Christmas - Five Days To Go!

 

Got all your Christmas shopping done? 

Me neither. 

In fact I don't Christmas shop. Haven't for years. Bill and I stopped exchanging gifts over forty years ago. We both had everything we wanted. As Bill often said "Christmas is for kids!" I agreed with him. 

Thinking back to my Christmases as a kid, I always felt let down. The promise was always more than the reality. I got over the "I wish I got this for Christmas" vibe by the time I was nine or ten. The only Christmas present I can remember that I truly enjoyed and appreciated was a Kodak camera. That started my picture taking journey which continues to this day with my iPhone. God! Imagine if I had received an iPhone when I was twelve years old. I would have literally over a million pictures, if not more. Maybe it's just as well I was born when I was (1941), when a Kodak Brownie camera was state of art.

I'm not complaining about "poor me" at Christmas time though. The things I fondly remember about Christmastime was the smell of the fresh Christmas tree (they cost about $5 then) and the bubble lights. I still have bubble light, over my fireplace mantle now.

When I got older and had money that I could buy presents I tried to capture the Christmas Spirit but alas, that spirit eluded me again. The promise was always more than the reality. I would often spend my whole Christmas bonus of a couple thousand dollars (this was in the Sixties when a couple thousand dollars could buy substantial Christmas presents) on my nieces and nephew and my parents. My father was always hard to buy for so I gave up after a couple years. My Mother was easy because she never brought anything for herself and she always appreciated what I got her. Probably because I put a lot of thought into her gift as well as her birthday gift which was on December 24th. My brothers? I have no idea what I bought them. I don't remember. Probably nothing. They had, like Bill, pretty much everything they wanted.

So this Saturday morning before Christmas I think of Christmases past and what always comes up is the promise wasn't the reality. Even the whole "Peace On Earth" myth. I figured that early on too.

So put me into the "Bah humbug!" category. I do like the 1950's black and white movie about Ebenezer Scrooge though. Not so much for the message but for the well crafted movie. 

These days of chaos with "you know who" (I can't bear to put his name in this post), Christmas means even less. I believe in the message of Christmas but my difference is to practice it all year not just at Christmastime.