Holiday time now

This is my favorite time of year. It's finally cooler (yes, I like cool/cold weather. And yes, I prefer standard time to DST. You are free to disagree with me on that). And in two weeks from now I will be gearing up to travel home for Thanksgiving.

And then starts the flurry of holiday preparations. It's funny, when you are a Christian who tries to be thoughtful about it - there's kind of a split-personality in the month of December. On the one hand, you have Advent, which is a time of preparation and reflection (I've seen it described as being similar to a mini-Lent). On the other hand, you have "The Christmas Season" with all the trappings it carries - the decorations, the music, the parties, the special foods, the obtaining of gifts for people, the concerts, all of that.

I have to admit I unabashedly LOVE all the special-and-different things we do - I love being able to go to little parties where there are special little finger foods and the person's house is all decorated up. And I love plotting and scheming about what gifts would be best for what people. And I love the old traditional Christmas specials. And I love a lot of the music. And I love driving around at night and seeing the decorations people have put up. I'm sure part of it is related to the bushel of happy memories I have of past Christmases, that all those things bring up those happy times. But I think part of it is that I do still have a childish enjoyment of a lot of those things...I admit it, I kind of like the idea of making things shinier or sparklier or putting bows on them or hanging up fairy lights on them - it makes the mundane stuff less mundane. And frankly, by the end of a semester, I'm pretty tired and ready to think about things like baking cookies or decorating my house instead of thinking about heavier stuff.

And I've already started my Christmas shopping. And I found a nice small toy gift (My AAUW group collects toys for the local toy drive).

I saw the first Christmas special this weekend...it was the good old cartoon version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. (I've seen the live-action movie version; I really don't care for it. But I like the cartoon). I think this (like the Charlie Brown specials) is good because you often see it from different perspectives depending on where you are in life. When I watched it this year, I was struck - maybe related to things I've seen and comments I've heard lately from people around me - that it could almost be taken as a parable on gratitude vs. envy. The Grinch is trying to ruin the Whos' celebration ostensibly because it's loud, and the noise annoys him, but really, it's because (I think) he's envious of them - envious of their cozy world of which he is not a part. So rather than getting a pair of earplugs (or grabbing some of the cotton that he'd use on his Santa Claus suit and stuffing it in his ears) and just planning to sleep through the day, he decides to make them as miserable as he is.

But it doesn't work. It doesn't work, because, as the narrator comments, "Maybe, just maybe, Christmas doesn't come from a store. Maybe, perhaps, Christmas means a bit more." It doesn't work because the Whos happiness and gratitude is not tied to the Roast Beast and other trappings of the day - and the Grinch does not realize that until he's standing there up on the mountain. And there's the lovely epiphany moment (really, in some ways, it's like a ghost-free retelling of A Christmas Carol), and the Grinch reforms. (Okay, in real life, it would likely not be that easy, or that fast, or the Whos would not forgive him so wholeheartedly...but parables are rarely exactly reflective of real life).

I've dealt with enough people who wanted to ruin the happiness others had, simply because they did not have that particular happiness themselves, to be struck by the Grinch's attitude. (And to hope, really, that those people have some kind of an epiphany - or at least decide to go and get a pair of earplugs instead).

So I'm really ready to think about shifting over into holiday mode, to welcoming back so many of the things I love and enjoy about this time of year.

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Oh, and: this explains both my office and my sewing room:

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If I were braver about revealing my pegasisterhood at work, I'd print that out and hang it up on my office door.