Thank God it's Christmas.

Last year, when I first put on the Christmas music I listen to every December, I had to sit down and cry. I was sad - sad because I had lost several people I cared about over the course of last year, and sad because several more people I cared about had moved away.

This year, I pulled the CDs out this weekend and put them on.

And I found myself crying again, but for a very different reason.

I was grateful that it was Christmas again.

Grateful that I have a little time to take a breath. To look at lights and the decorated church, to see the Angel trees in some of the local stores, to dump the change at the bottom of my purse into the Salvation Army kettles.

I now feel - upon having found and recovered my Christmas spirit - almost like I lost my way a bit this fall, like the funny and compassionate person that I really am kind of got hidden under a bitter veneer. I don't know if that's due to excessive worrying about what is going on in the world, or having listened too much to an embittered colleague, or having dealt with too many demanding and ungrateful people, or if I merely focused too tightly on work-stuff, and didn't think about the bigger, larger world.

Because work stuff can get pretty stifling at times, pretty close, like being inside of a small sealed room, and the air gets kind of stale and smelly, figuratively speaking. It is almost as if I forget about the bigger wider world, and I can only see the problems I am having at the moment.

But my Christmas spirit is pulling me out of that. Already I think I have laughed more in the past several days than I have in a long time. I've made food for people I care about (the various social groups I belong to are having their annual parties). I didn't cook much this fall, because I felt so busy - and honestly, a lot of the time, I'd go into the kitchen TO cook, and then decide I didn't feel like all the bother. (There have been a lot of things I normally do for myself that I haven't done this fall, because it seemed at the time like "too much bother.")

I've made a few small gifts for friends - just simple stuff, but things they will enjoy. And doing that makes me happy.

And seeing the church decorated today made me happy. And the bell-ringers at the grocery store. And even some of the dumb Christmas ads on television. All of it. It as if I can laugh at things again instead of being annoyed by them.

I spent too much of this fall being annoyed by stuff. I lost a lot of my natural tolerance for some reason. I don't know if it could have a physiological cause - allergies, maybe, or that I had a badly pulled muscle in my shoulder that just recently healed up, or even if, for some unexplained reason, I could have been a tad depressed this fall.

But I feel better now - more like myself. And I'm grateful. And I'm especially grateful that in about another week now, I will get to go see my family, and take a long holiday time off, and get to help my parents put up and decorate the tree, and do the fun silly holiday stuff we do - going out and driving around in the evening to try to pick out the best "Griswold house" Christmas light display, or watching certain movies that come on every year, or just sitting around the dinner table and telling funny stories and laughing.

I will have to work in the future not to lose who I am again. To remember that I'm a resilient and compassionate person whose major way of dealing with the stupidities that happen in life is to laugh at them and shrug and go, "life is funny" rather than, as I had been doing way too much this fall, taking it personally and being annoyed.

Thank God it's Christmas. Thank God it's Christmas.