Good News for the Cynic This Christmas
My husband knew something was wrong when I said it. He looked up from his phone, “What did you just say?” I repeated, “Christmas. What’s the point anyway?” A new city. A new house. The year had been full of sudden change. Now the holidays were approaching with the pressure of creating magic for our children coming to spend the holidays in a new home. The problem was that there was no magic to give. I was cynical. Tired. And quite frankly, a little depressed. No little kids to buy for. No fun surprise like a puppy or a hard-to-find toy. I couldn’t conjure up the magic I was known for giving, the magic I had grown up with. As a child, I squealed when Santa threw candy through our sliding glass door as Rudolph sailed overhead (my dad may have been nearby throwing candy to bounce off the glass as he distracted us). When I grew older and could handle a hatchet, I marched into our wooded yard to cut my own “Charlie Brown tree” to bedazzle my bedroom. Then as a college student, I could not wait to pull into our driveway at Christmas break knowing Mama had turned on every twinkling light, hit play on the holiday music, and prepared a fire and cup of spice tea for me as I collapsed from dorm room living to home-sweet-home. Fast forward through two and a half decades of putting on a Christmas show for five kids and the chaotic cheer that ensued, myriad Christmas Eve dinners with family and friends, several late entrances into candlelight church services, and I was in a place without memories, with kids too grown to care about Elf on a Shelf, and family miles away...