The Spirit of Christmas

I've been thinking a lot about the spirit of Christmas. I believe a person can feel this, whether or not they celebrate - it's nothing more, or less, than a sense of peace within your heart. I'm not a a religious person, although I am spritiual, but something about this time of year gives me a longing to go to church. The main draw for me is the singing.

I spent my childhood in church, I was raised in a Mennonite home. Church usually bored me to death, but the singing was something else. Our church was divided into three sections of pews - the far side for couples and their older children (babies went upstairs behind glass ... lol), the middle section was for the old folks, and the remaining side was reserved for the teenagers. Sometimes the teenagers and the old folks together, managed to ruin the song, with the old singing painfully slowly, while the teenagers raced through it, in an attempt to speed up the laggers. Sometimes, though, the singing was absolutely beautiful. The entire building swelled with our combined voices. I miss that.

I've always believed in the power of the Spirit of Christmas, because it greatly affected my household every year. When Christmas approached, we drew together in a special way. My mother, especially, changed every year at Christmas time, in the way she treated me. In December, her nicer self (I prefer to believe it was her *Real* self), was allowed to come out. Suddenly I was not the family scapegoat, all the family were together in our joy for life. We enjoyed each other's company, and treated each other with real thoughtfulness. I attribute all of this to the Spirit of Christmas. That spirit entered our home each year in its final month, and infused our hearts with real peace.

This year is the first I will be completely alone. I'm not lonely though, I feel very introspective. I've made some huge changes in my life recently. At the age of fourty - one, I have left my abusive boyfriend of twenty - four years. I have moved out of the house we bought together, and am living in a tiny, rented apartment in a small city (or large town, depending on your point of view), where I really don't have friends. He continues to live in the house, fifteen minutes drive away in a tiny village further up the highway, but I don't consider him a friend, even when we get along, so ... I'm alone.

I've always been a loner, so this solitary existence feels good to me. I'm feeling very peaceful as Christmas approaches. I plan to spend all of the holidays by myself. I'm busy printing up my photographs to make into cards that I sell at the local gift gallery, and on my kitchen table is an applehead mermaid that is nearly finished. I will bring her into the gallery later today, to hopefully be snapped up by a late shopper.

**I have to go offtopic for a minute, and talk about my appleheads**
... They are posed dolls with a papier mache body, and a carved, dried apple for a head. I've been making them for years and years. I have made ballerina's and mermaids, tacky tourists, and sailors pulling down their pants to show their wrinkly apple bum. I've made belly dancers and couples dancing arm in arm, I've made grumpy men with an apple bulldog on a leash, I've made Christmas carolers. There are endless variations. The apple head resembles a very old person, so it's a cool contrast I think, to have this elderly person wearing a tutu, or sporting a mermaids tail. The mermaid I'm making at the moment was on hold for a bit, when I realised I'd left my huge box of material scraps behind in the attic of the house I recently left. I need material to cover her fish tail - something flashy, to turn her into a beautiful creature. Then I remembered a pair of panties I never wear. I got them for Christmas one year - the material is metalic, rainbow colours, and not my style at all. So I cut them up, and am gluing the material over her tail. It looks great! I have to laugh though, when I think of my panties being for sale in a gallery....

Anyway, back to the subject of Christmas:

When I was a kid, I felt sorry for all the fourty something unmarried women in our church. They seemed so alone, especially at this time of year. Our family sometimes dropped in on them, in the belief that they needed cheering up. My mother related to them, because she hadn't married my father until she was thirty. Now that I am a fourty something unmarried woman living alone in an apartment, I often think about these women from my childhood. I have become one of them, and I find that it suits me perfectly. Silly now to recall my belief that these unmarried women were terribly unhappy. Aloneness can be a wonderful thing when one is comfortable in their own company.

I'm enjoying this time, the Spirit of Christmas is everywhere! It's a very muted thing, nothing like the modern idea of Christmas, with all the noise and bustle and bright plastic toys. For me, this time of year is serene. Christmas is ... waking in the early morning to see the winter sun washing the walls in palest cream ... standing outside on a clear, starry night and feeling a shiver pass through me at the realisation that I am a speck on a planet spinning across the vast universe ... walking through the mall, with all the glitter and canned music, the bored Santa, and the overspending, only to hear a beautiful voice soaring through all of these commercial trappings. I turn a corner, and there is a Native Indian man playing a guitar, and singing Silent Night. I sit on a nearby bench to listen.