Some years ago I listened to an education professional talk about her career, which had been full of surprises, not all of them good. She ended with the comment, “Change is the constant, attitude is the variable.” That’s been true of my life, and with my husband’s death eighteen months ago, I felt challenged to watch the attitude. Christmas now looks different to me, and it’s been full of good surprises.

I think of this holiday as one for children. This is not new to me and certainly not to thousands of other people. But this year I’ve had a chance to focus on how many others are like me, without close family and hoping to tone down the holiday chaos and frenzy and just enjoy our friends. 

My relatives, the few that remain, live a distance away. They don’t want to travel and neither do I. We exchange cards and letters, and wish each other well. I’m not alone. I have more friends without close family with children than with, and we’re all breathing a sigh of relief. We don’t have to go to the mall, wrap gifts, find something special for someone we don’t know well, bake and cook more food than we alone would eat in six months, and drive through weather that we would otherwise ignore from the warmth and comfort of our living rooms. And then drive home.

More than in previous years I’ve noticed that this has become a time to turn people’s attention to those with little or nothing. Several groups in my community, some organized and others informal, are gathering winter clothing, setting up holiday meals, getting homeless into shelters or apartments. Their drives for help and support are gaining traction, and with quiet gratitude they’re satisfying a cruel need and helping the rest of us find greater meaning in the season. This afternoon I’m taking a bag of new winter clothing to a drop-off box at a local temple for distribution on Christmas Eve. From the street this morning, during my early walk, I could see the drop-off box was overflowing. I’ll add to that.

Christmas Day has turned into a day of thanksgiving without the turkey and different decorations. I enjoyed the children’s Christmas when I was a child, and now I enjoy the adult version. With the loss of my husband I found a larger community, its members traversing the same changing seas as I am, all of us at different stages, riding a wave or sliding into a trough, heading to shore or leaving it, but all of us seeing and acknowledging each other. To my delight I prefer this new version of Christmas.

To all our readers on Ladies of Mystery, best wishes for the holiday season, however you celebrate or don’t celebrate.