NoJoMo Day 15 - Favorite Holiday in The Long and Winding Road

Day Fifteen: What is your favorite holiday and why?

I decided to put the day’s topic in my heading because when I go back and look at the list of my entries I have no idea what the topic was on the previous days!

I really thought about this, because my first instinct was to respond “Christmas!”. I wanted to at least give some thought to the other holidays. In the days when I was super religious, I loved Easter because of its holy significance. It now doesn’t mean anything to me except the Easter Bunny and Easter baskets. There is so much outcry about “the war on Christmas.” There is no “war” on Christmas. Christmas started as a pagan holiday that had nothing to do with Christianity until Christians took it over and decided to designate Dec. 25th as Jesus’ birthday. While a lot of people (Christian and non-Christian) use the holiday season to give back to others, which is very Christ-like, many of our Christmas traditions have nothing to do with Christ. And yet Easter is the most holy holiday of them all and you’d almost never know it unless you are a church-goer. I don’t hear any outcry bemoaning that fact.

Well – anyway – back to the question at hand. I love Thanksgiving because it brings families together to gather around a feast. It doesn’t take weeks (or months) of preparation or hauling decorations out of storage, etc. No gifts to buy. There’s lots of good football games. It launches the holiday season (well, in our family, my daughter’s birthday launches the holiday season).

But, I still have to go with what I assume will be the crowd, and say that Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the decorations. It gets dark before I even leave work at the end of the day, and I love driving home looking at all the Christmas lights. I love coming up with those perfect gift ideas for my friends and family. I love the parties and the festive atmosphere. I love being with my family and sharing our own Christmas traditions, which have changed over the years as family members come and go, or move closer or further away. I love Christmas music. I love the warm fuzzy feeling I get in my heart when I imagine the under-privileged families who are opening gifts on Christmas morning because of donations from me and so many others. I feel very sad for those for whom Christmas is just another day. I’ve been fortunate to have really wonderful memorable Christmases, except for one or two that were very depressing.

I think my worst Christmas happened when my daughter was about 10 years old. My husband was overseas. We had just been through a very challenging situation that had left us broke. I could only afford to buy one gift for my daughter, and none for anyone else. It was one of those times when my mom was drinking very badly and I was not seeing her for the holiday. That’s the year I realized what it feels like when the world around you is celebrating, spending money, buying gifts, going to parties, gathering with family – a month-long party I wasn’t invited to. Every day there was a reminder that this was a Christmas that I was sitting out. It was really hard. Christmas is so special to me and it only comes once a year. But for me, it was really just that one Christmas that was depressing. There are too many people for whom that is the case year after year.

Well this entry took a couple twists and turns I wasn’t expecting. I think that’s the purpose of these prompts though, so it’s all good. Ho ho ho!