My thoughts on the Christmas season

December 22, 2015 · 0 Comments

Dear editor:
As I get older, memories of my childhood come back to me. As Christmas draws near, my thoughts, when allowed, travel back to perhaps an easier time. A more fun filled time. I reckon as some get older the memories from their childhood are meant to remind us that we still have a child within us and that perhaps it is time to make our lives more simple verses the complicated I know I create in my day to day life.
I have some fond memories of past Christmas’. I grew up in the country where on dark winter nights the stars shone so brightly that you could make out the constellations even as the snow fell out of the sky.
I remember one night in particular, laying outside in the snow. I wore a hand-me-down snow suit and I lay for what seemed like hours as snowflakes as big as those cut out of paper floated out of the sky and landed on and around me adding to the already abundant amounts of snow already on the ground. And yet, through it all I could see the bright yellow stars, thousands of miles above me, glistening and sparkling on that cold winter night. A peace I would love to relive. I wonder if the person living in my old house would mind me returning one last time? We know the family, all I would need is snow. I pray for it this holiday season for Canadian Christmas’ are meant to be white, not green.
I remember the year the Christmas tree was too small to handle all the presents strewn under and around it. I learned early on the owners of each gift. They were so uniquely wrapped and as a child my eyes grew bigger each day as I sat and once again picked out those for me. That memory is from a long time ago but I can still see in my mind those belonging to me.
The peppermint pens, a favourite each year. I wonder if they still exist. One has to wonder what unique stores my mom visited to find some of the gifts that she did. I think of her now, no longer able to get around like she used to. Time has taken its toll on us all. Her body may have given up on her but her spirit has not waned.
I take a sip of wine, with feet perched on an ottoman belong to a loved one no longer in my life. He went to Heaven and I do miss him dearly. His spirit lives on in my heart as does the last smile I remember from a Thanksgiving only a few short years ago.
The world, my world is changing but not the memories that come and go of their own free will. I miss the innocence, I miss the playful times when life was simple. A time before I started to make it complicated. I still act like a child sometimes but wish I did it more often. Life goes too fast these days. I won’t ever get back what has already past and I know I can’t add to my meter of life. I truly want to throw caution to the wind and not worry what others may think of me. I just need to be me.
Although the whimsical me is yet to be born, I hope I learn soon that life is so much more than a 9 to 5 job, responsibility and being an adult because this year life has proven to me that it goes too fast. The drama I see, the killing I hear each night on TV. The world does not need to revolve this way, why can’t we figure this out? Why can’t we relive the innocence that lives within the children we once used to be? Why can’t we love unconditionally and why, most importantly, can’t we stop trying to control that which we never had any right to control in the first place?
Regards and all the best to you and yours this holiday season.
Natalie Merritt