Shiny Lights and Sad Songs: Giving When You're Tired

I’m going to let you all in on a little secret:  I don’t write these blog posts in real time.  I am a real, live Hermione Granger and as such can’t bear the feeling of procrastinating.  I write the blog two or three weeks in advance to make sure that if we’re hit by the flu or I get overwhelmed with life, I’m still meeting my (totally, 100% made up by me) deadlines. 

But this post?  This post was written right up to the moment.  I am in over my head.  I practiced what I preached and took the first week in December for self-care.  And with the short Advent, I feel like I am a chicken with my head cut off.  I guess what I am saying is that I am self-sacrificing my own enjoyment of this holiday season so that it can go off well.

But I’m not really that good at sacrifice so I’m listening Joni Mitchell and Nina Simone as I mopily wrap present after present.  I’m just…down.  Two of the three kiddos figured out about Santa this year and the world sort of sucks at present and it just seemed like the time to listen to “Both Sides Now.”  But then Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” came on and I thought three things at once: 1) I will never fucking forgive the Pentatonix for making this a Christmas song.  I’m pretty sure it’s about shitty relationships and good sex, right? 2) I know Leonard Cohen wrote it and all but Jeff Buckley’s version is better.  Fight me on this.  And 3) It means something that I’m more touched by “Hallelujah” than “O Holy Night” right now.

I grew up in a world that knew it was in decline.  Eastern Pennsylvania in the 80s and 90s was not a cheery place to be.  But there was something more real, and more full, about a Christmas season full of tough people working their damndest to make sure that my siblings and I had traditions and memories, and things to fall back on so that when I grew up, and our world once again struggled to find the light, I knew how important it was to sacrifice and keep the light burning.

I’m not one for facades, and Stepford wives, and glossy photos.  But at this time of year, a lot of us are working our butts off to share traditions that might be meaningless except for the meaning we give them.  Gift giving matters.  Thoughtfulness matters.  Links to the past, a past so long ago we don’t even understand why we do it, matters.

Our culture is so obsessed with usefulness, with value, with perfection that we forget that it’s ok to do things simply to remind our bodies and our minds that we are not the first to come, and we will not be the last to be here.  And us, the sacrificing exhausted middle generations?  We’re holding both sides so that someday when my kids grow up and look at a 4:17pm sunset, they’ll remember that good smells, warm lights, and brightly colored paper will maybe, just maybe, make the world a little better.