Not So Big Christmas

Now that I live in a Not So Big House (under 1000 square feet for 2 people, and no yard, garage, or storage unit, it's a little easier for friends to accept my aversion to accumulating 'stuff.'  Those that have visited can see how little wall and counter space there really is, and our ongoing effort to pare down the gizmos and decor that quickly become clutter.

Christmas is the most challenging time.  Like so many Americans driven by commercial burnout and financial uncertainty, we're looking for ways to strip off the stress from the holiday, to find the spirit beneath the noise and glitter.  It helps to have Jewish friends as role models, to experience with them tuning our Christmas can be like.  Whether Channukah overlaps the 12 days or not (usually not much, sometimes not at all), it always falls during the cold and dark of early winter.  The lighting of candles for the Festival of Lights helps me hold the faith in the light returning and our ability to all have enough in lean times simply by sharing with each other.  Gifts are nominal, almost an incidental element.  

Celebrating the solstice with songs, stories and a shared meal followed by a give-away (used treasures and hand-made items especially appropriate here) reinforces this notion that winter holidays are really ways to get together and remind each other that family and community carry us through hard times, whether grief or financial stress, health crises, or just short days with too much rain or snow.

So Christmas here will follow the Not So Big model, with the house open to friends to come cook together, drop in to visit and drink hot cider, sing a few carols, and swap stories.  Will there be presents to unwrap?  A few.  I'm heading to town today for the Sunday paper, to get news and the comics.  Should be plenty of funnies to wrap the stocking stuffers, concert tickets, and other written promises of good times in 2009.