If there is love in your heart and your mind
You will feel like Christmas all the time
~ “Where are you Christmas”
Today we got a notice in our time capture terminals telling us that only two days hence – on December 1st, we would be asked to come in late to start Christmas decorating. The Holiday Cruise, with it’s velvet hats and red-wax smiles, is almost on top of us…how did it come so fast?
And…where is it? In this crazy, volitale and frankly frightening world, in these tense times, how do we find Christmas, where do we look for it. How do we take time out to even start.
I was walking through port with Amras a few days ago, fending off the burn that the brilliant Hawai’ian sunlight is always determined to give me, and looking at the Christmas trees. It never ceases to strike me as bizarre that in the states Christmas starts in November, right after thanksgiving – but moreso than that, Christmas trees decorated with plumaria and ukelalies always just seem so…bizarre to me. At heart, I will always be a Canadian girl, no matter how far I stray, and Christmas means snow and sleet and rain and hot chocolate in front of the fire.
But the answer to my question didn’t – and doesn’t – rest in any of those things..I found it, or remmebered it in the note that the my debarking boss left in my mailslot before he flew out the last port day of the cruise:
Remember, Christmas is wherever there is love. XO
And that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? That’s what it should be all about. It doesn’t matter does it? It doesn’t matter where you are, or what you have to wrap up or not, because that’s not what Christmas is about. It’s what perhaps, people may try to make it about – people try to make it about black Friday sales and pricetag competitions, but that’s not what it’s about.
It’s about – and this will at first sound strange – that feeling I get in my heart when I take my first sip of eggnog.
Which I did early this year, despite the mild disapproval of my family “Christmas Committee” (sorry Josh), because there was simply not going to be an opportunity to do so at the “right” time. I sat in that blinding hawai’ian sunilight, staring at the drinks menu in disbelief, and when the waitress came to take my order I handed it back to her quietly
One virgin Rum Nog please
Virgin?
Yes please
It arrived at the table, and I stared at it for a minute, then picked it up and took a very deep breath. Amras, being wise about these things, sat across the table from me and said nothing, because I wouldn’t have heard him even if he did. He just sat there and watched me breathe in, and then close my eyes and take that first real sip of Christmas. And I felt the tears well up though no sound came, because in that sip – I was home. Home with the sleet and the rain and the mud under my shoes as we shopped for the Christmas tree. Home with the boxes and boxes of ornaments where every single thing you unwrap has a story, home where every ornament on the tree represents someone and being on that tree means that whether you like it or not , with all the ups and downs, you are part of the family. Home, with the smell of pine needles and dust and tinsel that always catches in your hair. Home , where my Mum always has flour across the bridge of her nose and my Dad is always complaining about not getting the top of the tree right. Home, where there is love everywhere, not just under the tree. Where no one understands the crazy way we do things and that’s fine because that’s the way we do them. We don’t always understand each other, we very seldom even agree, but we love.
Hello Christmas…
This year, my little tiny christmas tree will be decorated with ornaments bought especially for it, and garlanded with a delicate shell-necklace that I bought speciifically for that purpose. And I will get construction paper and make paperchains to hang from my ceiling, and I will curl up with an eggnog latte (minus the coffee) and watch the movies I grew up with after turning the ship into a fairyland for the guests that will coming streaming on board when we pull into San Diego. We will make it snow, and we will bring Santa on board…we will sing in the christmas concerts and watch the children’s eyes shine.
And it will come, without packages, or boxes, or bags…
As I get older, Christmas is less and less about the Dolly in the Corner, and more and more about those lovely intagibles, as I get older – the things I want can’t be put under the tree. Can’t be wrapped, can’t be bought. But can be ever so freely given…
And giving those things, love, joy, compassion, and the ‘outstretched hand of tolerance’ …that is what Christmas is…
And ever shall be.