Christmas Alone

Special post for people who are thinking "Christmas won't be Christmas without..." any of the people we've lost in the past year or two...

It won't be the same. Of course not. Life is short and, if there is a person you can imagine wishing you had told you love him or her while the person was alive, pick up that pen, or phone if person still has a phone, now. (Go on. Do it. This web site will wait.) 

If you've written letters expressing good will and appreciation and penitence and so on to everyone you can think of (Really? Everyone? The mail carrier? The garbage collector? The neighbors who've behaved so well you've not had to think about them all year?), and it's still Christmas, this may be an indication that you have another obligation left.

There is a no-specific-religion tradition especially for people who have no one at all to celebrate major holidays with. That is Christmas at Waffle House.

I'm not saying that anyone who reads this site would pay twelve dollars for a plate of pancakes, when pancake mix and pancake syrup are so cheap (and so unhealthy), but that's not required. All you have to buy, by way of thanking the company for hosting this event, is a heinously overpriced cup of coffee. 

It's not obligatory, but it's fun, to take a box of little gift items. Unused--it's not Boxing Day yet--things like handmade artsy-craftsy ornaments, or pocket-sized useful things like flashlights, batteries, samples of fancy toiletries... This is also a traditional excuse to wear anything you enjoy wearing that happens to be bright red or green, or have a midwinter or Christmas motif on it. 

"Instead of dinner at MY GRANDMA'S house, y'want me to get dressed up to hang out with a lot of people who probably are homeless, and/or deserve to be homeless, in an overpriced, overcrowded restaurant full of junkfood and the smell of filthy trench coats with cigarette ashes...?!?!?!" 

I never said that walking in the woods, on the beach, wherever, and mourning for the person who's not walking beside you, might not feel better for you than doing Christmas at Waffle House. If you feel that way, do what feels right for you.

If you feel ready to cheer up people who are ready and willing to be cheered, however, dress up and take a few dozen wee gifties to your local Waffle House. Hand them out to everyone, whether they came with their families to cheer up other people, or came in alone to be cheered. Try to get into a few conversations with total strangers. You might meet a homeless person who is sober enough to benefit from help with money, a job, a place to stay, etc. You might meet a comfortably retired person who has outlived all of per friends and wants to make new acquaintances. You never know.

Last year's Christmas blog posts led to my being initiated into this tradition by a family who got into Christmas in a big way. I don't. I asked myself, "Now that the grandmother in this family is dead, and my generation have moved to a different town, am I going to walk out to Waffle House with a basket of wee gifties this year?" I asked myself this question in Wal-Mart after being handed a holiday bonus by a client. The answer was still "No." Handing out trinkets at Waffle House is not my calling. The only way I'd object to spending the holidays all alone would be if I'd fallen and couldn't get up. Christmas at Waffle House is a calling for people who want to be with other people on Christmas Day. It's cheap, it's a way to practice kindness to extroverts, and who knows, you might make a new friend.