Out of my mind: 'Tis The Season

Like a tsunami, another Christmas rolls relentlessly toward we adults while, to children, it creeps with the patience and determination of a glacier. Like most important transitions of human life these perceptions evolve while we are otherwise occupied. One day we're a kid in a loaded diaper drooling and laughing at the pretty lights on the tree and the next we're old. The good news is that memories of Yuletides past live on like roses in the snow.

If you're old enough to have grown children and maybe a grandchild or two, then you also recall the much simpler Christmases of youth. The dog-eared Sears catalog left where your parents could see the wonders of that Barbie dollhouse or the beyond cool Mattel nearly real looking submachine gun that was precisely like the one John Wayne wielded in the Sands of Iwo Jima, batteries not included. School was out and the extra homework the teacher had assigned could surely wait until after Christmas. There would be plenty of time to tackle that drudgery in the days before the new year. It was time to goof off with your friends, build snow forts, and anticipate the fun you would soon be having with the loot that Santa and your parents would shower upon you. Of course, all of that depended on the economy. In the '50s and '60s, credit cards weren't in abundance and ready to prop up a lifestyle or Christmas a family could ill afford. Debt was for serious purchases like houses and cars, not discretionary items such as toys and fancy food. If the economy was in the tank because of a strike or other circumstances, then the glue and macaroni, pipe cleaner and clay projects lovingly cobbled together in school would have to play a larger role in the festivities. Most of us had a few of those holidays.

As young adults, we gravitated toward different presents like furniture and other necessities required of our new household which often contained small children. Christmastime was beginning to move at a faster clip as our responsibilities increased. We came to appreciate the season more as we viewed it through the eyes of our children. There was magic in the air.

One day, almost without notice, we no longer had children in the home and thoughts turned to whether or not to bother with decorations this year and more toward where to spend the holidays. The "kids", now adults, became impossible to buy for, so we didn't. A check for what seemed to us to be a lot of money, to them probably not much at all, goes in a Christmas card and the shopping is done. Who knows what they really want anyway and, face it, you haven't been in style for eons. Christmas got simpler.

Just as it is with most of life, this rotation from the simple Christmas of a toddler to the rabid almost manic Christmas of a child is gone in a nanosecond. Nearly as fast is the Christmas season of young parents enjoying the beauty of what they once had through a different lens, the eyes of their children. We Boomers now enjoy the privilege of seeing the holiday at a slower pace not only through our children but now, if we're lucky, through our grandchildren and that may be the best Christmas present of all.

So here's to this time of year and the joy it brings. Hold it close and dear for in what will seem only an instant we may once again be in a diaper drooling and smiling at the pretty lights.