Of Christmas Past

I was thinking about how Christmas has changed a lot for me over the years. Yes, I am one of those people who thinks it's ridiculous that Christmas decorations in department stores go up in October. Yes, I also think Christmas has gotten over marketed, and that society tries to sell the idea that a fat guy in a red and white suite is what Christmas is all about. I'm not cynical about Christmas...ok, well maybe I am a little, but it seems to me that all my fond memories of December 25th are like those Hallmark commercials from the 1980's.

If you're at least as old as me, then you'll remember those Hallmark classic movies, you know the ones that always made you wanna cry tears of joy at the end? You'll also remember those golden lit, airbrushed Hallmark Christmas commercials that seemed to depict on tv the exact way I depict my memories of my youth. I admit that I am sentmental, and I admit that I romanticize the past as something of a golden faded memory. Maybe that's the way I should always try to remember Christmas, and the reason I always do?

I remember my first Christmas like it was yesterday. I got up before the sun rose, it must have been around 5am, and I woke my parents with a zeal only a 3 year old could possess. My sister hadn't been born yet, and it was the first true Christmas that my parents had where we were a complete family. It was mom, dad, and myself. A perfectly complete little family at the beginning of all things. Obvisously it was even more amazing the following year where I celebrated my first Christmas as a big brother. Yet the surprise, wonderment, and joy that I felt on that morning may be a feeling that I never experience again from that point of view. I hope one day that I can relive bits and pieces of it through my children, but I know it will never be the same as feeling I had that could only be felt through the innocent mind of a child.

Christmas is about the ultimate gift of love, life, redemption, and humanity wrapped all into one. I think the basic elements of that are so simple that even I as a 3 year understood it. Did I know the true details of the Nativity story, of course not, yet the depth of emotion that Christmas embodies I did. But, not only did I understand it, but I felt it, and it was something incredibly real because it was my unihibited reality. The more we "grow up" and the more life clouds that view, the harder it is to see the true simplicity in things. For once I'd like to go back to a place of undestanding where I don't feel like I am required to overthink, or overanalyze because it is protecting me from reality. Life brings upon so many doubts, that we truly become incapable of seeing things without a lens.

I like to remind myself that life is only as complicated as you convince yourself that it is. It's that simple...and that complicated at the same time.