I think I have a timing issue with the secular world on the subject of Christmas. I love Christmas -- I do, really -- but I think it begins on, well, Christmas. In my ideal world, the period before Christmas would be an introspective, solemn period. I like, when feasible, to fast during the day in the Advent season, only eating after sunse. (However, I don't like to point out that I'm doing it, so sometimes it's not feasible to refuse food.) Advent is a very spiritual time for me.

Any preparation for Christmas -- baking, gift-making -- I prefer to undertake in silence or while listening to some wonderful music, like Praetorius' polychoral Christmas music. I try not to shop, or at least not much. (Amazon helps me get away with avoiding malls). I don't decorate early -- never before December 15th, often later, and this year the tree went up on Christmas Eve.

I prefer to have a particularly austere Christmas Eve, up to and including the late-night church service, after which I go home and wrap gifts, again indulging in Praetorius, Handel, or...

Then, on Christmas itself, when the presents are given and the food comes out, the upwelling of joy is truly a genuine thing that everyone feels. We start with a family Christmas -- we never have guests, or travel ourselves, if we can help it. After Christmas come parties. Over the following two weeks the celebration continues, winding down organically around 12th night.

However, while I think Christmas begins on Christmas and ends in the middle of January, almost everyone around me -- even most of the congregation at my church -- seems to think that it begins on December 1 and ends at midnight on Christmas. Just as I'm feeling ready to enjoy the twinkle of Christmas lights, having assiduously avoided them all through the pre-Christmas season, the folks around me are turning theirs off. Here at work, the "Christmas party" was on the 13th of December when I'd rather have stayed home, and today on the 26th when I'm feeling ready to think about distributing gifts (I have tins of biscotti in the car to devide up) and offering Christmas greetings, the lights and decorations are already coming off the walls.

Fortunately, I do have like-minded friends -- a few -- who leave me alone during Advent but host post-Christmas gatherings. This year I'm going wassailing on December 29th and attending a 12th night party on January 5. But in general, even church-related Christmas social things are before the 25th of December. Being in the choir makes it worse...frantic preparations for Christmas services, when all I really want to do is go home and sit in the dark.

Does anyone else here feel oddly out of step with the holiday calendar -- loving the holiday but hating the timing?

(Sorry I'm late, but of course it never occurred to me to open this thread before Christmas! LOL.)

Claire