'Tis the Season to be Frantic

I started my holiday shopping today.

I hadn't purchased a single gift for my family until this morning. It is December the 17. I have four children.

I've been really busy, though. And little by little my Christmas spirit, which was late in arriving this year, is creeping in.

I've had my tree up for weeks, although the time has wizzed past me. We've entertained a little, attended concerts, kept up with work schedules and canoodled with family.

Yet amid the schedule and pace I've been keeping, I've been searching for that little teeny Christmas piece of me that is missing. Every year it gets harder to find. You know, it is the little kid inside of you that feels the anticipation of the holidays. The miracle of goodness and waiting. The joy in preparation and celebration.

I honestly was beginning to think that the entire season would pass and I wouldn't find it. But today, amid the flour mess in the kitchen and three batches of Christmas baking, after a day of shopping and an evening of CBC television children's Christmas programming; to the tune of Mickey Mouse's A Christmas Carol, with Scrooge McDuck and Tiny Tim.... I found it.

It was nestled in with my kids on the couch. It was in the drizzle of the chocolate and the heat of the oven. It was the scent of the candle on the counter and the blue glow from the lights on the snow outside.

The feeling didn't come to me like I expected. Every year, I wait for the giddy, eager anticipation of lost childhood to flow into me and keep me impatient and ecstatic for holiday blessings and celebrations. I remember waiting at the door for family, diving into baking and laughter, lying on my stomach, agonizing over presents (which ones have my name on them and being crushed when there were only one or two.

Each year that passes pulls me further away from the feelings I long to recapture. I find that I am rushed and resentful. I feel pushed through the season by concerts and commitments. And the joy of buying for children that could never be disappointed has become a competition with myself and a longing to 'top the gift we got them last year!'

Each year that passes finds me waiting, almost sadly, wondering if I will ever feel that way again.

Yet today, on this average, frantic shopping, baking, laundry, dinner and sick kid, any normal day... the feeling arrived.

I was lost in thought, stirring with one hand, planning the next batch of baking in my head, listening to the 'Who's down in Who-Ville' when I finally 'came to.'

It had finally arrived. It wasn't the giddy, jump out of my pants excitement that I had as a kid, though. It was a quiet, peaceful, 'Life is good and I am lucky' kind of a moment. A rare one, when my thoughts, worries and obsessive compulsive side let it's guard down, and allowed the peace of the present moment to fill me up.

The peace of the present moment. Who knew that's where it was? I'd been waiting, thinking I would never find my lost Christmas feelings ever again. And there it was.

Hmmm.

Those damn kids have it all figured out.
If only as adults, we could put the 'frantic' aside and get settled in this moment.

This quiet, Grinchy, cookie, candle, cozied on the couch kind of moment.
Christmas.

Hurrah. It's finally here.