Christmas Card - 2010; My Mundane Christmas

I have been writing my blog since June, 2005. Every Christmas I have been fortunate enough to have some transcendent experience that has given some insight or meaning to the holiday to me in a personal way. Those experiences, in turn, became the subject of my Christmas blog and some of my most read essays. Everybody loves Christmas.

So this year, I anxiously awaited my transcendent experience. I looked for it in the snow events we have had the past couple of weeks. I have searched in my choral activities, both in my church choir and Seraphim. I have looked for a meaningful Christmas movie or television program. I have listened to untold hours of Christmas music, even breaking my proverbial rule of “no dead people” Christmas recordings. (It really is time to bury Perry Como and Bing Crosby!!!)

But this year, I got nothin’. No revelations. No warm and cuddly feelings. No inspiration. No life epiphanies. Plain and simple, I got Christmas bupkis. I haven’t bought myself my Christmas present from my wife this year. (So what’s wrong with that? I know what I want…she doesn’t. I buy it. She wraps it. I open it. I give out an exclamation of surprise. End of story!!)

So have I become Scrooge? Well, maybe. Like my grandmother said, after listening to Silent Night for 84 years, it gets a little old. Plus the general mood in the country is bad. People are angry and depressed and jobless. Food bank drives are all around us constantly reminding us how tough it is for so many people. Decorations are chincy in the stores, and the merchandise selection leaves much to be desired as retailers have cut back. That deep sense of security has been washed away for a myriad of cultural, social, and political reasons. What is left is the shell of Christmas, and a lot of people going through the motions.

Mostly I think it is a function of age. I will be 61 years old next month. The last of my close relatives died two years ago, and my immediate family has moved on. My son is grown and there are no grandchildren to spoil as of yet. My entire family is political, and we have been extremely busy, even after the election, doing the things political families do…which is a lot different than normal folks!! Yes, I can definitely confirm that we are nuts.

But that being said, this will probably go down as one of my better Christmases. Both my church choir and Seraphim have never sounded better, although the basses got ahead of the director a few times in our stellar performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria at Martin Luther Lutheran Church last Sunday…certainly a musical landmark for Northeast Ohio!!! Our director has sent us out into the audience to sing Christmas carols at each of our performances, and that has been wonderful meeting and greeting people somewhere between Hark the Herald and Joy to the World. We sang an Italian Christmas Donkey song which brought people to their feet!!!

My church choir reached a new pinnacle by caroling at the Cornersburg Dairy Queen. Well, it’s not Carnegie Hall, but we got free hot fudge sundaes. And the church choir has held together; anchoring our church through a very difficult period. That’s a good thing.

The Christmas shows have been spectacular around the area. High on my “glad I went to see” list was Move over Broadway’s annual “Believe” Christmas show…what talent!! And the Oakland Theater’s How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas reached a new pinnacle of raunchiness, and the audience and I loved it. Certainly this isn’t for everybody, but go with an open mind and Away in a Manger will have new meaning.

My wife and I have joined any number of our friends for nights out. Last Friday night we spent almost 4 hours with some of our friends just talking and lingering over dinner. We closed the restaurant and had a wonderful time. Tonight we will be doing the same thing with some newly made friends. Should be a lot of fun!!

My closest friends will be stopping by my house on Christmas night, a new tradition that has developed over the past 15 years. They aren’t my late mother and father, or aunts and uncles or cousins, but certainly are the people that have a special place in my life. It is one of my favorite nights of the year.

So in writing this rambling treatise of literary excellence, maybe I have discovered that the transcendent experience for this year is realizing that my Christmas has actually become mundane. But that being said, there is comfort in constancy, and happiness in the mundane…because my mundane Christmas is not bad at all...no, not too bad at all!!!

Have a blessed and Merry Christmas.

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