It is 8:06 AM on January 6th, 2025. The holidays are officially in the rearview mirror and everyone is back to work. This is the saddest day of the year for many.
As I explained to my son, if the holidays didn’t end then we couldn’t look forward to other things throughout the year, nor the holidays to come. He would stop learning since school would be out and life couldn’t go on. It was a small consolation and he had some good counterpoints but they ended none-the-less and here we are.
I told him that this is why I record Christmas and be sure to take plenty of pictures during the other holidays. It is always nice to look back and remember, Christmas especially, holidays gone by. I really enjoy doing so and so does he. As for my wife and my oldest son, they’ll watch if I’m watching but don’t seem too interested to bring up the idea.
Being 47 years old, I have to work a bit to try and feel the magic of holidays when I was a boy. It will never be the same but I do stop and try to ‘soak it all in.’ As Charlie Brown correctly pointed out back in the ’60s, ‘Christmas has gone commercial,’ and this hasn’t slowed down. Now, Christmas starts in October in many stores and it seems the deeper meaning, whether that be the birth of Jesus for Christians, or going back further, the Winter Solstice and pagan rituals, in which the Christmas tree has its origins and the entire holiday is based, has lost a lot in our current commercial extravaganza. One item on my travel list is to travel to the Christmas markets in Europe and visit churches and cathedrals just to seep myself in the old traditions.
Being middle-age time goes very quickly. As my Dad pointed out about 25 years ago, Christmas takes a long time to come when you’re young but when you’re older ‘these things come very quickly.’ He was right, I’ll go into the blur of daily activity with a few short breaks and the next holiday season will soon be upon us. I noticed this especially with Christmas music: the more popular songs seem to me like they will soon start up again on the dusty record player with a hint of ‘groundhog day’ to them. Tired old songs that have lost their magic and I’ve heard 1000 times before. To ameliorate this, I’m always looking for early Christmas songs, traditional songs from the Victorian era and before. Those fit in nicely with my desire to seep myself in a bit of history where possible.
Anyway, the time is now 8:21 AM and it is time to jump back into the grind. I miss the years gone by and am not looking particularly forward to all the changes coming in the world, no matter how much they hype the new year on New Year’s Eve with the dropping of the ball. I’m not excited about 2025 and if I had my druthers, would like to re-experience 1995, or 2000.
