Ghosts of Christmas Past

One of the Secrets that They don't tell you is this: some of the pain you encounter in life comes not from discord with other people, but discord with your self -- or rather, competing versions of your self/selves.

I was always a romantic Christmas Nut. Most kids are, of course, but I kept right on being a Christmas Nut well into middle adulthood. The magick, the mysticism, the pageantry, the color, the music, the food: I could have been my own Lifetime Christmas movie. I followed my dear Aunt Nita in my love for Christmas, and following me was my niece Tina; all three of us worshipping at the shrine of Christmas, acolytes at the altar of Yule. Proof? Two boxes of ornaments, souvenirs from Germany, Hawaii, California, and various other locations. I hand-toted a bag full of precious blown-glass decorations from Rothenburg, Germany, in 1991, even making it off the last tiny prop plane with them unscathed when the plane caught fire on the runway.

But this week, I finally faced facts. I have become one of those Christmas curmudgeons who can't wait for the damn thing to be over; a Christmas minimalist who, in some years, shamefully doesn't even put up a wreath, much less a tree. I remember as a Baptist youth visiting old men and women in the community, and how sorry I felt for them; most of the time all they had was a small, shabby silver tree with a few threadbare decorations and a box of Queen Anne chocolate-covered cherries underneath. Never would I have foreseen a day when I would contemplate ditching all my decorations and taking a cruise.

There are a lot of life circumstances that have brought me here. Some are sad. My father died on December 23rd and although that's been nearly thirty years ago, my mother never regained her love of the holiday, and the last decade of her life was spent sunk in a miasm of chronic pain and depression; when Aunt Nita passed away, so did any feelings she had left for Christmas.

Other reasons are circumstantial. My husband and I are Pagan. We celebrate the Solstice and while that is fine religiously, opening presents on the 21st has always felt rushed and wrong. My internal rhythms simply will not adjust to having the Big Day be the 21st. He also works in the TSA, and so Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are frenzied workdays for him. Additional frenzy is that he provides most of the presents to his two autistic adult children, and so his focus is, rightly, on getting everything ready and delivered to them.

But even as I walked through all the mundane reasons why Christmas has lost the magick for me, I knew there was something else, some Factor X. Finally, I hit upon it. For a lot of folks, Christmas is when they experience Magick. But I live Magick 24/7. Every day I encounter Mystery. Miracles are not uncommon. I walk into a temple room filled with beauty and light and I call forth the holy Powers using signs and symbols as ancient and reverent as any Gregorian chant. I don't need Christmas magick anymore. What I used to get out of one season is with me now all the time.

I may still be on the Island of Misfit Toys, but .... I kind of like it here, with all the other misfits. This creates an internal friction as the old Me continues to reach out toward Christmas and the new Me shrugs and says, "meh." I do love the Otherworld energies of this time of year, however: so potent, so immediate. What I really wish is that I could go on some spiritual retreat from about the 20th to the 1st, not to escape per se, but to explore -- just strip it all down to the bare bones of who I have become, and encounter what this season really is, instead of the uneasy Ghost of Me At Christmases Past hovering about me. That's hard because the boundaries between Past and Future are so thin as to be vaporous at Yuletide -- one of the reasons why old family "stuff" rears its head now for so many people.