I love the Christmas holiday time, but only after Thanksgiving. It annoys me to see Christmas upstage Halloween and Thanksgiving in all the commercial venues.
Halloween doesn’t do much for me now that I’m past the candy gorging years but I really enjoy Thanksgiving, what it signifies and the time spent with family. Then I’m ready to move on to Christmas, playing my share of carols in the car and while decorating (a little bit) around the house.
The time span from Thanksgiving through Christmas is when I think a lot about friends, who they are and what they mean. This holiday has no religious significance to me as a non-Christian with Jewish heritage, but it holds plenty of sentimental significance.
I don’t stay in touch well. Not good on the phone. Don’t entertain much. And don’t really spend a lot of hang out time with people who are important to me. In fact, many of them live in different cities around the country. But they never lose their places in my heart. My close friends, my “peeps” in today’s parlance, are people who date way back to childhood, college, early work years and later work years. Each of them means something special and represents a certain kind of relationship, one that automatically resumes where we left off even it was a year or two or five or even 25 ago. Our bond holds fast and strong and if any of them needed me, wherever they lived, I’d be there ASAP.
So it’s to them — you — that I wish happy holidays, whether it’s Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa or nothing at all. It signifies the closing of another year. They go fast and furiously these days so enjoy every minute of them with those you hold dear.
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