Hi all,
I hope you had a fan-tabulous holiday season and Happy New Year!
Just dropping a quick note to say that I’ll be moving over to Tuesday and/or Wednesday AM posts from now on. Posts will range from poetry, fiction, blogging, and miscellaneous content.
I am looking forward to a productive writing year! All the best,
-AJM
I might sound like a major Grinch in this post, but I’m not going to apologize.
Christmas is coming, no, its steamrolling its way here faster than I’d like, and it’s sprinted past Thanksgiving and is on its way to Christmas in July…which will probably get here faster than Thanksgiving.
And Turkey day is merely two weeks away…just saying.
I’ve been out and about the last couple of days doing errands, and I’ve been noticing more and more red and green than I have before. Christmas may not be my favorite holiday, but usually I like to get into the Christmas spirit after Thanksgiving. Not before. Not during.
My less than jolly mood could be contributed to my three years spent working retail, and the Christmas music that some stores shove down your throats the day after Halloween.
We also lost my grandma this year, and it just doesn’t feel like there should be a holiday at all, but I definitely don’t want to see Christmas trees and fake snowmen out before I’m ready.
I guess when it comes down to it, the holidays mean something different for each and every one of us. For those who have lost loved ones, it can be a difficult time. Most of the time I get annoyed because of how commercialized Christmas has become. It is all about the money and stores are even opening Thanksgiving night, instead of early black Friday morning.
I feel just like Charlie Brown on A Charlie Brown Christmas. What ever happened to the true meaning of Christmas? To spending time with friends and family and loved ones?
To realize that Christmas is about the joy of spending time together and giving and love.
Maybe it doesn’t feel like Christmas this year because the only thing I want for Christmas is the one thing I can’t have: to spend one more Christmas with my Grandma. To hear her laugh again, to get wrapping paper thrown at my head.
Well, I didn’t mean to get all sentimental on you guys, but I am doing everything I can to find some joy in Christmas this year, and it just isn’t happening.
And it certainly doesn’t help when the outside world is telling us too soon that you better be ready: Christmas is coming!!
Where do you find the joy in the holidays?
I’ve decided that I’m going to try to make most of my presents this year, but I think I might also do some online shopping. I’ve had enough of stores already!
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
These last couple days have been a blast. Christmas isn’t apparently just one day in our house, we have been celebrating more of a Christmas week. I think it is definitely time to start eating healthier again, though, and to start exercising. And on that note, while taking a walk on Christmas day near my Grandma’s house, we came upon an old cemetery, and this headstone:
Not only is it interesting that this person from middle-of no-where-upstate, New York, fought and died for his country, someone somewhere out there still appreciates him. He was a veteran and that still matters, even if it happened over 50 years ago.
The flowers in front of his headstone were blown over and covered with leaves, but we dusted them off, and nestled them in front of his grave. The wind was blowing and the rain started splattering on our faces, and I tried to identify the significance this moment could possibly have.
Was it sad to be in a graveyard on Christmas afternoon? Was the rain and gloominess really just a way to emphasize it? Every little detail became so important suddenly: the curiosity on my boyfriend’s face as he yells across the headstones: “Look at this one, babe!”
The way the land curves and rolls; the mounds of grass, the moss that grows in splotches; and the path that cuts through the cemetery between tall, long-limbed trees. If you stood at one end of the path and looked down it, you get the impression that it goes on forever; that life continues somewhere on the “other side” where the road ends.
And meanwhile, the sky is so gray the clouds seem grumpy, like steel-gray eyebrows furrowed in disappointment, that it seems nearly impossible to find the light in the darkness, to stand tall and go about your day.
Except, I wasn’t sad or disappointed, I just felt…blessed. I was thankful to be where I am, in the country I am, with the people who I love and that belong to me. I felt proud for this soldier who had represented my country, and honored that I was the one who righted his flowers, to tell him, (even if it was just in a small way), that he did matter and still does to those who understand freedom and cherish it like I do.
I felt irony because of the name on the headstone, which happens to be the veteran’s father: George Bailey.
George Bailey, the name of the character in It’s a Wonderful Life, the man who didn’t know what wealth truly was until it was taken away from him. That our worth isn’t measured in the dollars in our pockets, but in the lives we touch and the people who love us most.
And isn’t that at the heart of Christmas?
I had a fantastic holiday, and I hope everyone else did, too. Did you do anything special this year? Vacation in the tropics? I’d love to hear about it.
Happy Writing everyone!
A. J. Morse 