christmas blues

i used to get so excited about Christmas. i loved going shopping and picking out gifts and putting up decorations and singing carols - and this was just within the past 5 years! i don't know why, as i get older, it seems like Christmas doesn't mean anything anymore.

every year, Christmas displays in stores go up earlier and earlier. at the rate they are going up, at some point they will actually coincide with the Christmas season. it doesn't feel like people care about spending time with family and friends - it's all about how much money you're going to spend and what you hope you'll get. i think i'm finally over-commercialized, if that's even possible.

it occurs to me that this feeling of nothingness has grown stronger over the past five years and i wonder if it is a coincidence that my Christmas Mass attendance has also waned over the past five years. it's not that i didn't like going to Christmas Eve Mass - it's more that it wasn't something that made sense to go to anymore. it's not that i don't still have the beliefs i grew up with. but when you make the effort to go to church on Christmas Eve and end up sitting in the adjacent school's gymnasium, watching what's going on in the Church by closed-circuit TV, the event loses its feeling. coupled with the fact that everyone else in the gym (usually late-comers or people with small children) end up chatting with each other throughout most of the hour instead of watching the priest on the TV, you stop taking it very seriously.

i'm not very Catholic anymore (but then again, how many Catholics do you know that are?) but i think i might go to Christmas Eve Mass this year. i know a lot of people will scoff at me but i think everyone, no matter what beliefs you subscribe to, needs to believe in something. even believing in nothing is believing in something, ironically enough. i think this is the year that i need to re-visit some things i believed in, even though it doesn't mean that i'm going back for good.