Holiday Hells

I don't think we generally use the term holiday juxtaposed with the term hell but it has a certain ring to it, don't you think? I think so... today.

What are these Holiday Hells? Amazingly enough they are everywhere.

Yards filled with elf, snowman, or Santa balloons half filled with air. I passed one the other day of a toy soldier who had lost half his air. He was bent at the waist, his face near the ground, one arm raised. He looked like he was praying. What does a toy soldier, an air filled toy soldier, have to do with Christmas? Maybe he was praying, asking the same question.

Stores with long lines of people who are generally in a nasty mood because they are having to stand in a long line to buy gifts for people they don't actually like anyway. Or complaining because they can't afford it and will be miserable into June because they spent too much.

Traffic jams at already poorly planned intersections, where horns blow for no apparent reason and to no apparent effect except to annoy those of us waiting patiently for the moron at the front of the line to realize the whole world has stopped in their tracks and is waiting for them to GO ON!

Christmas songs, with few religious ones, in every store in town that play over and over and over beginning in August and that we are all heartily sick of by December 1 but still have four weeks of them left. We don't even hear the words anymore, never mind feel the spirit that they were originally written to express.

Oh Holy Hell is what you hear the stressed mother in the toy aisle singing because she's trying to shop with her children and they are kicking and screaming and throwing tantrums because she won't let them pick up every item on the shelf. She's forgotten all about the wonder of the Holy Night. And Silent Night? That won't happen until after the kids are in bed and she can pull the plug on the television that had been running for 12 hours because her husband has been glued to the sports channel.

And my own personal holiday hells?

Waking up every few hours to pain strapped around my shoulders like a yoke.

Dragging myself out of bed for church and wondering why I have to live another day with this kind of pain, without Jerry. Wishing my children would go to church with me but knowing there is no point even asking anymore.

Sitting through worship service at church, clutching a fist of tissue until it is little more than dust so I can keep some of my dignity and composure while actually wanting to crawl under the pew and scream and scream and scream.

Enduring hugs from wonderful, well-meaning friends who tell me to hang on, it gets better.

Finding the sun shining as I come out of the church and as I head toward home, thinking how nice it would be if Jerry and I could take a drive somewhere this afternoon all while realizing it will never happen again.

Watching my son do something the way his father always did it.

Happy Holidays.