Let Your Soul & Spirit Sing

This is a post written earlier in the century when my column, The Couch Potato Chronicles was in full swing. Nothing really changed very much in this regard since then, so I thought you might enjoy it, he said presumptuously. PS The image above is a miniature room setting created by my wife, Heather, who is world class at this, and a lot of other crafty things.

Today I took some time to head over to Walmart and scope of some of the stuff on the wife’s list, when it started to hit me.

The raging torrent of Christmas starts with the little bump of some frenzied suburban housewife, trying to get by you in one of their aisles. She has a screaming kid in her shopping cart and a cell phone stuck in her ear as she is being led around the store by the voice on the other end of the phone.

She’s on a deadline. She’s got a quota and she’s damn well going to fill it before time runs out.

Her frenzied behavior stuck to me like some yucky syrup and it triggered the next level of awareness of the raging torrent, just busting through the dam. As I looked around I saw at least a dozen women just like the one who had bumped me. All as frenzied and harried. Some with friends or mothers, some speaking Slavic languages, nervous eyes darting around hoping against hope that they had not missed anything.

Needless to say I got the hell out of there as quick as I could. I got a couple of the things I was looking for, but I certainly didn’t blow a gasket in the process.

I don’t know what it is about this time of year that makes time seem like it’s running faster. We all seem to be so busy doing stuff that we can only pay the slightest bit of attention to the fact that this really is a wonderful time of year.

I’m not a very sentimental soul, but during the Christmas season I tend to soften up quite a bit.

It’s one of the few times of the year that I indulge myself in thinking about my childhood Christmases.

My mother had many brothers and sisters and for some reason, they would all converge on our house at Christmas time. Ours wasn’t the biggest house on the planet, so it was amazing how up to 20 people could fit into that house so comfortably. We were far from the richest family in town and it was amazing how there was always more than enough food and drink for everyone. The memory of those years, are a permanent fixture in my mind and every year about this time, I call them up and indulge myself in the pure unbridled joy of them.

Back then nobody seemed to be running around like so many headless chickens with cell phones, long shopping lists and soon to be maxed out credit cards. Everybody just seemed to be sitting around telling stories and having a fantastic time with the people they loved.

The purity and warmth of those childhood memories are a big part of what gets me through the now frenzied mania into which the holiday season seems to have evolved. Maybe it would be a good thing for everyone to just stop for a while and call up their own memories of those early days, before the mass media became so all pervasive, creating a new, faster, more frenetic pace of life.

Put on some Christmas carols and let those sounds wash over you. Have a rum and egg nog. You deserve it. In the evening, hunker down together and watch your favorite Christmas movie. Eat too much turkey and too many goodies. Wear a Santa Claus hat or some stupid reindeer antlers.  Haul out your ugly Christmas sweater and display it proudly. And to quote the great Van Morrison,
"Let your soul and spirit sing."