BAH - HUMBUG!!

I’m not mean, like Scrooge, and I don’t sit around counting my pennies...but I do notice a tendency to be GRUMPY...maybe it’s an old age thing?

For example:  Christmas seems like too much trouble.  Travel takes too much energy.  Gift wrapping is a waste of paper...and Traditions, in general, seem empty of meaning.  

Am I becoming emotionally lazy?  A curmudgeon?  Is the 'world just too much with us'...draining our energy?

Or am I just less willing to put up with things or people that don’t feed my soul?  I don't know.

 There are antecedents, however.  My mother, Gladys Palmer Anderson, was the original Mrs. Scrooge.  And she had to be...during the depression.  Somehow, through her clever planning, and prayer, and ‘making do’ she made us feel quite rich in ‘what matters’.  But she certainly didn't encourage needless celebrations.

As a child I would beg Mrs. Scrooge to let us have a Christmas tree.  She was tired I think...and her message was, essentially, “why go to all that bother?”. 

Yet, reluctantly, she’d haul out the old decorations from the attic...the faded red paper half-bell which opened out into a full round bell we hung from the chandelier in the middle of the living room...and ropes of green interlocking crepe paper loops strung from the bell across to the four corners of the room.  And boxes of thin flat strips of silver “icicles” to hang from every branch of the glowing tree.  

And I’d go out into the crisp blue night air and skate under the northern lights....skimming the ice in wide swaths - long glides - almost ecstatic with solitary joy.

These days I seem to have internalized mother’s careful spending of ‘energy'.  I find myself resistant to festivities, carnivals, circuses, big concerts, and MAGIC in general.

So I am always surprised when, in spite of all that conditioning, I spontaneously fall under the spell of holiday happiness...when the twinkly lights and the roaring hearth and the savory smells and the laughter of friends and family fill the air with warmth.

                        I love the magic of a whole town lit up in celebration of the season.  

              

Comments

[Terry Butler]

Oh how I agree. I remember my mother not wanting to go to the trouble of the holidays in her last years and I was shocked in silence. I was certain I would never feel that way and worried that she felt that way and what it meant. Now, as in so many other instances I understand I wish you and your family a safe and Merry Christmas holiday.