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.