I’ve come to believe that Christmas is state of mind and, therefore, pretty much a matter of timing.
Oh, I realize the holiday is fixed on the calendar as Dec. 25 each year just as Thanksgiving is the last Thursday of November each year.
But there have been plenty of Thanksgivings and Christmases when for me, the date came and went before it felt like Thanksgiving or Christmas. There have been Thanksgivings where I have found I have been far more inclined toward gratitude on some random day in October and indifferent to the subject on the official holiday.
It is the same, perhaps even worse, with Christmas.
There have been years where I have found myself perfectly in sync with the arrival of Christmas Day and other years where the spirit seems to have come before or after Christmas, if at all.
This is frustrating for me because, being the sentimental type, I always look forward to these holidays, hopeful that Thanksgiving and Christmas will find me perfectly attuned with the deeper, more meaningful truths these holidays represent.
Yet it remains a mystery.
I don’t think an unhappy person can really enjoy Christmas, so that might account for some of my “missed” Christmases. But there have been other years when life was good, yet Christmas evaded me nevertheless.
Like the old Grinch, I have “puzzled and puzzled ’till my puzzler is sore” and yet the answer to the mystery still eludes me.
Financial hardships or isolation might be expected to be a formula for Christmas indifference, yet I reflect on one year when this was particularly true for me and find no evidence to support that idea.
It was the first Christmas after I got out of prison. When the day arrived, I found myself alone, living in a tiny three-room house with my family 2,000 miles away, no presents to open and no Christmas dinner to enjoy. Bored, I flipped on the TV and stumbled across the public TV station which had devoted the day’s programming to choral music performed by Phoenix-area high-school choral groups. It revived happy memories of my own experience as a member of Tupelo High School’s acclaimed varsity chorus. Within an hour, I was as joyous as Ebenezer Scrooge on the Christmas Day after his epiphany.
So Christmas, being a state of mind, does not rely completely on circumstance.
What is to be done, then, to promote that spirit?
One possibility is exposure to some of the Christmas events that lead up to the big day.
Monday, I rode on The Dispatch float in the Starkville Christmas Parade and it seems to me that a lot of folks in Starkville are well on their way to “finding” Christmas. A large, happy crowd turned out for the parade as it meandered through downtown. Kids, who always seem ready for Christmas, seemed to particular enjoy the parade.
But it did not trigger my internal “Merry Christmas” sentiments, although it remains the possibility that the Christmas Spirit approaches in an incremental, imperceptible fashion.
I am determined to press on with that theory, hopeful that these events will provide the necessary spark.
Maybe Wassail Fest, which will be held Friday in downtown Columbus will ignite that coveted “good cheer” that goes with the season. If not that, perhaps attending the annual performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Annunciation Catholic Church the following week will do the trick. Or maybe a few more doses of Christmas Parades will be the answer. Caledonia and Crawford will have their parades Saturday. First Baptist Church will have its three-day “Christmas Village” event at the Shops at Brickerton Dec. 12-14.
This year’s Columbus Christmas Parade will be held on Dec. 13. Last year, the big draw as an appearance of the famous Budweiser Clydesdales. This year, top billing goes to Columbus’ own Jasmine Murray, the reigning Miss Mississippi.
There are other means of nudging the Christmas spirit along, of course. Christmas music has been playing on the radio since Thanksgiving. Santa and Salvation Army bell-ringers have established their ubiquitous presences in malls and department stores. There will be Christmas parties to attend and opportunities to give to the less fortunate, which also inspires the spirit of the season.
Of course, there is also the possibility that indulging too greatly in all these things will lead to Christmas burn-out, but it’s a risk I’m prepared to make.
Christmas will come, as Dr. Seuss noted, “just the same.”
Ready or not.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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