Christmas Blues 16x16

I remember returning home from a great aunt's house one Christmas Day afternoon. My parents had decided to spend time with the extended family, so we had spent a few hours at my aunt's house, crammed full of food and laughing relatives. As my dad was driving home in the darkening winter afternoon, I remember feeling a blanket of sadness descend upon my small brain. Christmas was over for a whole year. I was overwhelmed with a sense of gloom. Life was over--no more Christmas, no more gifts, no reason for celebration. As a kid, I simply didn't know the truth.  How sad life would truly be if our lives merely subsisted from one emotional high to the next, one manufactured preoccupation to another? In the midst of the baubles and glitz of the season, I am grateful that the true Christmas, namely the presence of God on earth is to be experienced all year, every moment, not just during a window of time. To not know differently would give me the same expression of the pup in the painting Christmas Gloom.