To me, the Christmas season is like the Empire Strikes Back. It's incredible the whole way through. Lots of suspense, lots of build up, and then you get the penultimate climax of pure uncut awesomeness, and then the credits role. It's a breathtaking ride, but at the end, you're still like, "wait, Han Solo got captured! And Vader is Luke's father? I need more! It can't be over!" But it is. To me, New Years is the time to cool off. New Years is like Return of the Jedi. Not quite as good* but it's fun, it ties up all the loose ends, and it leaves you feeling good about the end of the Star Wars saga. Just like New Years to Christmas.
When I was a kid, we had a story book called "The Day After Christmas," in which a family rode on flying cows to NYC or Disney World or somewhere to celebrate New Years. We don't have flying cows, we just have the memories and shreds of wrapping paper and all of our new stuff. Not that's a bad thing. I love having new stuff, but the day after Christmas, it's stuff. Before Christmas, it's a magical treasure wrapped in packages and hidden somewhere in the house like a Hardy Boys mystery novel. The day after Christmas, it's just stuff.
Again, I don't want to underplay how grateful I am for the stuff, and how much I like the stuff, but the suspense is over. I love my new games, but by February I'll be counting my pennies to pick up the next thing while NSMBW will have been beaten three times over and sitting on the shelf between Wii Fit and Cooking Mama.
It seemed to come and go so quickly this year, too. Part of it is because a lot of the staples of the season didn't come into my lifestyle with the same intensity this year as past years. It started off well enough. I was shopping and thinking about Christmas right around Thanksgiving. But then all of the zeal kind of faded out.
My mom is pretty much the usher of Christmas cheer in our house. Maybe she doesn't purposely try to be festive, but she's always the one who puts up the decorations. She's always the one who does the baking. This year, she took a second job for the season and so she didn't have the time or motivation to do a lot of those things. I'm happy for her for taking the other job, as a lot of the reason she did it was to have more money for presents for me and my siblings, so I'm very thankful for that. But at the same time, a lot of the meat of the seasonal spirit just wasn't there. A lot of the decorations didn't even get put up until a couple days before Christmas Eve.
It also didn't snow until a couple weeks into December. Snow is another thing that's always of utmost importance for Christmas, so late snow means late Christmas cheer. I also didn't listen to as much music or watch as many Christmas specials as I normally do. In addition, I had a lot of college work this month. In the week before Christmas, I had two final projects for school, so I spent almost every waking minute that I wasn't at work sitting in the front of the computer trying to polish those up. Just when the excitement should be hitting it's highest, it was sidelined by, ugh, school.
But you know what? It's okay. Because for all of that, Christmas itself was
AWESOME!!!
On Christmas Eve we visited our friends Seth and Heather, and got their kids the Elefun game, something I got for Christmas when I was a kid. Then we went to my cousins' and played video games all night. When we got home, we hung out, then started to bring the presents up from the basement to put under the tree. After a couple of trips and a couple of stacks of small boxes, all the presents were set, so we went to bed where I watch A Christmas Story until midnight, then had the best Christmas Eve sleep I've ever had.
Seriously, I always have trouble falling sleeping on Christmas Eve, but this year was great. I only woke up a couple times during the night and for the most part slept quite well. But the other thing that's cool is that those sly parents of mine played a trick on us. What we put under the tree on Christmas Eve was only some of the presents. They left the big stuff in the basement, and got up in the wee hours of the morning to put it under there while my siblings and I were in bed.
We got up around eight thirty and went through the usual routine. My siblings and I got up and looked in our stockings for the little stuff. Then the 'rents got up and I was elected to dish out the gifts. There was a reason for that, as tucked behind one of the larger gifts was this:
I suspected I was getting one, as my parents have been asking me about them for a while, but the way the way they put it in the case and just stuck it behind something else caught me completely off guard. I moved a box and was like, "whoa!" Awesome.
We unwrapped our presents, spent the day playing with them, then went to grandma's where I ate food, made small talk with my relatives, and joked about my aunt's sex life. It was one of the best Christmases in recent memory. I don't think I've had one like this since I was a kid. It was like New Super Mario Brothers Wii. In the good old days there were plenty of awesome sidescrolling Mario games, then they faded out in favor of the 3D games, which were still fun but not quite as nostalgic. Then NSMBW comes in full force and returns Mario to his roots in an modern classic. That's kind of how this Christmas was.
And speaking of New Super Mario Brothers Wii, guess what else I got? Among us, the family got tons of video games. NSMBW and Wii Sports Resort for the family. My mother got Cooking Mama from my Dad, my sister got Wii Fit from the parents, and my brother got Marvel Ultimate Alliance from me. I also got a snuggie, some accessories for my laptop, some stuff to let me play mp3s on my cell phone, a couple CDs, and some other stuff.
So it was a great Christmas over all. Absolutely phenomenal. I'm kind of sad that it's over, and kind of sad that it came and went so quickly, but it was well worth it.
I hope everybody else had a good one as well. Have a happy and safe New Year. God bless and thanks for reading!
*Based on popular opinion. I actually like RotJ more, but most people like Empire better, plus it was better suited as an example.
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