This post will be in two parts. Part one I'm gonna write right now (2pm) while watching White Christmas with my mom, and part two should come tonight either when I'm watching Charlie Brown Christmas or It's A Wonderful Life.
Part one.
To quote Ben Folds, "Everybody knows it sucks to grow up, and everybody does..." While I'm choosing not to fight the growing process as Ben Folds claims to do, the sentiment remains the same. As I was driving to and from my brothers old and new apartments to move some of his stuff, I was thinking about how Christmas and all that comes along with it changes with age. When you're a kid, Christmas is all wonder and lights and surprise. You have trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve because you know there will be presents under the tree in just a manner of hours. When you're a kid, your imagination and innocence are a huge part of Christmas. As you get older, things change as they do with every other part of life.
When you get older, your innocence and wide-eyed imagination begins to fade and Christmas begins to feel different. It becomes less about the presents and the surprises and the food and the sparkling cider and becomes more about the people you spend your time with, the relationships you build or strengthen, and the memories you forge. As I get older and begin thinking about future relationships and even marriage (down the road of course), I start to wish more for certain relationships to go the way I want and less for material possessions that will break, fade, or be forgotten. I find that life is just more enjoyable when you're spending it with someone, be it friends, family, or a significant other, memories are better made in plurality. This isn't to say that I don't enjoy alone time every now and then. There are plenty of times in my life when I enjoy solitude over being with other people, when I can think clearly or be a total idiot or do whatever I want. However, these moments go hand-in-hand with moments spent with others.
I'll be super honest for a moment here. I think the best way I could enjoy yearly Christmas traditions like watching A Charlie Brown Christmas would be to cuddle up on a couch with a girl I care about, bundle up with a blanket, turn the tree lights on and the room lights off, and enjoy the message of these Christmas classics. However, this probably won't be happening in the next couple years but I can live with that. I don't know who or even if I'll marry but I trust that God has control over life and if he wants me to find someone, it'll happen.
Anyway, this isn't so much about my hopeless romantic notions, it's about the change that comes with growing up. On Christmas Eve (at least for me), I try to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas and maybe something else like It's A Wonderful Life and then go and get some sleep. Life is usually busy and tiring, especially around this time of the year, so I don't usually have much trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve. The main trouble I have is getting up early on Christmas morning, 'cause when I'm tired and enjoying my nice warm bed, the thought of getting up and going downstairs to open presents just isn't as motivating as it used to be. However, I'm sure I'll wake up to the smell of blueberry muffins and hot chocolate tomorrow morning, thanks to my awesome mom, and I'll wrap up in sweats and a blanket and go enjoy Christmas morning.
I think as we all grow up, we trade our innocence and childhood wonder for the bittersweetness that is relationships. This isn't to say that we've all lost all of our innocence, but a great deal of it disappears with every page turn of the calendar. I don't know if I would say it's a completely fair trade but that's probably because I'm a tad sullen (thank you thesaurus) about another year of being single. However, I've got plenty of good friends and God has blessed my life immensely, so being romantically alone kinda fades to the backseat.
Part two will probably come later, but before I publish this post, I'd just like to say that Bing Crosby got the uglier sister in White Christmas. Danny Kaye lucked out.
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