These are the things that the people I know are preoccupied with this season.
1. Taking care of their parents.
2. Making the right financial decisions for the sake of adult children, young or otherwise.
3. Creating an atmosphere of security and hope for younger children.
4. Wondering what to do about the fact that bright sunny and very cold weather means that some street people are dying in their sleep.
That's about it. That's why women as well as men, need to be decision-makers, because people need to be cared for. Christmas can be a very worrisome time, and I think it needs to be said that one should be able to provide traditions that do not cost an arm and a leg. Who gets an extra big paycheck at Christmas? No one I know. Who has to renew their drivers license, car insurance, phone contract, and pay the dentist, the lawyer, the plumber and the university fees office at Christmas? Lots of people. I just hope that no children read this post and find out what adults are really thinking at Christmas.
Now that the boughs are up and the lights hung and the atmosphere of demented green chaos is firmly established, I am going to procure some good escapist literature, a few novels and perhaps Guy de Maupassant. I am going to ban the Nutcracker Tschaikovskian effervescence and listen to something in a minor key.
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5 comments:
Demented green chaos! Very funny phrase. Happy Christmas to you too. (I'm reading The Karamazov Brothers.)
I worry about my sister who is having a tough time with the loss of our mother.
And I worry about another family member who filed for divorce from her abusive husband and now is getting slammed by him and the church. (Thank God for a supportive Christian counselor).
But mostly I'm just surrounded by family and food and lovely things and it is very easy not to worry about anything. And that's probably good for me for a change!
Enjoy your music.
Thank you for this post. I love the tension of blending music in a minor key in with all the festivities. It feels honest and accurate. I played the piano for our hanging of the greens service a couple of weeks back at church. When the music director and I were picking out which verses of the many carols we'd be singing, we got in a little disagreement. I wanted to include the sad verses and she was like, "Oh, it's Christmas. I don't things like sin and death and thorns infesting the ground. It's Christmas. Let's be of good cheer." But I'm kind of like, if the good cheer of Christmas can't withstand the very real and very painful realities that still keep going on all through the Christmas season, then I don't want that kind of pasted on joy. I find I can enjoy the cheer most when I let it settle into my heart with the painful realities that really are.
Banning the "Nutcracker...effervescence" brought me a big smile.
Sometimes I wonder how much I'll mess my kids up with keeping the happiness and sadness all mingled in together so much. Hopefully they'll be freer to be really and truly happy because the happiness will not have to involve a forgetting of real reality. But, who knows, maybe I'm spoiling it all for them?
Oops, for all my words, I left a few out. I meant to say the music director said, "I don't want to get bogged down in things like.... at Christmas, when we're supposed to be happy."
Forced happiness is sad, as is feigned happiness.
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