Tinsle Time

I heard a commentary on WNPR coming home tonight that really made me stop and think.  Am I the Chief Celebrator? Are you?  If you or I weren’t in the house would they go to the same crazy lengths to celebrate a holiday?  If not, then you are a Chief Celebrator and I think I am too.  Why do we bother if it only means this much to us?  I think, it is because we realize somewhere deep within ourselves just how profoundly important celebrating and memory making is, what it will mean to someone later on.  Holidays are not just happy sugar sweet & snow covered bliss.  Holidays are bitter-sweet, shadow haunted alleyways as well.  From our earliest memories we have glimpses packed with childhood innocents and Christmas glee, but the older we get those memories are shadowed.  There are empty chairs at gatherings…dear family gone; some have broken homes to complicate what should be a festive time & older folk alone and nearly forgotten.  As much as it might annoy some that we Chief Celebrators go to such ridiculous lengths to make merry, don’t you think it is our duty to do so.  See we remind them why we celebrate even in the mists of penny-pinching times or plenty-to-share times.  If we don’t take the time to reflect what we have come through as families or individuals, and how much we all mean to each other; I think we will just drift apart.  Family and friends anchor each other through all life brings. 


   I remember years Ed and I had so little to supply under the tree and yet it was almost always full.  I remember a few years of plenty and the giggling fun we had racing through the malls buying for everyone we could think of.  I remember living rooms lit only with Christmas lights secretly stuffing stockings only to realize someone had been there before me.  I remember Grams having 2 punch bowls of eggnog and that we kids were NOT allowed to drink from one of them!  I remember childhood Christmas’s in Indiana that are filled people now gone or now distant.  We need to remind each other of not just the reason for the season we are in but the journey that brought us to another one to enjoy it.  


Nichols (not the Saint btw) reminded me a few weeks ago that if we are not homeless, if we have something for dinner, & if we are not cold; we have much to celebrate and be thankful for & the rest is fluff.  Ya know he right. Some years have lots of packaging and some not so much, but that’s alright.  Celebrating is what is needed, holiday happiness is needed, and memories of all kinds are needed.  They help shape us and anchor us to the ones we hold most dear.