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The holiday season is always an internal push and pull battle to keep the spirit alive until your given holiday has arrived. Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, whatever it is. Unless you stay Zen, the world will suck the milk of human kindness, which the holidays are all about, right out of you.
You really have to keep your eye on the prize to make it to and through your given holiday. This is especially true when you traverse the prickly landscape that is the holiday world. At times I think I am becoming bi-polar with the way that my emotions can change in a heartbeat when taking care of all of those little chores that have to be done before the big day or week arrives.
Going to the mall is the best way for you to test the resolve of your holiday mindset. When you are on your way there your head is full of all of the wonderful things you are going to do for your friends and loved ones. The special little things you are going to get for them to make their holiday dreams come true. For example, if you are truly flush on the money front, you may be going to get them that over priced diamond ring at Zales and are absolutely giddy at the prospect.
That is until you reach the parking lot, your first step in the “holiday test your patience” spectrum. We are all aware that parking is at a premium this time of year, and that heaven forbid, you may have to walk a bit more than usual to get to the entrance of the mall. This fact of life unfortunately is not acceptable to many shoppers and I’m sure they would rather sell their young than have to walk any prolonged distance to get to their destination.
The parking lots everywhere are not full of sugar plum fairies, they are full of parking hungry demons. I can’t say for certain, but I could swear that I saw someone who had finished shopping and was leaving the parking lot when they saw a parking spot that was uncontested and pulled in to it for no other reason than they could.
It is not just the malls that are suffering from this it is basically everywhere. A parking space during this time of year has become, for most, the best gift you can get any time that you get in your car. Well that and a good price at the gas pump, which as we all know is not going to happen.
You would think that with the prices of gas going back up every day that people would take the first space that they see just so they wouldn’t waste the gas. But there they are circling the parking lots like sharks, waiting to overtake a weaker opponent in the battle for the next available space.
Once you have survived the parking lot at your given destination, you re group and try to get back that holiday vibe that you had on the drive there. Once inside, most establishments have the decorations and the joyful and soothing holiday music to get you back in the mood. If it is not too crowded, oh, who am I kidding, everyplace is crowded. Anyway, once you start the buying process, feeling a bit like Santa, you are truly in the mood.
That is until the inevitable happens, and you know there is always at least one, that would be the rude sales person. They are annoying anytime of the year, but during the holidays they are even worse to have to deal with. Maybe because we perceive them as not just rude, but as an evil relation to the Grinch.
You do your best to try and justify their poor attitudes with thoughts like, this is probably just a part time holiday job for them and they aren’t used to the swing of customer service. Soon enough they will be back at their regular job working at the cable or phone company, where things like that don’t matter.
When your shopping is done you feel like you’ve spent a full day at Disneyland, you’re tired but happy. If you’re lucky your holiday mojo is still intact and all that’s left is caroling. Well, that is unless you are like me, and you forgot to do your holiday cards.
If you do them early it isn’t so much a chore as it is reaching out to all of those people you don’t hear from during the year. Nowadays we usually communicate by email with those that we haven’t had time to call. And while there are some very cute electronic cards that you can send out, nothing beats an old fashion card that you have taken the time to write. I feel it just keeps the season bright and not by the light of a computer screen.
It would have gone a little more smoothly had I not run out of stamps halfway through the process. This, of course, meant I had to go to the scariest place during the holidays, especially when faced with standing in line, the post office. Unfortunately, in the town in which I live we seem to be stuck in a time warp, so the stamp machines only take cash, not credit or ATM cards. Even with cash they don’t dispense rolls of stamps.
So that meant that I had to join the line of the other Yuletide revelers in a line that was longer than a sleigh with eight reindeer or the line to see Santa at the mall. The difference in the line for Santa and the line at the post office is that there is the payoff of seeing Santa after the wait.
As I stood in line it was interesting to watch the people coming in with their piles of packages to be sent. When they first got in line they had smiles on their faces and joy in their eyes. After about twenty minutes, when they hadn’t moved an inch, most had a look on their faces like somebody had shot their puppy.
By the time they finally reached the counter it looked like most people had not only had every once of their holiday spirit drained from them, the majority barely had the strength to lift the packages they had been kicking all the way there, up onto the counter. A sad sight indeed.
But we holiday humans are a hearty bunch and as soon as we left the confines of the post office and the brisk cold air hit us, it reminded us of why we were there in the first place. I watched as one after another regained the spring in their step and the smiles back on their faces.
You can’t keep a true elf down for long.
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