You may not agree but I think Christmas is 90% emotion and 10% action. While it feels like we are running around every day in December like chickens with our heads cut off, it is only the result of emotions gone astray.
What other event would make a grown woman stay up for nights in a row, making cookies and candy that she makes at no other time. The decorating, cooking, entertaining duties....and then there is the gifts. Something for everyone is what the emotion will tell you and if not careful, you will be sucked in. Having a closet of gifts available for any unforeseen present givers to you and yours, seems almost necessary - just in case.
And on top of everything else, you throw in childhood expectations and you have yourself a full blown emotional ride that will steer you hard and fast into the great Holiday unknown. You will lose your Way and forget everything but the almighty Task List. Emotion drives every aspect of Christmas - the more aware we are, the better we can learn to use emotion for good.
This will be a different Christmas for most of us. We will have more time than money. Instead of concentrating on what we can't give/spend/do - maybe we take that emotion and change the way we think. I have been doing the Jones soda bottle thing for a few years now. Pick out a color, add the kids's Christmas picture and hand them out to family on Christmas Eve. This year, there will be no bottles to hand out. As I was thinking how disappointed I was going to be, I started thinking maybe I could do it for Valentine's Day. maybe start a new tradition. That is a constructive way of using emotion in a more positive way. Disappointment is a part of life, a very real part but sometimes, we recognize that we have the ability to take seeing red and use it to our advantage.
As I go thru the next 22 days and have disappointment come my way, I hope I remember that the light, sounds, smells, music and joy of the Christmas season are but just a emotion away. A cup of peppermint cocoa with Tony Bennett singing in the background may be all I really need...
