Throughout the Year

December is full of anticipation and prone to exaggeration ~ wanting and giving lots of gifts or hoping for perhaps just the right one, overdecorating both the inside and outside of our houses, making and eating too much high-calorie but very yummy food, trying to forget old hurts (or even fresh new ones) to embrace love and joy.  It can be crazy and over-the-top but I dig it anyway.

One of the things I really, really like about this season is getting together with friends to reaffirm our good will toward each other, if not all mankind.  There's something very weird, yet very magical about how maudlin and loving and accepting and altruistic and peaceful we feel this time of year. 

And then there is sweet January.  It's the quiet interlude after the hectic holidays and before the new year rises and grabs us by the throat.  Our houses return to normal as the decorations are boxed up and stowed away.  The meals become more manageable.  The busyness settles down to a familiar hum.  And we all go back to whatever we were doing before the fantastic interruption of Christmas.

It's too bad that the sweetness, the love, the acceptance, the peace and the joy don't linger longer.  A refrain of one of my favorite songs of this season is "oh that we would only feel this way throughout the year."  (or something like that)  If truth be told, I'm talking about myself and not just the world around me.  I can choose to act this way past magical December and beyond sweet January, and then those feelings will follow me throughout the year.