Keeping Christmas: The Year COVID stole Christmas, and every joyful celebration.

To many of us Christmas and New Year’s was different this year. It was celebrated in a quiet manner, in solitude or small numbers. Not what we had planned for and needed after an already though year. As if we were cheated from it. Well, just add it to the pile of occasions and life events that were taken away from us last year.  The entire year was different. Nothing got so grand that we were hoping for or expecting. We are experiencing a world pandemic, and “grand” living is not to be expected. But it has been a tough year for us all. And everyone has been affected by the COVID situation in one way or another.

Now we are about to embark upon the new year, and our usual New Year’s optimism, and beliefs of a fresh start may not feel so powerful this year. we may feel a bit bruised from the year we have been through and not quote allowing ourselves the joy of big dreaming and a hopeful future.  We are still in the middle of the pandemic; nothing is yet fixed or back to normal. We still face multiple challenges before we can break free from our isolated cocoon and give a big hug to everyone we love and truly celebrate. But there is reason to hope, a vaccine is made, tested and on its way, we just have to be patient. Yet again. And restrain ourselves from wanting just give a F* and not care. Because we have to care, it matters immensely that we care. And we have to persist a little more. 

We have all gone through trials and hardship. We have gone through lockdown, businesses closing, and the world closed its walls upon us. And we were left to continue our life inside our little bubble- or cohort. We have all had to make sacrifices, birthdays have been uncelebrated, we have kept our distance and not been able to see our family and friends, and now the green COVID- monster even stole Christmas from many of us.

My hope and focus are on what we learn and take with us from the previous year, nothing is wasted when we learn and grow. My hope is that we will continue to feel a stronger sense of community and that what we have been through will bring us closer together and more leave us united. Both the world and every individual are completely changed from the beginning of 2020 to now.  But the real importance is that we consciously choose to make the most of any situation life throws at us.  

It is now that we make the blueprint for what 2021 will be like. We may not experience the “normal” we all yearn for, but how can we make the best of what’s to come? Instead of whining about what I didn’t get to do, what I missed, and what was “taken” away from me, I focus my energy on creating a bright future full of promise.  What can I do to share that hope and optimism with others? How can I help others to feel less saddened and find a connection to joy that will ease them through still coming challenges? And how can we all connect more and feel that we are part of a community in these separating and isolated times?

With the inspiring lyrics by Henry van Dyke I leave you with the task of ask not what you can do for yourself, but what you can do for others. After all, Christmas is about giving.

Keeping Christmas

“It is a good thing to observe Christmas day. The mere marking of times and seasons, when men agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom. It helps one to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life. It reminds a man to set his own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity which runs on sun time.

But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.

Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that your fellow-men are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to own that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness–are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open–are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world–stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death–and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas.

And if you keep it for a day, why not always?

But you can never keep it alone.”

-Henry van Dyke-