Christmas wish list, huh? This is normally something I would have fun thinking about, but this year I'm honestly drawing a blank. It's not that I have everything, or that I wouldn't love that new (fill in the blank) low whistle like so many others. It's just that for the sake of emotional stability through hard times, I haven't allowed myself to really want something of that sort for so long that it's like I've forgotten how to, well... want stuff like that. Not that I don't want anything, it's just that right now there are more important things to me than a new CD, camera, book, whistle, etc. Important things like keeping up on the bills and finding a job that will work around my hubbies work. I would much rather see that my son has something fun under the tree this year than have anything for myself. Why dwell on things I can't have right now? It will wait. Much rather count the blessings I do have and be happy. So this year I don't have a Christmas list. Anything else will be a bonus.
Hubby and I were talking about what Christmas means the other day. It started with the news talking about the busy holiday season and how it's forcast to be better this year with the economy up from last year. He said something that really made me think, "They tell us on the news all through to Christmas what a wonderful Christmas we are going to have, then afterwards they will tell us what a wonderful Christmas we just had, like they have something to convince us of."
In response to a lady on TV who said she was "terribly stressed" about shopping for Christmas this year because she wasn't sure she would be able to buy many presents for her kids and she so wanted a nice Christmas for them, my hubby asked "Can't someone still have a memorable Christmas without presents? Or is that what Christmas has become, all about the presents?"
He told me that it's not that he wouldn't spend hundreds of dollars on Christmas gifts if he could. What bothers him was how commercial the holiday has become. How some people go into debt just to buy all these presents, all these "things" that the world says they should have and then spend months paying it all off when maybe they could have been just as happy with a little less and the peace of mind that not having that burden of extra debt to pay off in the New Year would bring. How so many people he sees and those he talks to (even his active Christian friends and aquaintances) when they talk about Christmas and what they do for the holiday, put more emphasise on the presents and Santa Claus than on the baby born in a stable roughly two thousand years ago who would change the world, which holiday CHRISTmas bears His name. That if you couldn't find a way to have a pleasent happy Christmas without tons of gifts, then what are you really celebrating?
Not to say anything bad about presents at Christmas... they can be great fun, (and who couldn't use more whistles
) but he did give me something to think about. And over the past few years, I've come to agree with him.
Happy Holidays!
Sara
(PS: Okay, I do want something... I want snow.
)
'I wish it need not have happend in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'
-LOTR-