Christmas Corn
I had a box of presents from my mom to open today. When I started doing it, I thought back to how much I loved the Partridge Family Christmas album in my childhood. I realized that it might be on Yahoo Music, so I looked it up and played it. God bless the Information Age.
Listening to that album, while sitting on my bed opening gifts with my cat beside me, was distinctly surreal. I was once again amazed at how familiar a long-lost experience can seem. I felt a bit dissociated and concerned that I'd be hit by messy old psychic influences and I reminded myself hey, I'm Greg and I'm 38, I'm past 90% of that old stuff, and I'm relatively aware and comfortable with the rest. I 90% believed myself. I think I'm going in a good direction.
I don't know if I've publicly stated how special our modern Christmas mythology was to me. I think it was my primary belief in magic and wonder, and when I was disillusioned about my belief in Santa Claus-- not until age ten or eleven-- I became questioning, cynical and perhaps even bitter about lots of other things. If that belief and disruption were the catalysts I often perceive them to be, I may owe them much of my individuality, my especial strengths, weaknesses and possibilities.
Christmas means very little to me anymore. I wish it could acquire more meaning again, even though I'm neither Christian nor materialist. I like the idea of holidays; they can create valuable conscious structure-- I'm just not very good at feeling and living them now. I'm too generally unsettled for it. I do have some nostalgia though, and some warm fuzzy feelings for the important people throughout my life. I hope everyone can use the holidays to renew some relationships with their most basic, important values; or, if those values no longer suffice, to imagine some better ones.