This Time Of Year

found at  http://blog.newsok.com/photo/category/uncategorized/ 

So, the dog days of August are upon us, and for many of us in the US it has been a horrid summer of drought and record highs.  Horray for the La Nina years!  Hip Hip Horray!

Yes, where I live it has been very hot with very little rain.  It makes going outside to do any sort of chore a tedious task all its own.  If you go out too early, neighbors might complain about the noise.  Do it too late and you might hit the sprinkler heads.

Anyway, I digress because the purpose of this post is more about what seems to happen to me during this time of year.  The wheels of schools all across the land begin to turn.  Papers rustle, mops swish, bells are being tested.  The store registers clatter away with the sound of new school cloths and heaps of school supplies -- which brings me to where my mind likes to wander.

Maybe it's the heat?  Many I know often tell me that it's the heat and I am just longing for the long winter's nights.  I fancy the darkness and coming hollowed days.  I love the snowfall and the wonderlands of ice.  I enjoy the nip on my nose, the chill rushing through the house.  I love fireplaces, though I don't have one.

found at: 
http://www.bestourism.com/items/di/6285?title=Christmas&b=223 

But, what draws me most to this time of year is a pursuit I'm afraid I have lost.

I never really had the opportunity to believe in Santa Claus.  My brother had figured out the secret back when he was around three years old.  Around the same age he discovered how to take apart anything his little hands could touch.  Also the same time he discovered that his baby brother could roll down the stairs just like a log!  I, of course, don't remember those moments.  They're all a spinning blur of banister and carpet and then darkness.

When I was young, my brother and I couldn't wait for Christmas.  My family lived a much more hardscrabble life than I understood at the time, and Christmas tended to be more of a time for my brother and I to fantasize about what we would get and then let my parents surprise us.  It was amazing that way.

Yet, it wasn't the presents I think I have lost.  It's the magic of the air.  It's the magic of my family being together and playing in the snow.  It's the magic that something was just right with the world, if only for this moment.  I think, as I got older, the Spirit of Christmas became more complicated and more allusive to my adult sensibilities.

Every now and then I can catch just the whisper of her shimmering dress as she runs out of my sight.  I can sense her cool breath on my neck as I march to school trying to think of how best to get my students to seek out the spirit rather than the latest video game like greedy goblins.

I'm afraid many of the churches around me now no longer know the spirit that I speak of.  And it frustrates me every year that she is just a whisper out of sight.

So starting around this time, all my old Christmas movies come out and I begin to watch them.  I begin to take notes.  I begin to plan family events (which always seem to go bust because many members of my family can't seem to be bothered to join us).  However, most of all, I seek a way to catch that spirit and hold her tight and try to shine her light to the world.

I just don't know how.  So what if we make that this message's little challenge.  Have you ever seen or felt the spirit of Christmas?  If so, how?

P.S. I'm not crazy, folks.  I'm being metaphorical.