When I started this post yesterday, Christmas Day, it started out quite differently.  It was initially a post about my love-hate relationship with the holiday:  love the lights, sights, smells, tastes, the wonder on children’s faces; hate the crowds, shopping, traffic, wrapping, disruption of routine, hours spent in the kitchen, etc., etc., etc.  I was tired after three weeks of pretty intensive preparation, was still in the process of cooking Christmas dinner, and yes, I was just a tad on the whiny side.  But then late last night things changed and I am now seeing it all from a different perspective.

Last night my family and I had an awesome, fun Christmas evening with very dear friends.  It was chaotic and noisy, but it was fun and certainly memorable.  We laughed, ate, exchanged gifts, laughed some more, played games, and just did what most of us do on Christmas … had a wonderful time with family and friends.  These things, most of us take for granted … I know I do.  I take it for granted because I have always had it.  I never spent Christmas alone.  I have always had my family, friends, plenty to eat, a brightly-lit and decorated house, a Christmas tree with presents beneath it.  That is the expectation most of us have for this holiday.  It is the expectation that is promoted by retailers, the media, communities, the expectation we have based on traditions established throughout the years past.  And for most of us, that expectation is met.  Late last night I communicated with two friends who had none of this.  No family with whom to share a meal, no special traditions to share with friends, it was, in fact, just a night like any other.  Maybe worse than most nights, probably worse, in fact, because they were left alone in their own worlds while the rest of us were busy meeting those Christmas expectations. I chatted briefly with one of these friends, read the blog post of the other, and … suddenly I felt very different than I did an hour earlier.  I felt thankful, certainly, but also sad and impotent.

How many of us, during the festivities of the day yesterday, thought of a homeless person, thought of the person sitting alone in her apartment with no money, no family, no job, or the man sitting at a bar wishing he just had someone to talk to?  One friend was told (not by me) to basically suck it up and smile.  What must it be like?  How petty am I to whine about being tired or about having to clean the kitchen at 10:00 on Christmas night, or the mess of pine needles and bits of ribbon littering the carpet?  What a spoiled brat I felt like at 11:00 last night!  My heart goes out to these two very dear friends. I owe them an apology for not being there for them, but I also owe them each a debt of gratitude for reminding me that I have more to be thankful for than I deserve, that my life is something to cherish and appreciate, not to complain about.  I remind myself now that it isn’t about presents, food, decorations … it is only about having the people in your life whom you care about and who care about you.  I could not find the right words so say to either of these friends last night, because I know that, never having walked in their shoes, I cannot actually feel their blisters.  For those who think they have all the right words to say to people who are alone and lonely … you don’t.  If you haven’t been there, you don’t know how they feel, you cannot imagine it.  I hear people say stupid things to them like “I know just how you feel” or “tomorrow will be better” or “cheer up, it could be worse” and though I know they mean well, these things are not helpful.  I even felt guilty saying “Merry Christmas” to these two friends, as I knew that their “Christmas” was anything but “Merry”.

It is not my intent here to make anybody feel guilty about what they have, but simply to remind you that there are people in the world, probably more than any of us realize, for whom Christmas is just another day …