In case anybody's been wondering - I have survived (and at certain moments actually enjoyed !) the holiday season .  The excessive blinking lights, the blaring mall music , the jingly adverts jamming my cranky car radio all urging me to buy and consume as early as November almost managed to kill my holiday spirit.  They made me want to scurry into some remote burrow and hibernate there till the whole hubuldabaloo is past.  I was tempted to shrug the whole holiday season off as one complete superficial show.  But then i thought: wait a minute, i can't let anything wipe out the meaning of any period in my life or year.  And so i decided that Christmas was going to be the time when i give the gift of my time and self to family and friends.  I didn't get the time to cook any Christmas cake or log, but we did hold a bingo session with great auntie Rose and Great Auntie Mary, we watched Andrea Bocelli in (Christmas) concert with nannas and nannu, and we attended an angelic choral concert.  I had fun decorating the garden trees with Jeremy, and depositing a daily surprise in the kids' Christmas calendar (admittedly, the sweet surprises went down better than the spiritual ones). 

We didn't manage to do all we'd have liked to do - we didn't get to visit all our elderly relatives and we didn't send holiday greetings to our overseas friends.  I confess, we're still working on our 2010 family calendar!  (Tomorrow i will take it for printing!)  But we did give the best of ourselves and our time.  And in the process i found the warm spirit of the holiday season.

Having found it I then had to let myself enjoy it.  I have the habit of not letting myself be happy with good things if not "everything" in life is perfect.  How could i enjoy my son's Christmas concert if my father was spending Christmas alone with his dog?  How could i enjoy Christmas if my isle is suffering severe drought, if world climate is being damaged?    Besides white hairs age has at least brought some understanding.  So with age I have come to understand that being happy is actually cherishing the good that exists amidst the bad.  That being happy about the good things in life does not mean you don't care about the bad things happening to yourself or others.  And so this holiday season i have allowed myself to savour the warmth and light born from the loving gestures of family and friends inspite of imperfections in my life and in the life of some dearly loved ones.  

In this new year that dawns upon us, blinking lights, glaring music, viruses, droughts, and other calamities will continue aspiring to rob us of our physical and spiritual well-being.  And we will still deserve to be happy, particularly when we receive or give the gift of self. 

This year, may we focus on and celebrate the good in ourselves, in our life and world.  In doing so may we find the strength to survive and why not, at times even enjoy, life's challenges.

(The photo shows how one church in Ogygia depicted the birth of Christ - the fisherman of men.  The depiction also evokes Ogygia's fishing tradition)