Why I'm Done With Christmas

It happens every year. Barely halfway through the month of December and I am done with the whole holiday thing. I am already plotting January. Keeping a list - not of what I have to do this month or what I want for Christmas - but of what I want to do in January. 

I wake up each morning not counting the days until Christmas but the days until my calendar reads 2014.

I am done. Done with the throngs of tourists who have come to enjoy my city. The ones who are never told the dangers of walking four across the sidewalk holding hands or suddenly stopping at the top of the subway stairs to have a look around. I am done with having to hold my purse a little closer to me when navigating the crowds or wondering if that seemingly lost person who is asking me for directions is really lost or setting me up to steal my wallet.

I am done with angry people in the stores and ridiculous answers when I ask a question. Like the woman in Trader Joe's who when I asked where the canned pumpkin was told me they were out because it was a seasonal item -looking at me like I was asking her in July. I am done with the liquor store marking up all their prices and keeping the less expensive yet quite drinkable wines out of sight. And I am done wondering why it seems all my friends on Facebook don't seem as done as I am.


I get to this place where I feel like Ebenezer himself and have to struggle to remember what it was I always loved about this holiday.

My memories overflow with twinkling lights and snowmen made of Ivory flakes. Candy cane cookies sprinkled with crushed peppermint and a house full of family and friends. The mystery of who Santa Claus really was. Presents wrapped in shiny paper and tied up with green and red ribbons. The smell of pine filling the room. Watching White Christmas for the umpteenth time and still being enthralled. Love and hope and possibility permeating the air. That feeling that something magical was about to appear at every corner.

Magic.

There it is! That is what the lure of this holiday always was for me. True I was raised to believe in Jesus and know that this is supposed to be the celebration of his birthday. But the message that was always the clearest for me was not that of religion - but that of magic. 

Of possibility. 

Of believing in what everyone else wants to tell you cannot or should not believe in. 

Christmas was never supposed to be about the business we have made it to be.

It's not Christmas I'm done with. What I'm done with is getting caught up in what others want to make it be. At least until next year.

With best wishes for a magical holiday season!

See you in 2014!!

Anything Can Happen If You Let It

I expected a night of enjoyment. I expected the kind of magic that only something with a Disney touch can provide. I expected to hum along the words I knew so well. I expected to delight in watching my adopted niece enchanted by the dance and the music. What I did not expect when I walked into the Amsterdam Theatre last night was to hear Mary Poppins feeding me wisdom along with that spoonful of sugar.


This is a children's story after all. I didn't recall  learning anything more from the story than all the words to  Chim Chim Cer-ee and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. If Mary Poppins  had served me up a deeper message back in the Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke version, I didn't remember.


Until she uttered those words. "Anything can happen if you let it." 


The words ran through every cell of my being.
Anything can happen if you let it.
Of course it can!  I know that. I believed that as I child. I forgot it for a very long time, buried under that pile of twists and turns life takes us on.  I've studied and worked long and hard to relearn that wisdom and embrace the truth of what she was saying.


Making things happen was about allowing them to.
I could think of a long list of spiritual teachers from Abraham Hicks to Florence Scovel Shinn with a version of this I had read. But Mary Poppins? Is that really where I heard it first?


I caught the face of my niece who sat mesmerized by the lights and the music. A little girl, who if not for the love, generosity and never wavering faith in this very belief  of the woman who is her mother, would still be sitting inside of an orphanage in Guatemala instead of the oldest theatre on Broadway surrounded by her cousins and aunts and grandmother. 


Whether she heard Mary Poppins as I did last night is of no matter. It is in her cells as it was in mine. And if along the way she forgets she will have moments like last night when it hits her and she will feel the full truth of the statement. She might do as I did, start counting up all the miracles that she can remember that manifested when she allowed them to.  Starting with the one that is her.

Naughty or Nice

Have you been naughty or nice this year?

As kids my parents used this ploy for the entire month of December. Santa would know our behavior.  He saw what no one else did. We might be able to lie to the rest of the world or at least our parents, but Santa knew. He was our conscience. He was an omnipresent figure much in the way we were taught God was, except Santa dressed in red and white suits and always seemed to be smiling and God  preferred long flowing robes with a much more serious look on his face.

But they both did have a thing for soft white beards. And they both seemed obsessed with our behavior.

Our  truth as far as Santa was concerned would be evidenced in what lay under the tree on Christmas morning. As for God, well we had an entire lifetime instead of just the month of December to get things right.

The bro and I, intent on being nice enough for Santa

For me the gig was up the Christmas Eve I spotted my father from my bedroom window loaded down with wrapped gifts that had been stored in the garage behind the apartments we lived in.

I had been on to something for a while and now I had my proof !  I could be naughty or nice and "Santa" was still going to show up. But I kept my secret quiet for a while longer. Besides, my little brother, never as suspicious as I, still thought Santa was real. My young self thought he deserved to believe a little longer.

While I felt rather pleased  that I had been right about this Santa thing being a hoax I was a little disappointed to discover my magical figure did not really exist. I liked the idea of magic. I wanted to believe in magic. Being told I needed to be 'nice' to get my reward made being 'naughty' that much more delicious.

But this was my first smack in my young head that maybe magic was not real. Maybe believing in something you couldn't see was to be reserved for young, innocent and unworldly minds. If I was going to grow up and succeed in the world I'd have to start "getting a grip" on what was "real" and what was not. I had to dismiss this idea of magic. Maybe being "nice" was not going to get me anywhere. And then it brought up the other question, if Santa was not real, did the same thing hold true for that other unseen personage, God?

I spent a lot of years not really believing, demanding proof for all I saw and wanted. I wanted concrete examples of how things were going to happen. I wanted to know the steps I needed to take. I had to get serious, never mind "naughty or nice".  I was so intent on the 'truth' that I often failed to see when the magic did show up.

I don't know the time or place I switched back, but I did. I started to believe again. In Santa Claus and in a power greater than myself. And when I did I started to notice the miracles that I could create, simply by believing and trusting in something or someone more powerful than me. Miraculously, it seemed being a little "naughty" did not have any bearing on what showed up. In fact, sometimes  a little mischievous fun  was exactly what was needed to create the magic.

So yes, this year I've been a little of both, naughty and nice.  How about you?



Have you been naughty or nice?
Do you still believe?
Have you created some magic this season?

Do You Believe In Magic?

Magic is underrated. We don't put much weight on it. Magic does not seem to have as much rhyme or reason to us as a spreadsheet does. It requires surrender to the unseen as well as faith. You can't touch or see magic and you certainly can't download it onto your computer screen. Or can you? If you believe in magic that might be possible.

Our information on overload world drums it  into our head that we must look at the facts, we must do the research, and base  our plans on what we come up with. It's gotten worse since the computer invaded the desktop. There are now a dozen ways to look at the same information with the click of a key.  We take the elaborate conclusions reached from  a software program that someone designed to do a calculation to be the corporate bible. We point and say, there it is! That must be the way! We discount magic but we never discount what the machine told us. We forget to think and we forget to believe.

I am not advocating not doing the work. If I don't write I don't get published.

I am not suggesting to forgo research and data. If I don't know my market, no one will buy my services.

But I am suggesting that we have to remember to look at the forest and not just the trees. The trees themselves are important. Without them there is no forest. But it is the forest in its entirety that emanates the magic, those patches of  fresh grass and pink and yellow flowers in between that popped up out of nowhere, even when someone told us the ground was not suitable.

If you want to shake up your life, whether a minor renovation or a complete overhaul, in the words of Tug McGraw, "Ya Gotta Believe." When he coined that phrase in the 1973 baseball season no one imagined that the  New York Mets would go from last place to first and win not only the division title but the National League pennant. For Tug and the Mets it was about believing they could become champs. The statistics were against them, but it didn't matter. They created magic because they believed.

This might sound too supernatural for many of you but I recommend pondering it a while. Choose to believe in some force bigger than yourself,  besides your computer and the non stop bad news emanating from the Internet, the newspaper and television. Do the work and surrender to the magic. And let me know what happens.