Incandescently Ridiculous

Maybe a better title for this post would have been "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams."

I suppose, if we're speaking technically, this is not the first year I haven't been home for Christmas. I spent plenty of Christmases when I was wee at the homes of family in Edmonton. Technically speaking, this isn't the first Christmas I am spending on my own either - Craig and I are blessed to have my Extendifam who are kindly taking us in for church and dinners and making sure we don't have to wake up in our respective cold empty houses tomorrow morning alone. It's not even the first Christmas I've had to forge for myself - last year, although we did make it to church in Calgary on Christmas Eve by six o'clock (thanks to a highway suspiciously devoid of traffic cops) we still weren't in Calgary very long and did all the holiday psyching up and whatnot in Edmonton.

So I don't know exactly why this Christmas feels so different.

Well, that's a lie: the glaring difference is that this is the first Christmas in my whole life where I won't wake up in the same house as my parents and siblings, won't open my stocking one present at a time so everyone can see what everyone else got, including the dog, then have breakfast, and THEN do the tree in the same one-at-a-time fashion in order to lengthen the day and afford each gift its proper exclamatory shouts of glee. I won't get to watch my niece open her stocking and stick all the wrapping paper in her mouth.

Yes, I'm a little sad today. I am excited for the new experience of having Christmas with my aunt and uncle and hordes of cousins, and I know we will have a wonderful time at church and dinner tonight and presents tomorrow morning and then dinner again. I think it will be a lot of fun, and it beats the heck out of ways a lot of people will be spending Christmas tomorrow - at work or up north in camp or what have you.

Nostalgia is just sitting pretty heavy on my heart today.

-rae