Christmas is over....

Christmas is over and I woke up wondering what it was all about. It seems like any old ordinary day today, except that I will be heading to the stores this afternoon for the sales to buy next years wrapping paper etc. All the decorating, all the shopping, all the busy-ness and in one day its over. If I had my way, I would just take down all the decorations and get the house back to normal. I loved watching the babies open presents and see the smiles on every one's faces when they got things they wanted. The holiday goodies make me long for going back to my healthy eating. Hard to pass up the cookies but sugar never makes me feel as good as say carrot juice.

Christ somehow gets lost behind wrapping paper and bows. The manger scene never seems to take front stage as much as greenery and bows. Jingle bells raise our mood more than does the song, O Holy Night. I think this morning I just feel like I got it wrong. Missed the point. Answered some big question wrong or something like that. Adults often comment that Christmas isn't as much fun as when they were kids. You know, no toys to play with on Christmas day, no belief in Santa. But now I am wondering if we just miss the whole point as adults and then feel a longing for what Christmas is all about. I think that is part of it for me. I wanted to listen to music this morning that would draw me closer to Christ, lead me to a place where I felt a deeper call to be more loving, more compassionate, more dedicated to living a life for others and not just out for this or that thing, or more stuff or trying to puff myself up so I look better on the man made scale of success.

The way I feel is hard to define in a few sentences, mostly because I am not sure just how I feel, but there is an emptiness from the holiday as deep as the discarded boxes that the presents came in.

I needed to have connected to the holiness of the day and I didn't. Yes, I know its not really the birthday of Jesus, but a date is not what I celebrate anyway, its an event. And frankly I got so caught up in the red and green, the holly and the ivy, the evergreen and the red candles that I didn't spend time contemplating how a baby born in a stable, changed the world. Sure, I can do this kind of thinking today, but that doesn't erase the fact that I spent a good part of a month, missing the point ! I am not beating myself up over it, but simply facing a fact of where my thoughts have been.

I might have said the right little phases of the season and sent Christmas cards that focused on the real reason for the season, but I personally missed the depth that could have been experienced.

Good old Dr Phil is fond of saying, "You can't change what you don't acknowledge" which is a truth.

I am acknowledging, that I missed something this Christmas.