Home for the Holidays: This Young Woman's Thoughts on the Holiday Season
During the holiday season, it seems that words have more meaning when spoken or written, and annoyances are quickly forgiven and forgotten in favor of sentiment and mad rush of the holiday season. Words have more power during this time of year. For example, “Happy Holidays” becomes a mantra for some, being tossed about as gaily and randomly as confetti at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Any phrase expressing even a modicum of bliss is heaped en masse with teeth-cracking smiles to any passerby along with possibly spiked cider-induced karaoke. Though let me clarify, when I say ‘passerby’, I mean any unsuspecting victim of one’s over-exuberant but altogether understandable surplus of holiday cheer. No one is completely normal nor do they have their metaphoric goblet of common sense overflowing during the holidays!
Of course it is not unreasonable that a person’s common sense can be called into question when six weeks before the holiday our faithful companion, the radio, has already forgone the selection of favored songs to blare eighty-seven wonderful renditions of ‘Jingle Bells’. Naturally, these wonderful songs are cut with a healthy dose of jingle-ridden advertisements, as well as approximately sixteen other holiday songs and their various incarnations that you will hear echoing in your head until just before Valentine’s Day. My favorite holiday song is actually “Dominic the Italian Christmas Donkey”. That could just be because it was hilarious to have myself, my three younger brothers and my normally reserved mother making donkey noises along with the radio.
Speaking of things occurring outside of the norm; this time of year often coincides with a rise in an alarming trend. The winter months seem to bring the inexplicable desire to wear borderline-ridiculous or just plain over the top sweaters that jingle, sing, light up and otherwise perform duties not usually required by one’s apparel. All of which said sweaters are in color combinations that would not in any other circumstance see the light of day ever. And please do not get me started on the jingling elf hats-with or without that white fuzz border, the flashing Rudolph noses held onto one’s face by a strip of questionably suitable elastic that cuts off half the circulation to your face, and the ridiculous but adorable and somehow permissible headgear in the shape of reindeer antler. Said self-adornments are probably better left back in the third grade winter chorus, which is the last situation in which I can recall wearing any of said holiday themed items without being under extreme duress. Or perhaps it may have occurred while under the influence of some very well made eggnog. The issue of questionable fashion set aside for now, the holiday season is primarily centered on one’s home and hearth and a renewed interest in loved ones and connections that may need a hint of renewal.
‘Home’. The word in the context I am attempting to portray it in is typically defined as “a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person or of a family or household”; or as “the place in which one’s domestic affections are centered”; and finally as “a person’s native place or own country”. The traditional picture conjured up by the word ‘home’ at this time of year is something akin to a Norman Rockwellian version of Yuletide domestic bliss: a snow decked, white picket fenced abode with smoke billowing gently from a chimney. Lights shine in the windows, there is a wreath hanging on the door wishing holiday cheer to passersby, and the vague outline of a Christmas tree can be seen through the curtains. Outside the home, a slightly misshapen snowman with a borrowed scarf, vegetable nose and twig arms stands as a silent smiling sentinel over the laughter-filled snowball fights of children and dear Rover romping in the snow with his other canine companions.
The year of 2008 finds me witnessing this ideal scene taking place as an observer, a young woman on the fringe of the scene. I watch the snow fall gently to the white-covered ground and hear the tinkle of “Let it Snow” whisper out around me. I shake the snow globe once more as the music winds to down into silence and watch the false snowflakes rain down on the frozen idyllic moment before replacing the bauble on the shelf. In reality, I am living with my roommate in Florida, my family scattered to the four winds, and a scene of domestic bliss is the farthest thing from reality this year. There is no particular location where my “domestic affections are centered” and the “usual residence” I previously called home are both falling apart at the seams at a rapid rate. Soon, my stepmother will no longer bear that title, and my father is heading for parts unknown at his earliest convenience. My mother is still across the country and while I will get to see her for a brief time, not all is well on that front either. All in all, it is not my finest holiday season.
However, as I sit and listen to the radio with its eighty-seven versions of ‘Jingle Bells’, ‘Little Drummer Boy’ and ‘Carol of the Bells’, I am reminded of what I do have. I have a list of over fifty people that are going to receive holiday cards from me-and I managed to send them in a timely manner already. I have friends that I can call and sing the chipmunk version of holiday songs with, even though they are living far across the state or even the country and are in the break room at work when I phone. I have a place to live, which is a vast improvement over certain years I have known.
Though the holiday season could wrap me in a through blanket of depression if I let it, I find things in life to make me laugh. Longstanding friends of mine know that I freely admit that I loathe palm trees with every fiber of my being, they amuse me. Though, it is still my opinion that the ones with Christmas lights on them just look very wrong. However, even though I can be rather anti-Floridian when it comes to holiday decorations, even I must admit there is something endlessly amusing about seeing a flock of nine pink plastic flamingos each with a Santa hat and reindeer antlers atop their head-one with a blinking red nose and everything- in the neighbor’s front yard. That one display of tropical celebratory spirit prompted me to dig out and don my green jingle bell earrings.
So while I may not have the life in a snow globe I want, I have friends and family that love me. I have new cookie recipes and I have mistletoe to dodge. I have every intention of finding one of those foolish Santa hats with white trim and embracing the holiday spirit whole-heartedly. Home is where the heart is so this year, I suppose, I shall carry my home with me wherever I go.
To all I wish a happy holiday, whatever your creed.
And if you must travel, to you I say "Godspeed".
....Even though I'm a pagan chick ^_^ Happy Holidays to all.
BellaB.