I will be honest; this has been a difficult Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong: Christmas is always filled with joy, the most intense of joys. There are many who are experiencing great suffering during this Christmas season, but I am not one of them.
I am just tired.
My first semester of college is over… and it was exhilarating. I only hope to take better advantage of the opportunities before me this next year.
Inasmuch as college has been wonderful, it has been exhausting. Relationships with friends and family have been strained. And coming home has been hard.
I feel like Odysseus.
I am home but home has changed.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
-T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi
These lines may seem excessively dark; especially since they remind me of my experience coming home this year. Not entirely, though- my family are not “alien people clutching strange gods” : )
But still, the fact is that Christmas has come, “and it was, (you may say) satisfactory.”
I am joyful. I would venture to say that I am happy (though I must clarify that I have only the foggiest notion of the difference).
I have exulted in this Christmas season, have listened to Vince Guaraldi, have drunk eggnog, gone caroling, and loved every second of it.
Above all, I celebrate the incarnation; the miracle of the Word made flesh.
But I should be glad of a second death.
