While the rest of the world has packed away most of the decorations and started to receive the bills for Christmas 2008, I am still vowing to celebrate Christmas a little while longer. Today was Epiphany. The day traditionally celebrated as the day the Magi visited the infant Jesus. It is celebrated in Slovakia and other eastern European countries. Epiphany also means the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something. I think that is significant in a time when we are just packing up the decorations including the manger set, lights and Christmas tree. It saddens me each year to put it all away because it brings such joy to get it all out, the sparkle, the shine, the memories. When we put it all away, the house seems a little less warm, a little more plain. So, I am keeping up my Christmas lights outside this year. Call me Redneck if you will, but they’re pretty, and the way I look at it we need need a little Christmas all year long.
We need Christmas to remind us to get outside of ourselves. To say “Hi” to our neighbors more and not just “Merry Christmas” or “Have a nice Holiday” every 25th of December. We need in this time of “Global Economic Crisis” to go out a buy a bottle of wine once a week and say ” What the heck!”, It’s only 10$. It’s not like it’s my life savings!
We need to get together with friends more and have people over to our homes. Turn the damn T.V. off and play games, talk, and cook together. Not just on the holidays. We need to sing the carols about hope and peace and goodwill toward men and women all year long. As Scrooge said, we need to keep Christmas in our hearts all year long!
We need to get in the habit of dressing up more for our loved ones when we get a chance, not just the holidays! Yes, that means, get out of your sweats and your jeans and fix your hair and look like you are expecting company. As an old Jello commercial used to say, “treat your company like family, and your family like company!”
We need to reflect on how blessed we are and why we have Christmas in the first place. Not just once a year for an hour when we are drug to a Christmas eve service, but all year long.
We need to think of neat things we can do for others and ways we can serve others throughout the year. This lifts us out of the “Me First” mentality that seems to drive America so much of the time. As we do this we will smile more, open more doors for others, let others go before us in line and hopefully choose to listen more than to be listened to.
We need to celebrate small victories all year long. A son or daughter made a new time in a 10K race. You paid off a credit card. Your daughter graduates from college. Your cat had kittens. A friend returns from Afghanistan.
Life today is difficult. Problems challenge us and we worry about our children’s futures. It’s easy to fall into the trap of taking ourselves too seriously of worrying about success, jobs, acceptance, parenting, illnesses and so on. It’s easy to lose our ability to laugh. It’s easy to forget the simple ways to purely enjoying one another. Celebration keeps us balanced in a difficult world, renews our perspective, and enables us to recapture joy.
That’s why I’m keeping Christmas this year all year long. !
Tags: Afghanistan, bills, celebration, Christmas, economy, Ephiphany, friends, illness, Jesus, Life, Magi, wine
January 7, 2009 at 4:44 pm |
Brilliant! I’ll keep it with you! And you know I haven’t taken my X-mas lights down for 2 years now.