I feel rather like I'm in the Twilight Zone.
I've been working quite a lot while trying to recapture the spirit of Christmas past. In other words, I've been trying to get this Christmas to feel like it did when I was younger. I know that technically it isn't really Christmas yet, but I've always found the week prior to Christmas Eve to be the best. When Christmas is really here it's almost over. There are a couple of precious days and then it's finished.
The anticipation is much better than the actual day itself.
I have tried to recreate my specific rituals. I have even managed to borrowed a VCR so that I can watch some of my old tapes that I used to watch at Christmas, such as my collection of Christmas episodes of sitcoms. I am enjoying this a lot.
After I got home tonight, I watched "Foul Play", because it's tradition for me to watch that movie a few days before Christmas.
I asked my dad to bring this little Christmas house out from its dark resting place where it's been living for the past 15 years. It's a small house made of wood, painted red, with white cotton on its roof and around it, to make it look like snow. It was made by someone in our family generations ago. You place a lightbulb inside of it, so that it lights up. It has two small rooms.
I was able to put it up this evening, and it's so neat. I had forgotten it since it was so long since I had it up.
So while I'm trying to recreate Christmas past, I am feeling so oddly disconnected, for no particular reason. Almost as though I'm in this vacuum. Although it's not an unpleasant vacuum by any means, it's still odd. Medication induced?
Some moments I am curled up on the couch like a content cat, purring away and enjoying every moment of this season. The next I am oddly morose and self-deprecating. It's bizarre. I suppose it's the season. Christmas brings with it too many expectations. Illusions of the perfect holiday. Life isn't really like what we imagine it will be. There is the discord between family members, my parents arguing, my mother throwing temper tantrums, something which is also a Christmas tradition in our family, and my stubborn, secret wish for a big, family Christmas, which I know is impossible, and a thing of the past. I wish I could get that thought out off my head. I do appreciate what I have though. A lot of people have no one to spend the holidays with. They're completely alone.
Tomorrow is the last day of work. The 23rd will be devoted to doing the last Christmas shopping and baking, and naturally, watching Beatrix Potter at 3:00pm. Another feature of Christmas past.
All in all, this is definitely the best time of the year.
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