Those Holiday Feelings

It’s that time of year. . .we get those holiday feelings. They start at Thanksgiving. We had a lovely, lovely Thanksgiving week. We got to see Sam, Janel and Calvin came, and we saw Bill’s folks and friends too! We started the season off strong with Beethoven’s 9th at Orchestra Hall. Listening to that fourth movement, with full orchestra, chorus and soloists, Beethoven’s cry to the universe, well. . . it makes a lot of our frustrations seem pretty petty. To me.

Janel and I had our traditional Christmas shopping day, and this time we got to have lunch in a galleria restaurant instead of covid takeout in the car. It was lovely. Traditions. Traditions. Those holiday feelings.

I pride myself on focusing on love and not fear. Perfect love casts out fear, or so the good book says. I work hard at not dwelling in the past nor worrying about the future. But, if there is a chink in the armor, it’s those holiday feelings.

Each Thanksgiving brings with it every Thanksgiving. Childhood trips to cold farmhouses in cold cars with cold feet. I’m singing carols with Susan on the dark drive home, Mama and Grandma waiting for us for leftovers in Eldridge. I’ve written it all before, rushing home from Friday’s Christmas shopping downtown, long before it was black friday, begging to get home in time to watch Rudolph on network television.

Then comes the college Thanksgivings. Epic road trips for 48 hours of family time. Five years of Thanksgiving night Texas dance hall gigs. Then marriage and our own littles— in Nisswa, and New Brighton and Eagle Lake. The Wednesdays of cooking, teaching, practicing for choir, packing and getting to church for the kids to sing. Road trips after choir rehearsals. Exhausted Thursdays, before I knew better. I mean, I kinda know better now.

Since 2019, Thanksgiving is waiting for Calvin. That first year was the hardest.

I was living on the memory go round, stuck in the notion that maybe the past was actually better, the four of us living under one roof. I forgot that while my mind can glorify just about any memory, that’s not a great place to stay for too long. I snapped out of it. Pretty much. . . I accepted the new normal. It actually took some divine intervention, which I already wrote about back then. Sometimes there are real angels in the felted wool decorations I hang on the tree.

Two years later, and now I have two juniors, one in high school and one in college. A new threat! That new normal of Calvin coming home for Thanksgiving with Janel, only has one more year. . . then God knows what he will be doing and Mary will be off as well. Heaven help me. I just got it figured out.

Moving on.

Each Christmas brings every Christmas. Those holiday feelings. Letting my mind take trips down memory lane with a just a little healthy nostalgia. Quelling the projection of future holidays that will be. . . DIFFERENT.

I’m holding the conflicting mindsets of making the holidays special, without making an idol of them. And holding space for that darker place that tells me that things will not stay the same. The people and circumstances in our lives will always be changing. Perhaps our fear of losing the people we love, could actually serve some greater purpose of breaking us out of the spell. We can appreciate this moment. This holiday. These circumstances. Be there now.

For better or for worse, I am a creature of habits and rituals. I probably write the same thing every year, my quest to be in the present moment. It’s just in my DNA to change the decorations on the bulletin board in my childhood room each month, from one holiday to the next. Now the bulletin board is my life, my home, the holiday calendar, the grocery list. Christmas recital pieces.

I’m so thankful for the Thanksgiving week we had. There was so much love and food, family and friends. I’m truly looking forward to advent and Christmas. I’m happy with the way things are RIGHT NOW. . . and when I’m being my best self, that perfect love, that casts out fear, tells me that it’s going to be okay, even when things change. There will always be those holiday feelings.

Lord, thank you for the gift of memories, and thank you for this year’s precious Thanksgiving. And keep us hopeful knowing that you have everything under control, the Alpha and the Omega, the cosmic cry of Beethoven’s universal gift for us. Let the most important holiday feeling we long for, be your peace, now and forever. Amen.