Christmas isn't Christmas till it happens in your heart

I love that song. It's been some time since I've sung it.

It's now 4:41 AM according to my newly-fixed computer's clock, the very same computer I'm using to type this out now. The world is nicely asleep around with, although I do hear the occasional car drive past in the silence of this night. Oh and Lavie's awake somewhere in the house, but obviously sleepy enough not to come bother me for attention.

If you're wondering, I'm awake because I can't sleep. It's been like that for the past week or so; waking up at strangely odd hours and finding it near impossible to sleep after that. I'm guessing it is because the weather has turned rather chilly at night these days, and the cold creeps in and wakes me up.

A wandering thought comes to mind of how the homeless survive living outside in these conditions... and if I were them, perhaps I would be a little less living right now.

Anyway. Back to the topic of Christmas.

I was just telling Melodie earlier in the day, that once you start working, Christmas, or at least the celebration of it, starts to change quite a bit. Once it was a time of excitement, of expecting hopefully for presents and cards from people you cared about, or hopeful expectation of thanks and affection from people you cared about receiving the presents and cards you got them. Dinners and outings and celebrations were expected and planned for, and the mood was one of rather heady celebration, oftentimes for no good reason other than a chance to celebrate life along with the rest of the world.

Once you start working though, things start to change a little. Timetables throughout the year begin to become packed with opportunities to meet people, since working a day job takes a big bite out of the time you have for one another. Money becomes both more, and less of an issue; more as you (hopefully) begin to treasure your own hard-earned dollars, less because its such a big bump from the allowance you used to have. As a result people's appetites, each according to their choices, and there grows a distinct dissonance between the varying ranges of frugality and generosity.

Then comes the influence of the world and the constant drive for more and more things, as if money and its buying power, for self and for others, has become a nice little substitute for the inability to spend time or express affection for one another.

The idea of what Christmas is all about begins to pervade our minds too. We suddenly realize the year is drawing to its inevitable close, and make desperate plans to meet up with as many people that we treasure as we can, to catch up, to know that each is well, to know that hey, we're still friends... right?

And then... it seems to me, that every year the cycle repeats itself, it gets harder. Or perhaps, my heart has grown colder, or just that little bit more enclosed. The circle of "I-really-got-to-meet-you!" friends shrinks; the number of Christmas cards and expectations take a dip; those here-and-now find themselves in my thoughts much more often than golden-olden friendships that have sustained me in the past. Divergent lives, changing times, and the simple fact that relationships not worked upon get slowly covered in the fine layer of memory dust. They're all there really, but they sit quiet as they begin to fade into the background of my history.

And yet, these things are what made me who I am today.

Perhaps, that is what changes Christmas the most for me. The purposelessness of celebration has lost its charm; without embracing the meaning of what the season is all about all year round, the celebration rather much becomes the wake up call that reminds us of what has been gained or lost over the year. Year after year, the growing weight of who we have becomes, weighs down silently on our shoulders.

And perhaps, so too, the significance of the very birth of whom we celebrate. The appearance of the Word, the essence of Love, the one Light that would banish the darkness from our souls... and give us hope. The angels sing, the chorus raised, glad tidings brought to a mankind that would, till now, struggle to understand the depth of redemption promised by the coming of Christ. e who were once enemies of God, would be forgiven, and become friends.

Such a revelation it would be each year to the reflecting soul, that each passing year our weight should have grown, and yet because of Him, has diminished into joy and celebration.

Now to live it daily for the coming year. Because... work doesn't really matter. People do.