I Believe in Magic

I believe in magic. I do. You might think it's weird that an adult woman would say such a thing...it's actually one of the things I love about myself, one of those things that if it's gone, I know something in my life needs to change and one of the things I hope I never lose about myself. Christmas is one of those times when I love to feel the magic.

I'm not religious...so I'm not speaking from that point of view. What I do want to say, though, is that because Christmas has become and in our current US society is supposed to be a religious holiday (some Christmas traditions trace back beyond the advent of formal Christian religion and many traditions have their root in "paganism"...not the point of this post, just saying), if a person is not religious, I think it's easy to minimize or have a bad attitude toward the season and the holiday. Add to that, the rampant consumerism associated with the entire season and it's enough to make a person want to turn her back on the whole thing. 

I know...I've been in that place before. I'm not there now and I hope I never go back there. Because what I've discovered is...and though trite and somewhat crude...it is usually a mistake to  throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater (I'm hampered with a rural Iowa upbringing and I blame my mother for these expressions...lol). I went through a phase where I was anti-Christmas/holiday season because I don't believe in the religious part of it and I am vehemently against the consumerism and perfectionism and stress associated with the holidays. And I was less. And I wasn't joyful. And there was no magic. 

So...about that baby. Keep the baby. Get rid of the bathwater. I learned that I don't need to engage in the consumerism. My family has created evolving traditions that aren't focused on that aspect.
And while some members of my family honor the religious aspect, I am free to honor what I choose about the season. 

I love what I feel is the MAGIC of the holidays and Christmas. And for me, that is the love that comes with it, the lights, decorating my mom's homemade sugar cookies (the best in the land!), the holiday leggings and ugly Christmas sweaters (every day the week before Christmas!), the music that reminds me of Christmases when I believed in Santa Claus and piling in the car to drive around looking at Christmas lights. It is the shared experiences we are blessed to have together to create new memories, and the time for inward reflection the season seems to so effortlessly evoke. Even traditions that aren't a person's favorite...sometimes the point isn't the tradition, it's sharing the experience with people you love and care about and creating memories. 

A couple weekends ago, my mom, my sister Anne and I took my nephew Trevor (9) and my niece Brooklyn (4) to the Living History Farms Family Christmas. I'm still trying to figure out who had more fun...me and Anne or the kids (or...we might have still been the kids. Ha, ha!). We decorated paper bag puppet reindeer, told Santa what we wanted for Christmas and danced. 

This has quickly become one of my favorite life memories, even though it just happened a couple weeks ago. Anne and I partnered with Trevor and Brooklyn and danced a Russian dance called "Sasha". We had so much fun that we all wanted to go back to the church, where the dancing was, to dance again...and the caller knew we loved that song so much he said, "What do you think...should we do Sasha again?!" And we all cheered and danced. It was so much fun that we're going to play the YouTube version over the holidays and dance when we're all together. It didn't matter if the rest of the world was running around buying things nobody needs...we were in our own little magical memory.

I can't adequately express in words how much that memory, those moments, that fun, this magic means to me. And I am fortunate enough to have a lifetime of them and fortunate enough to be able to create more. That, for me, is what the holidays are about. And not only the holidays but the magic of life. I can tell when I need to change something in my life because I won't be on the same wavelength as the magic, the joy...I won't feel it and I will let all of those other things (the critiques, the judginess...the bathwater!) in, at the expense of the magic.

That's why I believe in magic...and why I believe we need to spend less time criticizing and judging from atop our soap boxes and high horses and spend more time focusing on the places and people who evoke magic for us. We make our lives and our experiences what we focus on...we choose what we let into our lives and our minds...and I hope we all choose to let the magic, whatever that looks like for each one of us, inside and play with it.

Chase the Leprechaun

“Get down! Shhh, he may see you!” I said.

“Who, Krissie, who?” Trevor questioned.

“Is this real?” Brooklyn shakily inquired.

Baby LJ looked around at each of us with a mesmerized gaze.

I responded, “The leprechaun.”

And so the quest began…

Every Thanksgiving I get the privilege to visit my sister Molly out in Stoughton, MA. Aside from the week being filled with delicious food and an abundance of alcohol, this is one of my favorite holidays. It is one of my favorite holidays because it emulates what a true community looks like. Larry’s family, my sister Jill and her family, my dad, and Larry and Molly’s old and new family friends, all come together for the day and be. I do not have much of a detailed history with anyone at the gathering, with the exception of my immediate family, but on this day we are all separate components placed together to make up one.

On top of everything that already makes Thanksgiving one of my favorite holidays, I am particularly fond of a specific memory from the week. While my brother-in-law, Larry, prepared the food, Molly tidied up the house, John and Pop watched football, and while Jill did every little task she could get her hands on, I was put on full blown aunt duty. I had all three kids: Trevor (9), Brooklyn (4), and LJ (1) to entertain, and I knew finding a game that would attract mutual prolonged interest would be difficult, so naturally we went outside, to at the very least, get out of everyone else’s hair.

Molly and Larry live in a very nice neighborhood and have a very keen backyard. Their backyard is full of trees and has a little dried up stream running through it. I decided that we would go exploring to see what we could find in the woods. As we began our journey, I suddenly got into my own imagination. As you see in the dialogue above, I created this mission where our purpose was to go through all of these obstacles in order to find the leprechaun. Why a leprechaun? You ask. To be honest, I do not know, it was something that I just felt in the moment and went with.

The journey began with us casually walking in the shallow entrance of the woods. All of a sudden we heard a rustling in the woods, and it turned out it was an elf. Frightened at first we crouched down and took shelter. After speaking with the elf who had a firm, loud voice, Trevor discovered the elf only wanted to help us find the leprechaun. He gave us a little bit of direction where to go next, so we continued on our journey. We then stumbled across a dismantled plane. Pilot Parker, who started on the journey prior to us, crashed his plane in search of the leprechaun. We were sad to hear about Pilot Parker, but we kept on moving. Then, all of a sudden, we heard this disgruntled growl! There was a bear among us! At this point in time I had Trevor stating this isn’t real, Brooklyn putting her hands around LJ’s head and telling him it wasn’t real and to not worry, and LJ staring blankly at all of us. The growling continued and next thing you know; Brooklyn ran away screaming because she got too enthralled in the story.

Searching for the leprechaun was one of my fondest memories, not just over Thanksgiving, but of all time because I was given the opportunity to be imaginative and magical with my three favorite little humans. Each and every one of us played a role in the quest and had to use our imaginations in some sort of capacity for the theme to progress. Trevor was the leader who was in charge of killing the bad guys and protecting us. Brooklyn was in charge of strategy; she would tell us when to be quiet and point to where the bad guys were. LJ was in charge of sending the message down the line by reiterating what Brooklyn and Trevor had already said and did. He’s super good at saying “shhh!” I, of course, was the creator.

Our map to find the Leprechaun 

This experience captured the essence of childhood perfectly. Trevor, who is 9 years old, is right on the cusp of being a kid and being a teenager. He wants to play pretend, but also feels like he should be doing more realistic activities that match his friends’ interests, such as trivia crack and rough housing. This could be seen when Trevor rapidly blurted out, “This isn’t real,” to me and his sister. Trevor began the statement with confidence, then kind of tailed off at the end of his statement because he didn’t want to ruin it for the two young ins, as well as himself. Brooklyn, who is 4 years old, was wholeheartedly involved and committed to the game. She is very much still a child and holds the innocence of a child that has not yet been lied to by society and/or let the negativity of the world yet reach her. This could be seen when she was comforting LJ telling him it wasn’t real, and then ran away screaming because she couldn’t convince herself that it wasn’t real. Brooklyn believed in the game because I, an adult, believed in the game and no one had ever told her otherwise. LJ, who is 1-year-old, is still learning and developing. He is in awe of everything around him, from the rocks on the trail to his crazy cousins and cuckoo aunt. He mimics what he sees, but doesn’t quite know why he’s mimicking.

This experience was also refreshing to my 24-year-old self. I am often times questioning what I am doing with my life, my career, my hobbies and relationships, yet in this moment everything seemed so clear. I was with the people I love using my imagination and magic, tackling the obstacles thrown our way, searching for something bigger than ourselves. It’s so easy to focus on the next move in life, the bills left to pay and the dishes that need to get done, and this experience was a reminder that one is never too old to take a step back from reality and chase the leprechaun. One day, I hope to find him, and I hope that you too, consider joining the journey.