christmas
Christmas Day. Made it another year.
29 Christmas’s under the belt. That’s a good amount of Christmasus (Christmi?).
My favourite Christmas ever was, I’m not sure when it was. I liked driving home Christmas Eve from decorating cookies and looking up at the sky for Rudolph leading Santa’s slay (i.e. an airplane in the distance), seeing the tiny Christmas village my grandma would set up each year in her foyer, eating food and getting into trouble, making a fort out of pillows and couches in my grandparents basement, playing with the diggrydoo they had, general running around and tomfoolery.
I remember as a kid getting clothes and throwing a fit. What a brat.
The Christmas tree. Fires going in the fireplace. Stockings and gifts. New stuff. I like new stuff. I’m not sure what it is but there’s nothing quite like that opening new stuff feeling.
Nostalgia. Tradition. Another page turning. Another lap around the earth. Another winter. Another, crack at it. Another swing. Another opportunity to reflect on the nature of it all. I’m grateful I get to do it with family around.
Card games. Crib, mostly.
Listening to Luv(sic) Hexalogy - Nujabes & Shing02 But with transitions, I like it. I jumped rope for 10 minutes this morning. More like 5 minutes, took a minute break or so in between a set of 1 minute. My left ankle was tight; I did 10 minutes of jump rope in 20 minutes yesterday.
We had Chinese food at my Uncle’s. I talked to a different uncle about Buddhism and he told me about his upbringing. It was the most he’d told me about that before.
The discussion at dinner shifted to Scientology and my grandpa thought that his grandmother was a Scientologist; turns out she was just a Christian Scientist. Still interesting history I guess, not as juicy as being a Scientologist though.
According to my Grandpa his grandmother travelled to Canada with the money of an Italian syndicate of some sort to buy up land around Calgary. During the Great Depression she came under pressure to pay back her mortgages and turned to the Catholic Church. The Church refused to help her and she lost her wealth. She revoked her Catholicism and, as of yesterday I learned, eventually became a Christian Scientist.
I guess I should make Christmas cards for my immediate family now.
Merry Christmas.
I’m proud of you for making it another year.
Stay gentle out there.