This time of year seemed a lot slower when I was in elementary school. I don’t remember a continuous holiday season running from Halloween until the new year. But when each holiday season arrived, colors were brighter, smells were stronger, and it felt like there was more intensity to my surroundings. I was better able to soak in the experience. Perhaps the subsequent decades have dulled my perception. Or perhaps the pace of life has made it harder to fully experience the season. It’s probably both.
Occasionally something brings back those vivid experiences from the past. A photo that took two weeks to develop and cost a few hours’ wages can remind me of those times. But I have also stored up lots of memories. I remember going to Jeffery’s Grocery to buy a Zero bar and a chocolate drink in the late 1970s to prepare for watching Christmas cartoons. On a Christmas day in the early 1980s, I was Danny White and my brother was Terry Bradshaw when the Cowboys and Steelers faced off in our back yard. Thirty years later, I remember duck hunting with my son and a friend one Christmas afternoon as snowflakes fell. I remember sitting beside the tree and playing Christmas songs with my daughter when she was first learning to play the guitar. Those events seem like they happened in another lifetime. And they also seem like they happened yesterday.
I spend most of my days either helping people plan for what to do with their property when they are gone or helping families work through that administration. Planning for your property is important. But we should probably focus less of our time and attention on planning for the future and more on maximizing the present. Relationships and memories are more durable and more precious than property. And time slows down as we build them.
The magic of this season has nothing to do with property. It is rooted in the celebration of the day that the fullness of time had come. We experience that magic through relationships with the people we love. As we commemorate the day the world changed forever, let’s avoid the end-of-year rush and Christmas anxiety. Let’s slow down for a few days and take some time to build memories.