Christmas Eve is almost over.
We’ve prepared the tree, placed all the presents under it, even the ones “from Santa†and even cleared out the front of the fireplace so that Santa had a place to get in. (Why not? You can’t burn anything in a fireplace on any day cold enough to want to have a fire because of high pollution warnings.)
I must say, I’m still a little disturbed about perpetuating this whole “Santa Claus†fantasy, but Michelle has picked it up from her friends at school and she’s really looking forward to it. At least she hasn’t picked up any of that baby Jesus nonsense.
We took the kids out to the zoo to see the Zoolights. Each year, as they get older, it’s more fun as they appreciate it more. I guess there will come a year when it starts tapering off as they get too old for that sort of stuff, but it is fun to enjoy it now.
It’s interesting, having a family. Now we have “obligations†to make an effort at Christmas and while it might seem like a bit of a chore, it really isn’t. I hope we have many, many more Christmas
Perhaps it is our society, or perhaps it’s that I hold no stock in Christmas as a holy day, but I just don’t see a lot of Christmas spirit. Shopping, yes. People wearing Santa hats, yes. Bad traffic, yes. But no spirit.
I’ve only ever felt a genuine Christmas spirit once. It was back in about 1977, I was thirteen. My father and took the two-week Christmas vacation to travel down to the tip of Baja Mexico. We travelled over the inner “highway†nearest the gulf. Highway is a joke, it was a dirt road and we travelled for days without seeing another person.
We pulled into La Paz, which in those days was a sleepy fishing village, on Christmas Eve and we stopped into a little restaurant that stayed open for us. The owners didn’t speak much English, and we didn’t speak much Spanish, but before they left, they came over and asked about us. If we had family in the area, etc. We told them we were just traveling and that’s when they invited us to their home for Christmas. It wasn’t an obligatory invitation, it was sincere and genuine because they didn’t want us to be alone on Christmas.
We didn’t take them up on the offer, we had known where we’d be at Christmas and had planned accordingly. Still, I genuinely felt the actual spirit of Christmas that day and it was kind of nice.
I’ve typed away the rest of Christmas Eve, it’s now Christmas day. Merry Christmas, everyone.