It`s been a hell of a year for most people and not just through covid. I find Christmas bittersweet now I`m older and I find my mind wandering to the many people I`ve lost, parents, siblings, husband, friends etc and I remember Christmases past with them.
It`s sometimes like an elastic band around my heart and squeezing until it hurts but then I flip it and simply delete the word "Christmas" which leaves just another "day". A day to do as I please and to see or not see the people I choose. This year means families can`t always be together in the physical sense but hopefully not for much longer.
I`ve spent excited Christmases as a child waiting for Father Christmas to come, social Christmases as a teen when you couldn`t wait to wear a new outfit and catch up with mates, hard up Christmases as a newly wed with barely 2 pennies to rub together, family Christmases with my own young children and sneaking toys downstairs past their bedroom doors in the middle of the night and getting barely 2 hours sleep before one of them pokes you awake and asking "has he been yet??". Grief stricken Christmases when my Mum suddenly passed away just a couple of weeks before and I found the presents she`d bought for people all wrapped and stacked in her wardrobe, the Christmas my late husband found out he had cancer and the following Christmas when he was no longer with us. The thrilling Christmas my DIL did a secret pregnancy test and my son told me I was going to be a Grandma for the first time.
The Christmases I worked and seeing the clients I worked with who were much worse off than me but still trying to make the most of their Christmas Day. The Christmases I was alone but not lonely and also the Christmases when I was so lonely I cried and so on.
That elastic band around my heart has stretched far and wide many times with happiness and tightened many times in pain or grief but that`s the story of my life, not just Christmas and I think its pretty much the same for all of us.
Wherever you are and whatever you`re doing or not doing over Christmas then I wish you all well. We may never meet in the flesh but we sometimes bare our souls on here and know that even if only one person is listening to us then at least we are being heard and that is a precious gift and not just for Christmas. We are ALL special !
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or whatever else you call the festival, I wish you all a peaceful few days. Let's suspend this awful year, look to the future & appreciate all the good aspects of our lives. Stay safe, not just from this pesky virus, but under-cooked turkey, wrapping paper near the candles & too many sprouts! We'll all be here in 2021 so watch out QVC 
