Of Christmas, sandwich spread and solitude

Eleven days to Christmas! :)

It's that time of the year again - fairy lights, holly and mistletoe, cottonwool snow and tinsel. Tree ornaments glinting merrily in candlelight and warm, reassuringly sonorous brass bells. Candles that burn all night and faith that insists on re-asserting itself. Plum cake! A rotund, red-faced Santa who shakes his belly like a bowlful of jelly. Ho ho ho!

Christmas makes me think of chapels with choirs singing in perfect co-ordination. It makes me think of wreaths secured with ribbons, and of poinsettias in vases. Christmas is about carols at midnight, and the most vibrant shades of red and green the imagination can conjure. It is about believing, even at 23, that I will find something in my stocking on Christmas morning. :) It is about the beautiful message in Dickens' A Christmas Carol (I end up re-reading this book every Christmas, somehow). It is about decorated trees and lots of streamers in every store window. I have never really been sold on bling...but I can never have too much tinsel on Christmas. I can't get enough of the warm, spicy smell of pine cones. I can stare endlessly at a little church with light streaming out of its windows; and sit for hours inside cathedrals. Christmas is probably one of the coldest days of the year meteorologically - and the warmest in every other way imaginable. Why do I love Christmas so much? Because everything about it is about giving...and about belief. On Christmas, you believe.

Of course, the fact that it is just the beginning of a week of festivities and anticipation is the icing on the (plum) cake. :D

Talking of warmth and belonging, there's something incredibly wholesome about the friendships that spring up amongst an assortment of people thrown together by chance. Friendships that are cemented over late-night chats over everything under the sun; study sessions that, surprisingly, often work out as planned; meals had together - at conventional mealtimes and otherwise; heartbreak and tears that stand a very bleak chance against comforting by buddies; laughter and shared inside jokes and running gags that only the aforementioned assortment of people knows about; tiffs with and without rhyme and reason - and the way they melt away so soon, nobody knows or cares what they were about. Friendships that go beyond the ambit of the ordinary and become relationships. Bonds that, delved into, would reveal intuitive understanding, shared confidences, bars of chocolate and jars of sandwich spread, and the blessed security of the knowledge that things will definitely start looking up once you get back to the gang.

I have, on different occasions, celebrated Christmas alone, and with friends and family. This time, it will be with family. I'll miss the enormous wreath outside my school principal's residence, though, and the sight of lights twinkling within and outside the college chapel (and I can't ever forget Dr. Wilson's Christmas parties!). And I'll miss the impromptu Christmas bashes thrown in the hostel, when our supplies included five bottles of Coke, one big eggless cake, and multiple packs of Maggi. Ah well, we can't have it all.

Except that sometimes we do...and Christmas is one of those times when we should thank our lucky stars for it.

Merry Christmas, World...Happy Holidays! :) Ho ho ho!

P.S. This post is dedicated to all the people I have ever celebrated Christmas with.

P.P.S. This, Blogger tells me, is my 99th post. I like the sound of that! Maybe my New Year post will be my 100th! That would be doubly nice. :) :)