I sit in our sunroom, watching the snow fall. A welcome visitor that we have waited for a long, long December while the rest of the country had snow, and we didn't. I look out the sliding glass doors and watch the falling snow cover the ground, though plenty of grass still pokes through. Strange for this area of Michigan at this time of year. Because of the holidays, because of the expected perfect winter wonderland-scape, I have been impatient with the lack of snow, like a child who has waited all year to sled down a hill only to be repeatedly disappointed that such fun is not possible.
Today...the snow feels normal, part of December. A gift, yes, but not the same as when it falls on the 24th. Yuletide is over, and as I walked around the grocery store yesterday afternoon, stocking up after our week in Texas, I felt the yearly letdown of revelry fading into returning normalcy. I told Daniel, "It feels like everything is drooping."
My best friend wrote a great blog post about the way the magick about the holidays fades as we grow older. I think people with children get to maintain it as long as their kids are young. But I don't have kids, and neither does my best friend, and reading her post, I identified with her feelings about missing the sparkle children experience at holiday time.
For me, the past few years, the holidays have been even more stressful than they used to be. Traveling during November or December feels much more draining than any other time of year, and there are many more details to cover. We go to Texas by plane or by car, and we shop for gifts for my family there, rather than shopping beforehand, taking gifts along. Since we shop there, we have to wrap there, often a few hours before the gifts are unwrapped. It feels accelerated to me, sometimes like going through the motions. We don't live in the lives of the people we love, being so far away, so we have to ask, "What do you want for Yule?" And their response on the spot is often, "I have no idea."
And around and around it goes. The whirlwind of trying to make it all bright like childhood, knowing we can't recapture that wonder and innocence, largely because, we're not children. We know the deal about Santa and his elves and reindeer. We know the practical challenges of the season. We know that the picture-perfect portrait of family gatherings is in many cases a facade most people can't maintain, or even manage to create, even for one day. We can't un-know these things.
I wrote a comment to my best friend's insightful blog post. Perhaps recapturing the magick of our holiday as children isn't the answer. Perhaps as adults, we can create new magick more rooted in reality. Wonder abounds in our world; it doesn't need to be falsely manufactured. There is simple beauty in lights strung on a house, shining bright and twinkly in the dark of a winter night, whether there's snow or not. There is wonder in a tree decorated in baubles from the past. There is wonder in the love we feel for the people in our lives, and there is a keen wonder in the human spirit of giving.
Magick is everywhere and not just as holiday time.
Like snow falling on a regular Monday, making the part of me that loves winter sparkle like the child I used to be gazing at the presents under the tree.
Copyright 2009 Melissa LaFavers