Mutual, I’m Sure!

We are well into the holiday season, and our schedules are full. Each day I make a list of things that need to get done. Do you?

I am privileged to be able to fill my days doing things that I have a passion for. I never take this gift for granted. I’ve been on the other side – the one of drudgery and jobs that sucked the very soul from me. It was not a healthy place for me. I know that it is not for you either.

While we may not be able to change our jobs or situations, we can change our perception. I know, I know. I promise I will not give you the Pollyanna pep talk. The fact is our situations can be hard. Trust me, I know.

What I will tell you is that the only thing you can control is you. Your thoughts, your perceptions, your attitude. You. That’s it. That and maybe what you will eat for lunch today. 

Yesterday I had the most fun. Our small town is fortunate to have a twin cinema. It is the cinema I frequented in high school. The current owners struggle because blockbuster movies are expensive to rent.

That along with trying to entice people to come to an older theater with no stadium seating and fancy wall sconces. It’s clean, the tickets and concessions well undercut the fancier theaters thirty miles away. I can attest their popcorn is just as hot and buttery and their coke just as fizzy (and cheaper).

Back to yesterday. Me, along with two friends, gathered with our lap throws (old building means it can get cold), our aching knees and hips and watched the classic holiday movie, White Christmas starring Bing Cosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera Ellen.

WOW! Screenings of older movies is a rare treat regardless of where you live. I have seen this movie almost every Christmas on TV for the past twenty years, but I never had the gift of seeing it on the large, silver screen. SWOON!

The dresses! The music! Those voices! That dancing and twirling! What is not to love? We were the only three people in the theater, and you could hear us gasp with pleasure, sniffle, and of course, sing along – that would have been me. (I apologized to them both in advance.)

It was everything you would hope for in seeing a movie on the big screen. Yes, I paid to see an old movie I had seen countless times before, but let me tell you, it filled me up with the “Christmas spirit.”

In that moment, I experienced the joy of Christmas. I know some of you may say, well that had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. No, it did not, but it did have everything to do with what the birth of Christ means – LOVE. Time spent with dear friends, watching a beautiful movie full of music and dancing.

Are you depressed? Are you missing someone(s)? Are you alone? Are you ill? Here’s my advice – go look for something simple that makes you happy.

Even if you only have a minute of joy, that is more than many people have in this moment. You/we make our own happiness. Read that last sentence again and again, until it sinks in, please.

On the night Mary gave birth to Jesus, the story says that three wise men came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around. They had traveled far in the desert. I bet they were tired and hungry.

I don’t know about you, but hanging around a smelly stall of animals would be the last thing I’d want after a long day of travel. Yet for that moment, they forgot their own discomforts and gazed upon the Christ child. That is when they felt it. The “spirit of Christmas.”

“Mutual, I’m sure.”