As I stare out the window and watch the trees go swiftly by me, I am engulfed into my own world. While I’m thinking about if I left anything at home, how stressful this week will be and how to get over exhaustion, I realize that the semester is quickly coming to a close. In exactly two weeks I will be home again for an entire month. These last few weeks symbolize more than that however; it signifies that my favorite holiday is fast approaching.
Soon Santa Clauses, elves, wreaths, bright lights and candles will fill everyone’s windows like a sign stating, “Christmas is right around the corner!” The stores are already being filled with hundreds of people racking up on Elmo’s, Dora the Explorer merchandise and other toys that children must have this year.
This Christmas means so much to me because both my sisters are old enough this year to fully appreciate the true meanings of Christmas, being 13 and 16 years younger than me. This year they’ll understand that Christmas is about not only Santa Claus and gifts, but family and being able to be with the people you love.
Christmas is about sitting around the Christmas tree drinking hot cocoa while you share stories of embarrassing moments and the past Christmas’ of your youth. It’s when I sit each of my sisters on one knee while we look at our baby pictures. It’s when we laugh over moments that we vowed would never be talked about because it’s the season of being thankful for the people you love and the many things you are blessed to have.
So many people are homeless due to natural disasters that have taken place over the last two years, and I’m at least thankful to have a warm room to run into out of the cold, to have a warm bed to sleep in and, although it’s not much, the money to buy the food and clothes I need on a budget, to have a family far from perfect, to have friends to listen to my problems and wipe away my tears, to have freedom of speech, to have more equality than women in other societies and to be able to have my decisions not made by another person and forced upon me.
These things and so much more cross my mind as I think of what Christmas exemplifies not only to me but in a broader sense.
As Christmas creeps upon us, I can honestly state that although I complain about small things, at the end of the day I can name at least 20 things that I am thankful for that may be a necessity but many still do not have. I’m thankful for what I have and not so worried about what I don’t. So as Christmas approaches, I urge you all to think of the little things, because when money and wants are out of your grasp, the little things will be all you have.
Posted to the web by Shane Evans
