Ah, the holidays. The time of year when everyone collectively exhales, relaxes (or at least unclenches) and revels in more time spent with family, friends and loved ones. The lights, the decorations, the food! Isn’t it marvelous? And all that time off! Even people who don’t celebrate Christmas have told me this is their favorite time of year.
It’s a whole different story if you work retail in December. For us, Thanksgiving through the new year is go time. Those horrific videos of Black Friday shopper stampedes come to mind. I thank my lucky stars I don’t have to deal with anything like that! In comparison, the December frenzy at Zadok Jewelers isn’t so bad. While I do work more days and longer hours, for me, it has more to do with the mental space devoted to work than anything else. Take today, for example. It’s Monday and I have the day off. But it’s retail in December, so what “off” means as a salesperson is working from home. It’s actually pretty hard for me to concentrate on writing this. I started working at 8 a.m. and sent 14 emails and four text messages in an hour and a half. My iPad is pinging Zadok eBay-specific tones nonstop.
All this to say, my time spent sipping hot chocolate wrapped in a blanket while contentedly staring at the Christmas tree is in short supply this time of year. To be clear, I’m not complaining. It’s the nature of the beast and I enjoy what I do. But a funny thing happened around my third year working in sales. I hate to say it, but I lost the Christmas spirit. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the season! I know some who downright despise it since their work becomes so stressful and unpleasant. Not to mention, any problem in your personal life is magnified tenfold during the holidays. Sure, co-workers and customers can be cranky, but I haven’t had to deal with a major meltdown or disaster at work (yet). I’m in a strange sort of in-between place where I’m too busy to feel the spirit, but not put out enough to feel like a Grinch.
I’ve tried to combat such ambivalence this year. Our Christmas tree was up and decorated the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Pixel is wearing his Christmas collar. I’m going to as many holiday-related social events as my schedule allows (fine, I went to one), all in an effort to capture that magic. But so far, it’s not really working. I suppose when so much time and energy is devoted to helping others have the best Christmas ever, it takes the wind out of your own red and green sails a bit. But we’re still two weeks away. I have time! Right?
Last year, on a cold night sometime between December 26 and New Year’s Eve, I found myself sitting on the couch home alone with nothing to do. It was an unfamiliar sensation. I remember looking at our Christmas tree with its lights twinkling, really noticing it for the first time since putting it up and thinking, “Oh no, did I miss it?” I turned on the television and went to YouTube, found the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from “The Nutcracker” and pressed play.
As Tchaikovsky’s music filled the room, suddenly, I felt it. The Christmas spirit. I felt the warmth and the togetherness and the love so particular to this time of year. As I watched the Sugar Plum flit across the stage, I remembered how my mother sewed matching dresses for my sister and I to go see “The Nutcracker” at the Wortham, our annual Christmas family tradition. There is a photos of us in the front yard posing next to wooden reindeer my dad made, all velvet and hair bows. I thought of my husband’s family in Colombia, with completely different traditions that somehow inspire all the same feelings.
On my TV screen the dance ended, the ballerina’s chest rising and falling, the only sign of her exhaustion after the deceptively difficult solo dance. I had been lost in my thoughts, but the audience’s jarring applause snapped me out of it.
And just like that, the feeling was gone.