Holiday Cheer

The week before school breaks for the winter holiday is, perhaps, the longest week of the year. It's dark, it's cold, and this year, like last, is particularly wet.

And now, windy.

The forecasters of the forecast are predicting 70 mph winds tonight. That's a whole lot of blowing. I heard a friend of a friend describe the weather as "blowing rain" the other day and that's precisely what it's done now for 2 days straight. Tonight shall be no different.

I'm in search of my Holiday Cheer these days. Having a birthday (this Saturday) near the Christmas Chaos has always made it difficult for me to focus. There is shopping to do and though I'm nearly done, nothing feels actually complete or finished. There is wrapping to do, but I may just fall into my brother's habit and stay up late Christmas Eve and wrap like a fiend, though I don't buy nearly as many presents as everyone else does.

But there's also a birthday to celebrate and often I feel apologetic that my birthday festivities must interrupt the great anticipatory hoopla of Christmas.

Perhaps all would have been better had I been born Jewish, though my co-worker says being Jewish is just as horrible as having a birthday around Christmas. "You are," she tells me, "bombarded with Christmas every where." And she's right...the musak in the grocery stores, the lights on the houses, the silly little ornaments people pin to their lapels, the inordinate amount of red sweaters...it's hard to focus on anything BUT Christmas. Even the Iraq War seems to have taken a back seat and that is far more upsetting than no one really noticing my birthday.

Maybe Holiday Cheer will arrive on Friday when I am handed gift after gift from my students. Mugs are my least favorite, but I'm sure to get at least one snowman or a Santa. And there's always the chocolate. Mounds and mounds of it with a Starbuck's card tuck in neatly to a handmade greeting card or some gift that requires me to ask the giver exactly what it is and what it's used for.

I'm not complaining. I am very thankful for the gifts my students offer. They are so sweet when they shyly put it on my desk or bounce up and down asking me to "Open it, open it now!" I suppose, like anyone, the kids make Christmas Christmas and that's the kind of cheer that gets me more in the spirit.

Of course this year, the plethora of candles that come my way just may come in handy if we, once again, lose our power. As I did on Monday afternoon, I'll set up a seance of candles on our kitchen island and try not to poison myself in the perfume of smells venting from the candles shaped like elves or snowflakes!

So, bring it on, I say -- the wind and the winter, the chaos and the Christmas. I'll take a short moment on Saturday to send a blessing to my parents for birthing me and a blessing to my body for keeping me here and healthy, then I'll strap on my snowshoes and gallop off into the snow singing one Christmas Carol after another.