This Christmas, I feel like I’ve been so materialistic. Not for myself but for getting everyone the perfect gift.
Because gift-giving is one of my love languages, I forget that gifts don’t matter. Spending time with friends and family is more important than checking off an Amazon wishlist. And it took me watching Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas and writing out my Christmas cards to realize that it’s just about sharing love.
I’m watching the movie, and the last story, The Gift of the Magi, comes on, and I’m crying. I’m twenty-five years old; I’m still crying over this.
Does anyone else watch it and wish you had a love like that? Willing to give up everything that matters to make the person you love happy?
But it wasn’t even that story; it was the narrator at the end before everyone started singing. The narrator says, “This Christmas season let us all do our parts to keep Christmas spirits alive in our hearts.”
And I was like, what have I done to share the Christmas spirit? And all I could think about was, well, I’m buying everyone gifts. But let’s be honest, that’s not doing that much. And I looked down and remembered I was writing these sincere cards to people I can’t see often and who I don’t talk to regularly because I miss them and want them to know I care. But I want to do something for the people around me in my neighborhood, but I don’t know what.
My grandmother had a lemon tree in her backyard and would force us kids, to pass out lemons to all the neighbors. It didn’t matter if they asked or not; they got lemons on their doorsteps.
I would love to do something like that, but in this day and age, people would throw away whatever I left on their doorstep. I know because if something random appeared on my doorstep, I would throw it away.
It’s sad how we’ve grown as a society to be so untrusting of everyone. I wish I could have experienced knowing your neighbors, instead my neighbors are crazy. I literally had a neighbor yell at me over stealing their Amazon package.
Things just aren’t what they used to be.
I wish we could grow closer as a society and be kind to one another.
