FINDING CHRISTMAS

I may have realized last night, in the middle of it, another night of bad sleeps, that we (and I mean all of us) put a lot of responsibility on to the shoulders of Christmas. We want Christmas to solve world hunger and war. We want Christmas to have the miracle of neighbours getting along and religions to blend and mesh. We want the empty parts of us to fill with all the things that we've been longing for our whole lives. We wait, with breath held a little, for everything to change because .... afterall, it is Christmas.

I'm the most guilty of everyone I know. I wait with my eyes squeezed shut for the magic to find me that I remember from when I was little, when life was perfect without question, when I didn't worry and even know that my mother didn't really like me all that much, when I didn't worry if I was perfect or not, because children just accept what is. I crawled under the Christmas tree in the dark, shifting the parcels off to the side and listened to Perry Como croon about the night before Christmas and the magic of it all descended right on to my skin where I could feel it soak in and fill my heart with that wonderful sense that all is right with the world even though I knew it wasn't. Christmas was like a sedative that smoothed back my hair and made me pray for peace, not toys or candy or surprises, just peace.

I want my children to not care what is under the tree, not care about what I can't buy them, not care where I have come up short as a mother and a human being. I want them to just be glad that we have this moment, this second in time when we are all together and the memory of that will be the glue for the rest of the year, will be the magic that fills some of those empty days that undoubtedly will come.

I want the magic of Christmas to make up for all the human-ness of the world, the mistakes, the cruelty, the poverty, the imbalance of life. But most of all, I want the magic of Christmas to confirm to each soul I love (including mine) that we are all incredibly special just the way we are.

Merry Christmas. I think if I move my little tiny tree upstairs to the livingroom that Christmas magic will happen.

by W A Stewart, December 21, 2009