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I wandered the hallowed halls of consumerism this evening, making my annual wintry pilgrimage to the mall in search of random trinkets to be excitedly unwrapped three weeks from now. While I adore the Christmas season, and for me the holiday is decidedly secular, I generally despise the Christmas shopping season and all that goes with it. The visual onslaught of signs screaming SALE! DISCOUNT! DEALS! in seizure-inducing colours and fonts; the pouty children demanding this or that toy right now; the pushy crowds willing to trample anyone who dare come between them and the last Tickle Me Elmo doll on the shelf… But today was different, perhaps due to the fact that the dates are still in the single digits. Or maybe the change was in me: I went to the mall with a purpose, namely a shopping list three names long. An hour and a half passed, and I walked away – bags full, wallet empty, a sense of accomplishment floating around me. Is this not the very definition of an empty accomplishment?

I may be an atheist who loves Christmas, but I’ve never felt the need to defend that seeming contradiction. For me, Jesus is not the reason for the season, nor is it all about packages, boxes, and bags, as the Grinch said after his change of heart. It’s just another excuse to draw those you love and who love you near; to talk, laugh, eat, drink, and sing; to celebrate being alive and being together – albeit against a backdrop of old timey music and twinkly lights. Now that’s a holiday I can get behind.

La beauté des mères dépasse infiniment la gloire de la nature.

Christian Bobin

Une pluie douce et rafraîchissante suivi par du grand soleil. Des couleurs vives et une lumière éclatante. Un repas gourmand après des cérémonies solennelles. Des rires, des plaisanteries, des chansons; la famille, les amis, l’amour… Joyeuses Pâques.

Dirty, mucky snow melting in the shade of a sunset. Peach yogurt and litchi liqueur whilst waiting for the hot water tank to reset after loads of laundry, so that I may settle in to a hot bath. All around me: boxes, cleaning, moving, upcoming upheaval. Spring: a time of change, turning over of new leaves, dawn of a new day…

Happiness is only possible as an ongoing project. The pursuit of the thing, it turns out, is the thing itself.

Amanda Marcotte

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. ~George Bernard Shaw

And yet, recollections there are: and many, at that. And yes, looking towards and preparing for the future are important – but so is remembering the past, which is what shapes us, from one little HPB to Miss Orange…

So glad you’re you. And so glad you’re a part of me.

Photo: sleepishly @ Flickr

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.

Henry Ward Beecher

Photo: AquaSixio @ Deviant Art

Yes, that about sums up my New Year’s Eve and the birth of 2010. Drinking, singing, munching, laughing, and generally rocking out: it’s all good. Happy New Year!

New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.

Hamilton Wright Mabie

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags!
And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?

Dr. Seuss

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

Charles Dickens

Presents have been opened, food has been eaten, laughter has been shared: ghosts of yet another Christmas past. Now, on to Boxing Day sales? I think not: this year, nothing but rest is on my agenda. Which is not to say that I’m complaining.