By Jay Jamison
What just happened? The last few weeks have been frantic ones for me and for many people I know. The right gifts needed to be acquired, Christmas cards needed to be sent, various gatherings were expected to be scheduled, and many other things had to be planned. Some of us had to make travel plans, with the hope that the weather would cooperate. Then there was the wrapping of gifts — a skill that I have yet to master in over six decades of trying. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day came and went, bowl games were watched amid too much eating and drinking, and then came New Year’s Eve, and then even more bowl games (see eating and drinking, above). “Auld Lang Syne” was sung out of tune and then, bewildered, we rhetorically ask, “What just happened?” Somehow, after all of that, we are expected to turn the page and return to normal.
I don’t know about you, but I experience a weird sort of disorientation in the days following the holidays. Of course, there are the trivial experiences, like writing the wrong year on checks and dated documents, in the first few weeks of January. But something else seems to be happening also. I think the post holidays malaise is like spending weeks of rehearsal for a play, or some other type of performance. The show finally opens and then closes, and it’s over. That’s the sort of feeling some of us get with the passing of the holidays. Add to that mix the reality that leading up to Christmas, the days become shorter, and the gloom of night plays on our minds. And when it’s over, we land in January. The colorful Oz-like dream of Christmas is over, and we’re back once again in the black and white drudgery of another Midwest winter.
The Christmas season is about hope. With its passage, that hope does not disappear. The days become almost imperceptibly longer after the winter solstice, and we know from experience that they will continue to stretch into longer hours of daylight. For those who like to make resolutions, there is the hope for betterment in the dawning new year. Many of us start making plans, with that unspoken hope that maybe, this time we’ll get it right. Projects that were set aside in the rush leading up to the end of the year, are penciled onto the calendar for 2024. For Christians, the significance of Christmas doesn’t end on December 25 — the holiday is a booster shot of long-term hope.
Through January and February, we trudge on, fortified with the hope we gained last December. I can’t imagine making it through the toughest months of winter without the lift we get in the frantic days leading through Christmas and New Year’s. The cartoonists often depict the transition from one year to the next, as an old man passing the baton to a diaper-clad baby, a symbol of newness and hope.
We all have our little thoughts and sayings to get us through the tough times ahead. Mine is a simple one: pitchers and catchers report for spring training in six weeks. Hang in there, everyone — relief is on the way!
