Green Christmas

There is no secret to loving Christmas. You either do or you don’t, and if you do it’s a blaze of glitter glory. Week day nights during this season become occasion, and generosity, celebration and a well-meaning fanfare fill each one.

But when you’re transplanted to a new home, something as rooted and memory sweet as Christmas wobbles. Different smells, different sights and wearing t-shirts outside threw my senses into a tailspin.

So confusion leads to frustration, and frustration to the worst of meal mouthed places…self pity. When you don’t know the way to a grocery store, how well can you evoke the hubbub of peppermint and caramel corn that has heaped December year after year?

Then the man holds up a pomegranate in the grocery store with a big smile, and I realize that sameness is not what Christmas is about. The old is only precious in the present, and those two can mix to make something different all together.

We’re never left short of things to be thankful for, and that after all, is what makes December the most abundant month of all.

So for the pine scented candle he bought to smell like home upon my arrival

maple syrup in a huge parcel from the parents

the discount lights strung out along one empty room’s wall

how my biscotti tradition only requires one cookie sheet

how many pine cones are mounded outside my back door

for Christmas music while we grill sausages at midnight

peppermint tea & buying stamps

Skype

for every morning with him

and the One who came to bring many sons to glory

 

And in this landslide of praise, Christmas takes a breath and starts again. All I need, I have because this year like every other, my Father withholds no good thing.