ellenoutloud's Blog: holidays

Unlike a lot of folks, I don’t look forward to the holidays.

I prefer to look back into them. It’s a visualization technique I picked up a couple of years ago when I took an on-line writing class with artist and inspirator Mary Anne Radmacher. Her workshop was called: “Holidaze” – and its theme was how to back into the season.

Essentially we were to visualize ourselves January 1st looking back over the festivities, falderal, and fa-la-la. How would we want to remember them? We were to imagine what we’d want that to look like, then set about creating that celebration. Instead of waking up in the new year wondering what happened, we can focus on the results and outcomes we most desire.

Wow.

Intentional?

Purposeful?

In-the-Moment Mindful?

You mean there’s another way to broach the season besides pell mell tumult, confusion, frustration, anxiety, and pharmaceuticals?

Wow.

Sign me up.

Before I took that workshop I always felt a little like the last doggie in the herd – every other cow on the cattle trail seemed to know where they were going; I just sort of followed along. It feels good now to set off on an intentional trail – as much as that trail seems to twist and wind about.

Mindset in place I try to orchestrate a lot of what made those my seasons particularly happy and memorable. Not surprisingly, those happier days between November and January weren’t the ones consumed by shopping, credit cards, and frenetic activity. The most glorious days were colored with hall decking and laughter, merriment, surprise and serendipity.

So this December, along with my naughty and nice lists, Christmas card and shopping lists, I’ve got my “memories to make” list. I shall choose to focus on those activities so my January 1st will be filled with a warm heart and no regrets.

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I confess, I’m homesick. Happens around this time every year – some strand in my DNA runs amok and suddenly I feel like a sockeye salmon, I just want to go home.

Going “home” is a little tricky now. The house I grew up in was dozed a few years ago. The precious 1,200 foot ranchette was leveled so monstrous 11,000 foot tuscan villa could go up.

The folks that lived there are gone or moved away and I’ve done some moving myself. Since I first left “home”, I’ve had fifteen other addresses. Blame it on witness protection, I’ve never truly settled down.

Sometimes I think I haven’t laid down roots. I’m just not tied to any spot of geography. Not having children makes that easier or maybe it just explains it. Children may be your roots. Perhaps they are your home?

So while there is no real estate to return to nor highly populated reunion coming up, there will be holidays and Perry Como, festivities and friendly gazes. And, if not a chance to lay down some roots, there’ll be ample opportunity to make some memories, and they are almost as good.


"Oh! There's no place like home for the holidays,
'Cause no matter how far away you roam,
When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze,
For the holidays you can't beat home sweet home!"

One Christmas I got to play Santa. For real!

The company where I was working had adopted a very large family off an angel tree and wanted to have a party for them and needed a Santa to pass out their gifts. Despite how shy and retiring I am, I was elected!

I invested in a regulation red Santa suit complete with toy sack, itchy beard and hair – the works! Trust me, that get-up gave hot and heavy a whole new meaning.

Oh, sure, the older kids weren’t particularly impressed by the dweeb in the costume with the runny mascara, but the little ones under five were spellbound.

“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh” the littlest one kept saying as she alternately hid from and ran after me. She was probably three and thus had low expectations of Santa – or low enough for me to get by with it.

A few years later my husband got to wear the very same suit – proof positive the costumers meant business when they said “One Size Fits All”.

At 6’ 5”, with a natural mustache, beard, and booming bass voice, he was born for the role. He was asked to portray Saint Nick for a party at a domestic violence shelter for abused women and their children. He heard lots of sad stories that year. Good thing Santa wasn’t wearing mascara.

I haven’t seen the suit in years now. I think it got lost in one of our moves or maybe it’s up in the attic over the garage in one of those vaguely described storage boxes marked “Christmas” that gets pushed further and further back each year and never finds its way down again.

I need to find it, and an occasion to wear it again. Maybe we all should. Everyone should play Kris Kringle at least once in their lives. I know once you’ve been touched by the magic suit, well, you stay touched.

Something magical happens when you don that ensemble. Somehow you become a little bit more like the big guy himself and that makes you want to stay that way long after you take the costume off.

I suspect there's a little Santa in all of us -- Maybe we just need to let our Inner Santas out!

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Santa Claus portrayed by children's television producer Jonathan Meath

A couple of very special folks are celebrating their birthdays this week – yep – smack dab in the middle of the Christmas holidays! I gave one of them a birthday bear a few years ago to try make the day just a tad more memorable. He’s a cute little thing, and sings a dandy rendition of the Beatles’ Birthday song:

“They say it's your birthday / We're gonna have a good time / I'm glad it's your birthday / Happy birthday to you...”

There have been many years my friends have lamented the fact that their special day gets lost in the shuffle of hall-decking, shopping, office parties and family gatherings; travelling, to-do, hubbub, and all the fal-de-rol of the season.

I can’t help smiling when I hear them express that. I imagine another Child born at Christmas often feels the same way.

Somewhere in all the what of the holidays there is the why of them.

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The limp, tan, fella in the photo set me back about six bucks. He’s a 5-squeaker dog toy I picked up for my sister’s terrier. They live in New England so we won’t get to celebrate the holidays together but we share them as much as we can. She held her phone out so I could listen to her pup’s response to the present. Hearing the dog’s excited growls and yaps of delight, and my sister’s giggles was a real treat. A lot of holiday joy for little expense.

It always saddens me to see folks tied up in knots this time of year over gift-giving; Overspending, overthinking, overdoing. It’s easy to get so caught up the process of procurement we forget what the ‘giving’ is all about.

If there’s any blessing in the economic downturn perhaps it’s made us all try to do a little more with a little less. With more limited resources maybe we’re all a little more judicious and thoughtful in our giving.

Sad to say, I don’t remember that many presents I’ve given or received for Christmas’ over the years. I remember the ones that had heart behind them, like the drugstore journal with puppies on the cover and a purple bic pen.

Most of what I remember from Christmases past? The memories – the giggling and laughter and moments celebrated with others. Driving aroung looking at Christmas lights, caroling, staying up late and talking by a fireplace. Further evidence that money is no object or not the object, and sometimes the very best gifts are free.

I don’t have many treasures left from my childhood Christmases, but my sister did gift me a couple of china choir singers that used to hang on our tree. And while I haven’t carried around too many artifacts from my first marriage, I still have a handful of ornaments from yules of that era.

We didn’t put up a full-sized tree this year, just the Charlie Brown Christmas tree my sister sent me last year. I love it. It prompts me to remember what the whole holiday’s about. It looked a little bare with just the one ornament that comes with the set, so I rummaged around the Christmas storage containers and found the collection of trinkets and memory joggers I’ve toted around with me through this life of mine.

There they were! The choir guys, and that first ornament I got when I came to Texas, and drums and santas from years when I chose those as the theme of the year. There were a couple from my travels, when I vowed I’d pick one up whenever I did, and one from the last Christmas at a city I thought I’d never leave. There’s the photo ornament of my Dad and me, and one of my dog now in heaven.

It’s an eclectic group – but they’ve hung together for many a season and taking a moment or so to take them out of their storage box each year is my supreme sentimental nostalgic indulgence. It’s just not Christmas until I do.

So even though they don’t hang in glory amongst branches and tinsel, they make a pretty collection on a table around the tree that means so much.

Merry Christmas past, Merry Christmas to come, Merry Christmas Eve!

Somehow, back in September, back when I committed to this undertaking, a “year-end” deadline didn’t seem so daunting. When I wrote the challenge in my diary, in red, right after the words: “I will,” it seemed like such an easy thing to do.

Seems kind of crazy to make a resolution in the Fall with a December 31 expiration date. Those are usually saved for the first days of the new year, when there are more than 350 other days to accomplish anything I want to set my mind to.

But now I’ve gone and made a very specific promise to myself to finish a project by the end of the year, and here, with just a couple of days to go, we are.

I hate to admit I’m a sucker for time constraints and pressure but I am. Perhaps I’m not a procrastinator at all, just a chick that typically performs real well with a wildly looming deadline. Well, I’ve got one. A big one. Tick, tock.

It’s a personal put-up or shut-up moment for me – except for a very few, no one even knows I made the commitment. And I’m blessed, no one but me will be disappointed and I’m not at risk for letting anyone down.

It’s just me and me. Where the rubber meets the road. A real metal-tester.

Ooooh, whee! This New Year’s Eve promises to be like none other!

I’m hoping like mad that the only ball that’s dropped is in Times Square!

There aren’t many photos of my mom and me together. I always said that’s because my parents wore themselves out capturing every imaginable frame of my sister from her birth until I came along. Once I entered the scene they put the cameras up.

So many of the pictures I do have are as faded as my memories of them – I struggle to focus and can’t quite grasp the details. Where was this taken? And when?

I found this picture in an album; my sister Stace must have been playing paparazzi that day. It’s a rare shot of my mom and her mom, my Dad and me. Just me and the ghosts.

It was probably taken around Thanksgiving. That seems to be about the time of year my grandmother would visit, the few times she made the trek from the Ozarks of Missouri (pronounce mizz-zur-ah, in case you were wondering.) Everyone’s pretty covered up for Southern California, so I bet I’m right. It’s date stamped January 1966 but that only reveals when the film was developed. The Cunninghams were notorious for leaving rolls in the camera for eons.

But if I want to, and I do, I can make this shot my “Mothers Day 1966” memory. I mean why not? Who’s going to correct me?

I love how time lets us do that – we get to blur the details of our past lives like the faded photos we choose to hang on to. We can remember them about any way we want to.

Here’s wishing you all the happy memories you can conjure up --

As the song goes, faded or not, they light the corners anyway!