Today has Never Happened Before

Last year I struggled at Christmas time, and I think it boiled down to the fact that despite my best efforts, I was not able to recreate what we'd had in prior years. Despite the traditions we held to, despite the constant chorus of carols, it fell short of magic for me. I wrote a poem. A lament of sorts.

But then it began to dawn on me that I was looking at this all wrong. So I wrote yet another post: Fresh Christmas, and I felt better because I had a plan. But I'll be honest--it felt thin and unsatisfying, because I came to it barely in time to give it a try.

However, now that another year has sprinted by, I'm having a chance to practice in real time what I glimpsed last year: to add to my collection a newly minted, never-happened-quite-like-this Christmas. And I'm glad to report that the sadness of last year is not gnawing at me like a hungry shadow.

Instead,  I'm finding that this year, I want Christmas to be whatever it will be, and what it is--a day, a season that has not happened in quite this way before. Rather than trying to make it fit a pattern I absorbed when I was a child and then have tried to re-capture every year since pretending lost its realness, I am watching Christmas 2016 unfold.

This is not a lesser season for the fact that members of our family are halfway across the country, and others halfway across the world. It is not a lesser season because gift giving this year looks different. It is not lesser because activities are not as group oriented as on other Christmases. Something can only be lesser by comparison.
And how can we judge as lesser a day that has never happened just because it doesn't mimic one that has?

To re-create Christmas is an impossible task. Even if every piece matches, we're older, changed, and it's not the first time. In the act of re-creation, the magic of discovery is replaced with the damper of comparison.

And it is not by comparison we discover new treasures. It is by viewing each day, including this Christmas as a one-of-a-kind event, a day, a season that has never happened before and will never happen again in exactly this 2016 way. We can do familiar things with an eye for the unfolding of the new day, and let each variation and repetition of traditions be part of a unique occasion.

In holding too tightly to Christmas past, we can miss the wonder and the gift in Christmas present. In measuring this day against others, we risk missing the wonder it holds, risk not being fully present or fully enjoying what is. So I don't know what Christmas 2016 looks like.


I'm  going to find that out, one new discovery at a time. 

Fresh Christmas

I've spent the last month or more capturing Christmas--to try to feel once more what I felt as a child, and to help my kids, now almost all grown, capture it as well. But this Christmas morning, I find I have a new perspective. Despite what I've just been doing, I now realize that it's not about trying to relive Christmas past, as if those few fleeting years of my childhood or my kids' childhoods were the epitome of what Christmas should be.

This is the last year I'll do that. From this morning on, what I want to do is let each Christmas season unfold its own unique treasures. We can't always have everyone here. We can't always do exactly what we did that one year when it was perfect for me or some other person. But we can live in the now and treasure what's happening this day.


Of course we'll probably still have our traditional foods: grasshopper pie on Christmas Eve. Cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. (Why we use this occasion to slam ourselves with sugar, I have yet to define, and truthfully don't want to, because we literally only make these things once a year. Some things you just have to hold on to)!

But with the possible exception of food, I don't want to be looking backwards at Christmas except to reminisce. I want each December 25th from here on out--and I figure I've got at least 35 more to go--to be uncharted territory, as in reality, each new day is never and can never be a repeat of the one before it.

I want to add to my memory bank a newly-minted, one-off Christmas, vintage 2015, instead of trying to relive but never quite recapturing the magic of some other time time. Next year, besides God, who really knows how it will be? Who knows who will be here. Who knows what the weather will be, the dynamics, the tree.

We'll have to discover what unfolds. That's what we're doing today, and rather than feeling like it is less than other years because not everyone is here or no small child is present to add wonder, this Christmas is perfect because it is fresh and new and unexplored.

Let the celebration begin! 


Once everyone else gets up, of course. Me? I'm on my second cup of coffee :-)