Christmas Eve

Another year almost gone by and another Christmas Eve. 

When I was a little kid, this was an absolutely magical time. I loved everything about the Christmas season - the decorations, the lights, the smells, the food, the music, the old movies, and all of the new toys and things to do. I think that the last time I truly felt excited about Christmas though was in 1985 when I was twelve years old. For some reason, that was the last magical Christmas that I remember experiencing. I don't know why. Something changed in the intervening years. Perhaps it was puberty. Perhaps I came to develop a better understanding of the commercial nature of the Christmas season and that turned me off. Perhaps it's a combination of a number of these things. 

There have been times (especially since my children were born) that I started to occasionally feel the old magic. Never to the same extent though from when I was younger than twelve years old. I've never been able to recapture the excitement and those feelings. Whenever I start thinking about this I start to wonder why I would want to recapture it. Was it really all that great? Wasn't I just a small kid that was simply excited about getting new stuff - a pawn in the commercialization of the holiday (something that really got out of control in the 1970's and 1980's)? Is this way of thinking too negative? What does this say about me?

Maybe I have become old and jaded about the Christmas season and what I perceive to be the over-commercialization of it. Yet, I've been feeling this way since I was thirteen. That's certainly not old! 

This might be one example of where I truly grew up well ahead of my time. I tend to think that I'm a "late bloomer" in a lot of respects but that is likely not universally true. I'm not a late bloomer in everything that I do. 

Another aspect of my changed feeling about the season is my changed views on religion. When I was really young, I had no concept of religion other than I knew that I absolutely hated going to church and to Sunday school! Thank goodness my parents stopped going to church when I was around five. I don't think that I could have handled any more of that. When I was around nine or ten I started to take an interest in learning more about religion (I think that this had something to do with the obsession that I developed with the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark). My interest in Christmas as more than just a toy fest developed around this time as I tried to wrap my mind around all of the religious connotations of the holiday. But, I became jaded by religion as well - especially a lot of the mythology around Christ's birth. Beyond metaphor, the whole thing just stretched the bounds of credulity - even for a ten year old's mind!

Ugh... I tend to struggle this time of year. Family get togethers that I don't particularly enjoy. Awkward situations. Sometimes a feeling of isolation and loneliness. Hell - a downright negative attitude toward the season is something that I need to deal with so that I don't make everyone else around me miserable! I'll try my best this evening and tomorrow. I really will. It won't be easy. But, I am on a bit of a personal upswing right now. Maybe this will be a year that I can make the most of it and not be a total Scrooge.