Where Did The Christmas Spirit Go?

When my girls were little, we had a lot of Christmas spirit in the house. We would be decorating and shopping and baking. Christmas music would be playing. The tree would be up. Everyone was looking forward to celebrating. Everyone was happy.

Where did it all go? We haven’t decorated, we haven’t shopped, we haven’t baked. There is no Christmas music playing. The tree might not go up until the week before Christmas, no one cares. No one is excited. No one has any Christmas spirit. I miss it.

Seems we are too busy for all that nowadays. My older daughter is working during the week, sometimes overtime too. Her weekends are for socializing and taking care of things she can’t do during the week. She is too busy to care about Christmas. She has no time to decorate or put up the tree or to shop. Last night she was talking about working the weekend before Christmas. That was my last hope of trying to get us all together to do some of our holiday traditions.

My younger daughter is in college and studying hard for her finals. Her exams end on the 16^th, maybe after that she can come up for air. She doesn’t have time to think about gifts, decorating, lights, music or trees. Her head is full of anatomy terms and toxicology procedures. I can’t blame her, that has to be her priority for the next few days. After that, I’ll see if there is anything she would like to do in preparation for the holiday.

My husband is busy too. Between his job and working on his second master’s degree and doing plenty of things around here, I’m sure Christmas is the last thing on his mind. He would help me if I asked him, but I don’t think it’s a high priority on his list.

That leaves me. Should I decorate, bake, shop, and play music for myself? It just reminds me of how different things are this year. I loved making Christmas special for the girls. I didn’t count on them growing up so fast. I never thought they would lose all interest in Christmas.

Maybe I will go to Toys R Us. I have nothing to buy there, but I can reminisce over the past, pick out things I would have gotten if the girls were still little, and live a few vicarious moments through the other parents searching for the impossible to find toys that just have to be under the tree Christmas morning.