Cheryl’s Corners

As I walked through the crowded halls of my local mall, I watched a teeming crowd of children line up for their turn on Santa’s knee. I was tired, overburdened with boxes and bags and convinced I might hurt someone if I heard “Jingle Bell Rock” play over one more speaker today. I’ll admit to feeling a pang of envy looking at those kids. Their holidays are a fairly simple. When you’re seven years old, Christmas magic makes just about anything possible. Their joyous anticipation of the coming holiday was contagious. And for a moment, my bags and my heart felt lighter. I felt some of my inner Grinch fade away.

For grown-ups, holidays aren’t easy. At best, Christmas is often a double-edged sword. We go through months of planning, loads of money, stress, frustration, family conflict, inconvenience and string light tangles. Sometimes it all pays off in sublimely perfect moments. Sometimes those moments are our creation (sparkling trees, delicious food, thoughtful gifts). Often, they’re not (that white Christmas, those church bells, this cold, clear starry night). Whatever the case, they’re almost impossible to predict.

It’s my belief that the very best parts of the season are the simple, sweet and intimate ones. A night spent gathered around the fire telling stories, singing carols and enjoying each others company may seem dwarfed by the Skydiving Disco Christmas Lasers on Ice show that you drove forty miles to see (and ended up having to leave early because it triggered your mother-in-law’s vertigo). But it will be the former that lasts and sets a standard for holidays to come.

Of course, there is more to Christmas than what we managed to scoop up for half-price on Black Friday. This is a season of miracles, of magic, of faith, hope and joy. This year has been a difficult one. For many of us, it’s hard to summon a spirit of celebration. It is my belief that miracles can happen. Tidings of comfort and joy will come your way (often via an unexpected, circuitous route). It’s important to remember that no matter how dark the night, there’s the promise of a bright, shining star to illuminate your path and help you find your way forward.

The greatest gift we give is the gift of love. It’s a love we feel for our children, our spouses, our extended families and our wider communities. It is that spirit of love that keeps us decorating the tree, standing in line for extra boxes, slaving over that Christmas turkey, wishing perfect strangers a Merry Christmas and leaving the light on for friends and family members, even when they can’t always get home.

I’ll be asking Santa for comfort, peace and happiness in the New Year for all of us.  I think I’ll ask for a long lazy weekend after the tree comes down.  And finally, I pray for grace to guide us through the holidays and the months that follow.

May you have the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Years!

The very last leaves are clinging to the branches outside my window. I sit at the kitchen table with my calendar, scanning the next couple of months. I try to figure out how I’ll manage things. Early November is the quiet before the storm. It’s those few days that go by too fast before the arrival of Thanksgiving and the grand, glorious, exhausting mess of the holidays.

I planned to start my shopping early this year. But, as usual, life got in the way. And what would Thanksgiving be if someone in the family weren’t rushing to the last open supermarket on Thanksgiving morning to buy the one essential ingredient that we’d managed to forget? A turkey pan might not leak out into the bottom of the oven and fill the kitchen with smoke.  Some member of the extended family won’t make an inappropriate comment over pumpkin pie. And It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving. That’s what.

The follies and foibles are as much a part of the holiday season as the cranberry sauce. We go to great lengths to avoid them. We over-plan, over-think and over-stress our families and ourselves in order to insure that nothing goes wrong. But something does go wrong, usually the very thing you never considered. The candelabra burns a hole in your table cloth or Auntie Margaret sprains her ankle on the icy front steps or your eldest child announces that she’s leaving college to tour with a heavy metal band. When these things (or other calamities both minor and major) disrupt our turkey dinner, most of us are already emotionally, physically and sometimes financially exhausted (and it’s not even December yet). We may feel we lack the fortitude to laugh it off the  same way we would have if it happened any other day of the year.

But it’s likely true that whatever inevitable commotion befalls your household on Thanksgiving will not ruin everything. In fact, it will probably be the thing you laugh about next year. Memory doesn’t pick sides. Sometimes our best, most entertaining memories don’t come from moments of absolute joy, but from moments of shared frustration, inconvenience or even hardship. Happiness is more palpable in memory than it is in experience. It’s why we so often look at our past through rose-colored glasses. You remember your senior year of high school, or sophomore year of college or first year you were married to your husband as being generally happy times, even though you know they were difficult and often painful on a day-to-day basis. When you were living through those times, you may not have even realized you were happy.

This is a great gift we have, as humans. Time alone may not heal all wounds, but it certainly makes the past good times (and the bad times) look a little better from the vantage of the present. And all those memories, good and bad, are part of the tapestry of our experience, our adventure of living, feeling and loving who and what we do in this world.

So, when that coconut cake falls or the power goes out two seconds before you sit down to eat, enjoy your moment of frustration, then shake it off, crack a joke and consider just how funny this story will sound to your grandchildren.

It’s been a hard year for many of us. I’m thankful for what I’ve learned, whom I’ve loved and that tomorrow is indeed another day.

Happy Thanksgiving.