Christmas Is the Season of Gold but After Christmas Is the Time of Silver Linings

There is no Christmas story that begins when all the presents have been unwrapped. Everything about the holiday season is about build up, but Christmas morning is an insufficient release.When the lights go off, your focus returns to the soiled snow piles at the side of the road. You’ve eaten so many Christmas cookies you have a headache. You’ve seen so many bad movies about the holiday spirit that you long to throw in a slasher flick just for context.This is why Die Hard is considered a Christmas movie. It’s rebellion. People can’t take it anymore. The Christmas fantasy is beautiful, but human beings also have a deep longing for the truth.On the day after Christmas, perhaps you go outside to shovel the sidewalk. You listen to the awful scrape of the metal against the pavement. Somehow water gets kicked up into your boots. Your wool socks are wet. You’re cold. It’s miserable. It’s real life.Somehow, after Christmas, all the awfulness is a welcome change. Maybe that’s the point.Who has memories of December 26th, 27th, and so on until the calendar flips? I have to struggle to think of those days. I get flashes.Christmas morning is significant to children. You either get what you dreamed of, or you don’t. Most often you don’t. Many kids get nothing. Some don’t even get a pat on the head.All the Christmas stories we tell are about the people who get everything. The Christmas spirit always prevails. That’s become a multi-billion dollar industry. Every year that’s what we hear every single day. We hear it on the television and on the radio and we see it on the shelves.“The Christmas miracle is coming.”Then the morning lands and for most people the truth is exposed. We’re back to our real lives. We’re throwing away the shreds of used up wrapping paper.What about the stories of the people who remain broken on Christmas day? Perhaps it would be a greater Christmas miracle to give an offering to honesty for a change?It’s almost as if we get the days off to mourn another year that failed to redeem itself in the final days. Oh well, maybe next year will be better.I remember loading up into the family car and returning home after a visit to Grandma’s. Grandma’s was the last place we’d go. By then we were exhausted. Did we eat? Did we go home and sleep? Did we begin to bicker again?Our family wasn’t all that big on dining together anyway. Did we eat turkey? I remember gathering with my father’s family. It was more like a war than a celebration. We insulted each other and pretended it was affection. Yes there was turkey, but I preferred the mashed potatoes.I’m writing this on the morning of December 26th. As a father, Christmas morning is a relief to me. I try to make sure the kids get what they want. It’s a joy and a privilege to have them in the house. They’re older now, old enough to let us eat breakfast before the gifts are unwrapped.When they were younger, you’d hear them waking up and scurrying like mice downstairs. You’d hear them whisper, “Santa came! Santa came!” My wife and I would quietly listen beneath the covers. Their energy awakened us and it was so pure and joyous that we felt renewed just to bask in its healing glow.The girls tried so hard not to disturb us, but they were overflowing.Most years I set up some sort of a camera. Yesterday I propped my phone against the television. I think the video got uploaded to the cloud. Where are all those other videos now? I’m not even sure I could sit to watch them. I think it would break me to see them age year after year. It would be hard to see reminders of the times I didn’t have enough, and yet the joy of my children was overwhelming.They’d get a coloring book from the dollar store and their eyes would light up. It makes me think again about the kids who get nothing.Today, we’re all in a holding pattern. We’re in recovery from a hard year. Last night we watched a movie with the dog curled up on the couch. I read a story to my girls and we slept.On a warm winter day, there is water on the roads. You see the dingey snow, the reflections in the puddles, and the asphalt. When you go places, nobody is present. They’re waiting. Do they have their sights set on Christmas for next year? Maybe that will finally be the one that brings them happiness? Is that what they’re thinking?As a child, every day away from school was a gift. I hated that place. I hated the bullies and the teachers and the smelly bus that took me there. I dwelled in my imagination. If I had 6 days off, I’d lock myself in my room and read. My mind would go elsewhere. The world of snow and dirt and water wasn’t real to me. I lived in fantasy.These days I live in the future and the past. My wife showed me some pictures on her phone that she had posted of the girls from years ago. Seeing that does something to your brain. You go back there. I remembered the pajamas they wore. The picture was taken before I’d taken out the carpet and restored the floor. For some reason, we’d placed the tree in front of the upstairs closet door.I hadn’t remembered doing that. What else is lost?Yesterday I didn’t write. I didn’t turn on my computer, though I scrolled through my phone. I didn’t create words upon a page. I didn’t record my thoughts. It was supposed to be a day of rest, but it feels as if something precious was lost.From the 26th to the 31st is a long holding pattern. The only memory I can dig up is playing with Skywarp, the purple and gray transformer that I got when I was 9. In 50 years, that’s all I can remember from these days?Purgatory.Waiting for next year. We hope things will get better even though deep down we’re resigned to the belief that nothing will ever change.But that’s what makes this year different. Every time somebody shows you something you haven’t seen before, nothing is ever the same. Truth cannot be unseen anymore than you can convince yourself to forget how to read.You don’t have to be resigned. You don’t have to wallow in despair. You don’t have to waste these days tending your hangover from overindulgence in this cultural opiate next year.Today, my wife said she’s going to take the family out to dinner. I’ll sit with them and soak it in and gobble up every second. These are the days that we should be paying attention. The lights are off, the mystery has been revealed, and we’re left to sit with our truth for a minute.Assess how you feel in the week after Christmas. Don’t let it pass unexamined. Pay attention. These are the days that reveal the truth of your life.Truth and life are precious.This has been one of the most stressful years of my life. But in these quiet days of reflection, I realize I’ve met more true friends in this year than in any other. Maybe Christmas is the season of gold, but after Christmas is the time for silver linings!You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI’m so happy you’re here, and I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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