I am not feeling the Christmas spirit yet. Maybe because it’s only December 2. Maybe because it’s so gray and gloomy out today. Maybe because my oldest is edging ever closer to discovering the truth about Santa. Maybe because I ended up being sick the majority of last week and I’m just starting to feel better. Maybe because I’m struggling to find the Christ in Christmas — not because it’s been obscured by the commercialism, but because my own belief in God is ebbing. At least, the God of conventional Christianity, the one I was raised with.

Welll, I’m not really trying to go there right this second, before I’ve finished my coffee. At any rate, it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if I didn’t go down the Christmas rabbit hole. I’d probably spend less money. I wouldn’t feel so deflated the week after Christmas. I might even not eat so many cookies.

I’m just going to concentrate on the things that do have meaning for me. We are going to do another family coin drop for a charity — I have the can here, and my younger son decorated paper to wrap around it, but then lost it. I put white lights on the stair railing, as usual, last night, and the lights do hold off the gloom. I’m hoping that we can go on vacation the week after Christmas, and that that might even serve as the main present for the kids. Experiences, not things, and all that. But it may be too late to pull that off.

Honestly, I feel like Christmas just happened. Maybe Christmas should become an every-other-year event. Then everyone would really love it.

If I could do whatever I wanted on Christmas, I think I’d go back to “Holiday Home” in Vermont. (I know I’m obsessed with that place, but I have looked at and stayed at many a home, and it’s just the best little farmhouse ever.) To hang some stockings in front of that fireplace — now that’s some Currier and Ives sh–.

Conversely, I’d go to Paris or Rome with all the grownups in the family, find some awesome restaurant and spend Christmas Eve drinking and feasting. Kind of like the end of Something’s Gotta Give but with more people.

Oh well. We shall see. Right now I have to tag the pediatrician’s office in the ongoing quest to get flu shot appointments. And later I’ll be at the school helping out. It has started to rain. Last night I made cookies instead of making dinner so I need to make a real dinner tonight.