Now. Depending on your context and whatever else you bring to each word that enters your brain, the title of this post either fills you with abject despair, thrilling anticipation, or perhaps an unnameable anxiety that is a mixture of both.

Then again, maybe I’m reading too much into the emotional vibration of words and maybe you love Mondays in general or this one in particular. So maybe it’s all very neutral to you.

Perhaps, you’ve found all the perfect gifts for each one on your list. Perhaps each gift will be a proper profession of your love, loyalty or desire. Then again, maybe you have conflicted and confused feelings on that too. What if the thought behind the gift is misconstrued or dismissed or merely put aside like yesterday’s newspapers?

Maybe you decided to give everyone eco-responsible gifts of experience but now you’re wondering if that was misguided? The social pressure to profer material treasures and swath everything in shiny foil is planted deep, and yet, the new eco-green pressure says, you should save the trees, save the earth, save ourselves and well…you may as well save the rest of the world too while you’re at it.

And so you hand over a gift devoid of shine and glitz and aren’t really sure if there’s true joy in that either.

And people wonder why they have mixed emotions at Christmas?  Did you know that the Charlie Brown jazz music that was written for that first 1965 airing of that Christmas special, was deemed ‘too dark and melancholy” by the producers but somehow it was allowed to run anyway, and the response, well you know the response…it is such a classic sound. And I think it is because deep in the dark cave of our hearts we know that all of this festivity is our way of dealing with the darkest time of the year.

We throw as much light and hope into our world, precisely because our pagan ancestors hoped it would inspire the sun to come back. By heaping branches onto the fire we were begging the sun to not abandon us in our darkest hours, to remember to bring the light back to our winter caves where we hunkered down and tried to survive until spring released us from the murk.

That music of melancholy and darkness bundles up all of it in a perfect bittersweet package that is Christmas. Those notes capture the longing of Christmases past, Christmases of loss and Christmases too, of joy and wonderful lights.

Christmas amps it all up…family lost and family found, friends forgiven and friends abandoned…somehow it all is highlighted and thrown into sharp relief under all this light and tinsel. 

Our job then, is to remember that it is also okay to feel a little sad for all those who are no longer with us this Christmas but to revel in what is…how it is now. Whatever you choose to do, get behind your choice and accept that something else will be lost by picking that option.

My plan is to make the best of the lights, the love and the feasting. I want to pay attention and really listen to whoever I find myself with…to practise love and practise joy.  And to remember that all gifts have a price.