The Ghost of Christmas Passed

Nobody is missing.  We're just waiting.

I'm having a little trouble getting into the Holiday Spirit this year.  Not exactly sure why.  With the Teenangster’s birthday in the second week of December, we tend to not do significant decorating until after we’ve celebrated her day.  So that might be part of it.  It’s the last of her “angst” years, so I’ll have to come up with a new moniker I suppose. 

We’re way behind our usual pace too.  By now we’ve usually picked up a few gifts, written the slightly informational, yet completely irreverent Christmas letter, gotten a strong start on the Christmas cards, and attended the mandatory-fun Command Holiday Party.  I have no idea if a letter will even be attempted this year, we just bought some cards today, and our holiday party had to be moved to January.

Yeah, that’s what I thought- a Holiday party in January?  The only fun holiday in January is New Year’s Day, and that’s reserved for college bowl games and sobering up.  No disrespect intended to the estimable Dr. Martin Luther King, but his isn’t a day especially known for imbibing, recovering from imbibing, or collegiate sports.  As it turns out, our hard working and well-intentioned party planning committee chose the perfect December date for the fiesta.  Perfect, except for the fact that it conflicted with the longest and worst scheduled Mine Countermeasures (MCM) Exercise in recent memory.   We didn’t schedule it, but the folks in COMFIFTHFLEET, the ones who actually do Mine Warfare, as opposed to the folks in my command who just talk about it (guffaw), found that the dates work better for our coalition partners, some of which aren’t all that keen about Christian-based holidays.  That meant that a good portion of our staff would be in Bahrain advising, training, and assessing the forward-deployed Naval MCM Forces.   

So, our party this year isn’t until next year.  January 12^th to be specific.  I’m sure it’ll be very anti-climactic, but what can you do?  Not go I suppose, but I wouldn’t be much of a team player.  “Sorry, I don’t want to hang out with all of you outside of work except before Christmas.  After Christmas?  Forget it!”  That is the weekend before MLK day so it is still a “Holiday” party I guess. 

My lovely wife usually kicks off the season in our household.  At a minimum, she puts out the Advent Wreath and fills the Advent Calendar with little candies for our kids, neither of which are kids anymore of course.  Despite being all grown up, they still love the Christmas traditions they knew as kids, like the daily dose of the sweet stuff out of that particular decoration.  Quite particular about their candy is the younger one though, as I caught her swapping out some of the later days of the month with this week, knowing she’ll get to the calendar before her brother to get the “better” candy.  I’ll show her by filling it with black licorice and Jujubes next year.  Fortunately for her, my son takes more after me and isn’t all that concerned about it.  He’ll just roll his eyes at her as he happily munches whatever is there.

I’m not sure I’ll get around to putting up lights this year.  It takes a couple hours and I didn’t find the time for it this past weekend.  This time of year there’s only about 90 minutes of daylight by the time I get home from work so inside decorations might be our only “Fa La La La La” as my wife puts it.  I didn’t waste the weekend, but it sort of feels like it as I was driving around San Diego County playing “See’s Candy Delivery Man.”  My son hit up our relatives at Thanksgiving for his school fundraiser and cleaned them out.   

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We do have a couple other traditions.  Egg Nog is a favorite of mine, with or without the additional spirit.  Watching "It's a Wonderful Life" is another.   I mentioned that my wife is usually the Christmas catalyst round these parts.  She’s gainfully employed this season though, for the first time since the kids were born.  And as a new member of the workforce, she doesn’t have the energy that she was able to spend on excessive holiday spirit like she once did.  She’s working in the hospitality sector too so her weekends aren’t my weekends now and we don’t have each other to nag encourage about the Christmas chores.  The weather isn't helping either.  It's supposed to be 85 today and if you haven't heard, California is on fire again.

 

I guess our lack of spirit, which could better be described as a lack of energy, is understandable.  It also helps us focus better on the actual meaning of Christmas, vice all the commercialism.  The specter that is crass commercialism and getting all caught up in the shopping has definitely passed us by, if we ever really bought into it.  Advent is time of waiting anyway.  So my lack of spirit actually is Keeping Christ in Christmas, especially if I'm just waiting for it to arrive.  It’s a good time for it in our house anyway, with the kids being older, my wife and I getting older, and we sure don’t need more stuff.  I’m perfectly content with nothing under the tree for me and a simple Christmas morning with a few gifts for the rest of the family.  How about you?