So what's wrong with it?

Just move along, not too fast
Try to make the good times last
'Cause I've got all the time in the world

The Subdudes, All the Time in the World, from Primitive Streak

Several of the blogs that I read regularly have been talking lately about how glad the bloggers are that the holidays are over. They dislike the whole holiday season, I think because of all the obligations and feeling like they're under some culturally-dictated pressure to perform or feel or enjoy.

Not me. Towards the end of the 90s, when my parents' health began to fail, our whole family realized—myself, like a slap in the face—that the trappings and traditions are just fluff. The only thing that matters is being together, and if that's facilitated by having a particular date it's supposed to happen, all the better.

We'd sit at my parents' kitchen table and talk. Maybe after breakfast or lunch, maybe with a cup of coffee, maybe just sitting. But we'd talk. About everything—what was going on with us, what we'd heard from friends and neighbors and kinfolk, what we were thinking, what was happening in the world. The kind of talk about all kinds of things that turns out to mean really knowing someone. Sharing life, being close. Being a family.

When we realized that was what we were going to be losing at some point, it became even more precious than ever. And that knowledge has shaped my view of the holidays ever since. My parents are gone now, but I still have my sisters and their families, and Rich's family, and his parents are still alive. We see everybody at other times during the year, of course, but it's nice to know we always have Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to. Honestly, I don't even feel pressure around or about the holidays. Gifts don't faze me: I don't much care what I give; I certainly don't care what I get. Cooking the big meal is actually great fun for me. (It helps that I like to cook, and cooking with my various food-loving relatives is even better.) It's the time together that matters.

So I don't get the whole dreading the holidays thing. That table we used to sit around is in my kitchen now. We still sit around it and talk, sometimes. (The holidays usually happen at other people's houses. One sister and I did have a rendezvous last month, though, for a middle-of-the-night game of Gin Rummy. Or Rummy 500. Or Gin. I'm not sure which; we don't know our card games all that well. But it was lots of fun, anyway.) And even though I pray we have many, many more years of conversation, it won't be forever. So all I can do is enjoy it now. Thoroughly, and as often as I can.

Happy New Year to you and yours.