Christmas, we've been told, is the most wonderful time of the year. It's filled with precious family members making sweet long-lasting memories together. It's about spreading joy and cheer. It's about loving love and making heavenly magical cookies with angelic frosting.
But let's be real. Is that really what ends up happening?
Nope.
Christmas is everybody going to bed mad over the taboo game and waking up to yell about it some more. Christmas is hanging out with family members that you don't really know or have anything in common with. Christmas is grandparents making you feel guilty for not spending enough time with them and too much time with other "inferior" family members. Christmas is lying to little kids about a big fat man throwing out presents all over the world and eventually breaking their hearts when they learn it's not true. Christmas is trying to maneuver through all the out-of-state license plates parked all over the neighborhood. Christmas is watching Miracle on 34th Street over and over because there is nothing else on tv. Christmas is arguing over whose bringing dessert and whose bringing what side item. Christmas is sitting in the parking lot of Toys R Us for an hour only to find the one toy you wanted is sold out.
It's Scrooge sounding, right? Debatable. I call it honesty.
If there's anything I am guilty of, it's telling the truth. I'm open, raw, honest; I'll be the one to say it when everyone is thinking it.
You know I'm right. That's why movies like Christmas Vacation and holiday episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond are so funny. They are so completely accurate to what really happens during Christmas. Once we grow up into adults, Christmas becomes a much different experience from when we ran downstairs and found our first Super Nintendo (still to this day ... best Christmas present I've ever received).
It's sad.
I think it's because we've been told by society that Christmas is supposed to be all these different things. It's almost like it's forced. But all my wonderful times and sweet long-lasting memory family making happen when it happens. It's not planned. It's not forced. It is what it is.
Regardless if your Christmas is picture perfect ideal and as pretty as a picture or if it's filled with dysfunction, arguments and a cornucopia of family drama ... I hope it's everything you want and more.
Personally, I'm looking forward to tonight's Christmas Eve service at Hunter Street and watching It's A Wonderful Life with my mother.
The Merriest of Christmases to you!
The Merriest of Christmases to you!
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