My Christmas Message

This is an entry I wrote few years ago. It is all still true. I don’t hate Christmas and I do not hinder anyone’s embracing of the season. My wife Denise loves the season. Each year before Thanksgiving the tree is decorated and every surface in our house is covered with some type of Christmas village. The latest is three shelves on a display cabinet and the top of a library table I built from solid cherry. The display is everything Harry Potter.

The problem always used to happen when someone finds it their mission to get me in the “Christmas spirit”. I do have the spirt, in my own way as what follows shows. Enjoy!

The other day I did one of those quizzes on Facebook about if I were a Christmas movie which one would I be. I answered the questions and came up with How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I figured it would be that or Scrooged, you know something along those lines. I in general don’t embrace the pageantry of the holidays.

Now that Christmas is fast approaching to say that I hate Christmas would not be correct either. Christmas for me has never been about getting or giving. Growing up I would receive one toy and clothes. I would get clothes twice a year and that was at the beginning of school and Christmas. You would think that because I wasn’t unwrapping toys for hours that somehow my childhood was deprived but just the opposite was true.

Christmas when I was a child was all about family. Christmas Eve we had mountains of shrimp, baccala (to this day I will not touch), crab and my personal favorite scallops, and any other seafood that you can imagine and some I’m sure you would rather not. (Smelts) The house was filled with family and neighbors coming and going all night and more laughter than Santa could ever put in a bag. I never felt like I wanted for anything at Christmas, I had all I could ever want.

I enjoy midnight mass, you know the time before the service starts. The lights in the church are dimmed and everything is quiet except the choir singing. I sit with my family content with my place in the world. No wrestling, no stress from work. Just me, my family and God.

I enjoy looking at the nativity set that was my mom’s. My dad gave me the set when I got married. The nativity set was special to my mom who died when I was twenty-two. Each year my wife Denise arranges the figures on a table I built from scratch. My dad made the manger from trees on the property where I grew up. Above the manger is an angel that Denise painted. Sitting in the dark with the only light the one small bulb in the manger it is without a doubt the most beautiful thing about Christmas for me.

So maybe after I think about it in the end the Facebook quiz was right about me. After all the Grinch realized that Christmas isn’t found in a box, it’s found in your heart.