Scurrying

Gillian ran through the list of items she needed in her mind as she tried to hurry through the shopping centre.  She needed to check she had everything.  Christmas!  Ugh.  These bags were so heavy and cutting into her fingers with the weight of them.  

It wasn’t that she hadn’t enjoyed Christmas as a child.  To her, it had seemed to be such a wonderful holiday and so magical.  Father Christmas and everything so amazing with all the gifts she had wanted coming her way.  Even the amazingly tasteful Christmas lunch (except of course the sprouts - they were horrible!) and who could resist a Black Forest Gateaux?  Not her.  Shame it wasn’t the 80s anymore because they were seen as such retro food (or whatever they called it).

Trouble was, when she grew up and had a family, it just took so much time, energy and effort to get it all done.  Not only that, but trying to fit in all the family visits that were needed, having grandparents on the day so they could see the children open the presents.  She had had more than enough of shopping so she was going to go home and if something was missing, well, she wasn’t going out again!

Rushing to the car park, she found her car, opened the passenger door and threw in the bags.  She dug into one of them and found a gingerbread biscuit to eat because she just needed a quick pick me up.  There was no way she was going to make them herself.  It annoyed her mother in law but quite frankly she couldn’t care less.  These ones she got from the deli in the shopping centre were tasty enough, made better than she could and if it saved her time, she was going to have them!

As she was driving home, she turned the radio on and listened to some presenter chatting about the time and energy and money spent on Christmas and asking if it was really worth it all?  Yes, everybody wanted it to seem magical and special and great for the kids and see all the relatives in one short week, but there were 365 days in the year, why try to shove it all in seven days?

She then heard the strains of Silent Night being played and the words struck her in a new way.  Silent night?  All is calm?  Sleep in heavenly peace?  What was she doing?  She wasn’t calm.  She didn’t sleep in heavenly peace at Christmas - she was up wrapping presents and preparing for Christmas lunch.  She was far too stressed and overdoing everything as usual.  

In that very moment she determined that she was going to change her routine so that she could finally have a calm Christmas and have a good sleep the night before.  She knew if she could do so, life would be much easier and she wouldn’t be feeling frazzled on the day and hopefully not take everything said and seen as a judgement against her.  

What a lovely day and a wonderful change it would be.  Now she was beginning to look forward to it.  Long may it continue.