A friend threw down a journaling challenge this year and I picked up the gauntlet: a one-sentence journal entry for each of the twelve days of Christmas.
Long ago I kept a hardcopy journal, though my personal expoundings have been winding up on the blog more and more over the last eight years, to the extent that now my paper journal is filled with no more but the printouts of blog entries the didn't meet the standards of my own personally elected censorship board to be published here.
So, my Christmas one-liners are ending up here with you. I'm off to uncertain beginnings. My first was three sentences, one of which was a run-on. The second includes dubious usage of a semicolon. Apparently brevity and concision are not in my bag of natural talents.
But what I liked about this idea was not the limitations. (At least I can use more than 140 characters, right?) I liked the twelve days.
I know I've touched on this before, but Christmas isn't supposed to be a one-shot deal. We're supposed to get twelve days of it. Twelve days for eggnog with friends, a turkey with the family, and that general feeling of good cheer. That thing we were doing before? With all the shopping and the wrapping and cooking and all the stressing? That was advent. That means more than a piece of chocolate every day out of the little paper window in the calendar you bought at Cost Plus on December 1st.
I know that Advent and Christmas have strong Christian connotations. I'm not asking you to meet me there so if your hackles were starting to rise, you can smooth your fur out. I'm going somewhere universal with this.
Advent is supposed to be a prep season. Getting ready. And man do we do that... We work through the darkest days of the year prepping for the arrival of Christmas. It's a hell of a lot of work. Tidying things up at work for year-end deadlines, cleaning up the house in anticipation of house guests, making cookies and lists in anticipation of everybody's favorite big red fat guy. Arranging travel and food and jingle bells.
I've heard a lot of people saying over the last few weeks how stressful Christmas is. It's not Christmas. Not really. It's Advent. Christmas is the kickback time to chill after all the work is done. So enjoy it. Don't blow the last eleven days of it off.
I'm not saying I can stay in my pajamas for twelve days and not have any responsibilities. I've still got a kid to feed and a house to manage. I took a couple days off work but I'll be back to it soon enough. But most my hardcore deadlines have been met. When I get back home from my travels the house will be in reasonable shape. When I get back to office, it will be to a hodge-podge of everybody's leftover sweets in the kitchen and stories of holiday adventures. No one's expecting too much to get done from anybody in these last few days of the year. You can roll through it with a stretch and a smile. It's Christmas. Make the best of it.
So I'm going to blog for the full twelve days. But just a little bit, and forgive me if I don't mind the rules and sentence counts too much. It's Christmas. I'm still soaking up the merry, bright days and the silent nights.