merry christmas

well what an awesome day this has been.

with everything going on at work and school i didn't really start thinking about christmas until a few weeks ago, and i didn't start shopping until a mere few days ago. yet this year i had all of my presents wrapped and under the tree by christmas eve--well, almost. i forgot that two were "hidden" downstairs until my parents reminded me this morning and i had to wrap them really quick and add them to the pile.
i would say that we all did quite well this year. i certainly feel incredibly lucky about all of the useful and super things i received. but i would say that i was much more eager for my family to open up the things i got for them than i was about anything i was getting.
i always want to be a thoughtful person who gives people things that they either really need or will thoroughly enjoy. but that can be hard, so usually i just wind up giving people the exact things they asked me for and know they will get, which makes them completely un-thoughtful and relatively boring, or i give them something that they didn't ask for but is a generic, universal gift item and again--boring. but this year i had a fun and clever gift for everyone, even if it was limited (sorry a & s...). the anticipation of their reactions was a whole lot more fun than the "thanks, it's exactly what i asked for" response i generally produce.

also (and much more importantly), it was at least as fun as i imagined to have my niece here with us. she's still way too young to get it and she was pretty tired for most of the day (she hasn't adjusted to the time change very well yet), but boy do we all love her. i knew how much i love her before this, but today i got to watch and see how much the rest of my family loves her too. it's weird how a tiny person who can't even really do much can produce such massive amounts of happiness and love in people. and it's neat how much love my family members produce and give to each other. way to be, guys.

so it has been quite a day. i woke up, sat around and drank copious amounts of coffee with my family, ate an awesome brunch, opened and gave lots of presents, walked around the neighborhood, watched a clint eastwood western, and polished off the traditional family christmas cookies and homemade eggnog. it snowed exactly for the duration of the present-opening festivities, making it feel like a winter wonderland but without being perilous. i talked to my grandparents on the phone, laughed a lot, and schnuzzled with my niece. all in all, not too shabby.

as a grown-up i don't get excited about christmas the same way as i used to as a little kid. i remember looking forward to christmas for weeks--it seemed like months--and dreaming of all the special decorations that would be around the house and all the treats that we'd make and all the great stuff under the tree christmas morning, etc. i remember my brothers and i would stay up as late as our little bodies could handle on christmas eve and we'd wake up and drag our poor exhausted parents out of bed long before dawn christmas morning because we couldn't wait a second longer to open presents and because we wanted the maximum amount of time in the day to play with all of our new stuff. there was a sense of anticipation and excitement leading up to the holiday unequaled by anything else. even my birthday paled in comparison. christmas had the feel of something much bigger and more important than any other event in the whole year.
i don't really know when that sense of wonder and excitement faded exactly, or why it seems to happen to all people as they grow up. but i will say that i had a bit of that feeling again this year. only this year it wasn't about the magic of santa and reindeer or because of the time off from school (which has been really nice, by the way) or the awesome presents that would appear under the tree. this year it was about all the gross mushy stuff i talked about in the first half of this post.

i love christmas.