later.  

One Christmas a young merchant rigged up a sound system  connected to a tree on the courthouse lawn.  A few weeks before the holiday, he began playing holiday music.  Hearing those songs for weeks made it feel like Christmas for me. I realized that it was the music that gave me the Christmas spirit in a way that I had not felt it before.

No comments:

Post a Comment