Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Holidays

OK, for some reason I haven't been able to post correctly for a couple days. Anyway...

Every two months, the leaders in the church get together for what's called the "Big Picture," where our pastor explains what he'd going to be preaching on over the following few months, so we get his perspective, and can plan accordingly. Normally everybody brings a few bucks and we get bad pizza. This time around, it was a Thanksgiving meal with everybody bringing something, and they had just finished working on their kitchen, so we came to their home. That was freakin' awesome. It was family, getting together to eat and laugh and have fun, and just talk about crap. I've been thinking about this for a while now, but I'm really understanding this in a big way now: I'm digging the fact that it's the holidays.

Perhaps it's the contrast: Last year, the holidays were not so good. My dad had recently died, and I was in a job that I hated so much, but felt so trapped in that it regularly had me thinking about suicide. Since my family all reminded me of my dad, all I really wanted to do was avoid them. Not particularly good source material for a pleasant holiday season.

Now, I'm past the worst of my grief, I'm in a job that's "OK," and I'm in love. I'll have a good holiday time at the Fisher/Austin-plex, but I'll also be celebrating with the Chen household, so my effective family time (and size) has doubled.

I don't much care for the Christmas materialism thing, but I'm also excited about giving out heaps of gifts to friends and family, and getting cool things (I can almost see that Xbox 360 set up in the Altar of Entertainment).

There's also the holiday parties that are beginning to happen. Since my birthday falls betwixt Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can consider that a holiday as well (as there will be at least two celebrations of it). But really, I'm just looking forward to sitting back, drinking some red wine, eating some chocolate, and laughing with some of my best friends.

Yay!

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