holidays

I’ve been having thoughts along these lines, and after I read this post (thanks for the link, merlin!) I nodded and said, “this.”

What I Want for Christmas: Not a Damn Thing

[many good statements snipped]

“But when all is said and done, what’s important to me is not the gift, but the impulse behind it, which is the true gift. I’m glad you’re thinking of me. I’d be glad of it even without the bauble. That’s a hint.”

It says much of what I’d like to say.

So … how are YOU celebrating 1234567890 Day?

Need a hint? See this CNET article explaining what today is, and why only dorky sysadmins care.

It’s a wholly arbitrary holiday, so I’m thinking I should do something … random and arbitrary.

Every year on Christmas Eve I look for a way to express love.  For years I felt, as the non-religious sort, the true import of this holiday was a bit lost on me, but continued celebrating in my own way.

domesticat.net now chronicles fully a quarter of my existence on this earth, and combining that with a search function often serves to bring the arc of my life into clearer, simpler focus.

Other people focus solely on Christmas, but the entries of the past eight years tell me that this period of the year, this time of shortened days and year-end celebrations, matters as much to me as that one single day matters to most of you reading this entry.  I am not celebrating a religious event, but I am using the excuse of darkened, chilly days to re-evaluate my place in this life and the people I share it with.

I light words against the darkness, and leave them for you to find.  Here are two images from Christmas Eves come and gone:

My smile blossomed at ten after four, when he walked in the door, unexpected, early.  I had commented to Adam online a bit earlier that there was something calm and perfect about the afternoon: the raging storm; the slanted lamplight across my laptop; the soft sound of snoring, geriatric cats.  Suddenly, it was better.

Jeff smiled as he put his bag down and said, "Stacy sent us all home."  He put down his string bag of water bottle, lunch remnants, and snacks; he took his place on the other couch and I paused from debugging.

"I don’t know what it is I want tonight," I said, "but I want to do something a little different.  I just don’t know what."

"Why don’t we go out to dinner?"

As close as you’ll get to a Christmas card from us this year:

[‘Blessing enough’ on flickr. ]
[Original photo shot in St. Patrick’s, included in my 10/2007 New York City set.]

There are several simple signs that the crud has successfully knocked me on my ass, but the biggest sign of all is that I have been home since Friday night (and as of this writing it is now Tuesday afternoon) and though I have been on the couch most of that time, have I posted here?  No.  I’m just now feeling capable of stringing sentences together with some hope of achieving subject-verb agreement, and if I get wordy, even that’s gonna get a bit dicey.

I’ve been giving some thought to a piece of writing that works well this time of year, but I’m not sure I should / could do it.  It’s December, which means cards and year-end letters from friends are arriving in our mailbox, and also means it’s my turn to wonder if I should do one for my friends as well.