After weeks of anticipation, Christmas has come and Christmas has gone!
And now, just days after the celebration, the holiday is all bundled up in yesterday’s crumpled wrapping paper, ready to be recycled and the New Year is but an embryo waiting to emerge.
And for a quick and fleeting moment in time there is no great holiday to celebrate.
In hockey and golf, they call this in-between-time the shoulder season –a time when golfers go into withdrawal because of the frost warnings and hockey players await with anticipation newly scheduled ice times.
It’s all good. It’s a time to exhale and relax.
The deadline has passed.
In the weekly newspaper world which I inhabit on a regular basis, deadline is our bottom line, our motto, our common ground, and our own secret password. Early deadline is even more deadly, so to speak!
So, for the last few days remaining in 2015, it’s nice to know Christmas and its ensuing deadlines have come and gone.
Looking back on the days between the deadlines, it seems we’ve all lived through a whole lot of experiences, some good and some not so good, but all of which have served to shape us and, hopefully, leave us a little more humble, a whole lot more grateful and maybe even a tiny bit wiser.
For me, it’s been a season punctuated with the comforting familiarity of Christmas concerts and cheerful Christmas greetings, ringing out like silver bells in the frosty December air.
And, also for me, the holiday season has been highlighted by unexpected kindnesses that have lighted up my world to an even brighter hue than the Christmas lights stretched across the top of my garage door.
These unexpected kindnesses dropped into my world remind me of a line taken from the famous Desiderata which says eloquently: “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”
As 2015 rolls to a finish it is nice to know that traits such as kindness and compassion still exist, even as our world continues to be shaken by wars and rumours of wars.
For each and everyone of us, the year ahead is full of unchartered territory, a thought which could be slightly disturbing.
But, once again I am reminded of the beautiful words of The Desiderata:
“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars: you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.”
And so it seems to me if we simply believe those words and trust that they will be as accurate in 2016 as they were in 1692 when The Desiderata was found, we will eliminate a lot of useless worrying from our lives.
And, despite the economic downturn, the continual upheaval over Bill 6 and the overall unrest that shrouds the entire world, allow optimism to flourish.
And allow ourselves to have a truly Happy New Year!
Treena Mielke is editor of The Rimbey Review and is a columnist for Black Press.