Living in the Past....

 Happy New Year! I know it is already the 3rd of January but for me it still feels like I am living in 2007. I know I am a bit of a procrastinator but I swear that this time it was not my fault. Christmas really didn't arrive till just two days ago on Jan. 1st. That is what I get for whining on a previous blog that December of 2007 was going to be a busy month with 5 different celebrations and parties to go to. Factor in the weather, conflicts of schedules and I only made it to one of those celebrations. Christmas was officially canceled.

I didn't have to worry about finishing shopping, I didn't have to worry about unbaked cookies, I didn't even have to worry about putting up the Christmas tree. Christmas day came and went like any other ordinary day. I didn't even make it to any after Christmas sales to stock up on next year's Christmas. I was being a Christmas bum and I have to tell you......it felt nice.

Well that is til, the very end of the month of December and it was decided to have Christmas on the 1st of January. Then a mild panic took hold, and it was back in the kitchen to bake, back to wrapping presents, and thoughts of putting up the Christmas tree. I did finally get it up and decorated...on the 1st, and it came down the next day. Christmas not only came late it stayed for less than 24 hours.

I have to tell you that celebrating Christmas on the 1st of January of 2008 made me feel as if I was living my own version of a Christmas Carol, and that I was being visited by the ghost of Christmas past... , while presently celebrating Christmas.... in the future New Year. I didn't have any visions of ghosts though, even if at times I seemed a little scrooge-ish.

The whole Christmas seemed odd and out of place, as if we were left behind while others were off and into new and exciting things. It got me to thinking how much we change as we get older and we no longer have that excitement and wonder of Christmas that a child still has. Christmas can seem like a chore, something to live thru, bare with until it passes. We moan and groan about the hassle, and time involved and the unappreciated costly gifts that could have been money better spent. No matter how much sparkle and bling we have on the tree, we can't seem to find the spirit of the holiday.

Thinking back on Christmas's past, I can't remember all of them, only small pockets of memories that stick out. I can't remember every toy I received or what everyone else had gotten from Santa. Those memories are there in the back of my mind with a brightness of a mellow glow that only time can give it a true luster. Present day Christmases can't compare. Those celebrations contain people no longer with us, times we can't recapture. It has to wait it's turn to join those other past Christmases and leave it's own footnote. It has it's advantage of being savored at that very moment it is happening, but there is also that feeling of knowing it is time that is fleeting. Future Christmases have that element of the unknown. Children growing up, family dynamics changing, not knowing the time or place or who will be there for that next Christmas.

I felt a bit of all three Christmas ghosts on Jan. 1st. No Christmas is ever the same even if the same people are present. Lego's sprawled upon the table among some chex mix crumbs by an anxious 9 year old boy. Complaints of 6 year old girl that all of the old people were eating too much food as they sat with their slices of pie and coffee. It was time to open presents, and old people take too long. Chats with teenagers on music, videos, clothes, while a frog-duck puppet quacked in the background. Grown adults playing catch with a child's new toy, while trash bags of torn gift paper sat around.

It was Christmas on the New Year. What happened to the New Year holiday I don't know. I got to thinking what if how we spend the New Year was a prelude to what the upcoming year would be? If a person was laughing on New Year's would that mean they would have a year of laugher? Would it be the same if they had been crying? It made me giggle to think of all those people who fix big pots of beans for good luck on the upcoming year. I know what they would be doing the rest of the year (grin).

Was I still behind and living in 2007 finishing up a holiday? Would that mean that the rest of the year I would be behind and be playing catch up? I do have one or two things left over from 2007 to attend to yet. A small part of me wondered though, if I rang in the New Year celebrating Christmas, would that mean that every day would seem like Christmas in the New Year? For all my griping and complaining about the holiday, that didn't seem like such a bad idea after all...

Merry Christmas...Happy New Year....and everything in between...