When My Heart Finds Christmas

Maybe I'm getting old... but I am having a really hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Granted, there are several factors that might be contributing to this, but overall the holiday seems to have lost it's magic a little bit. My brother and his wife are spending the holiday with her family, and though I am looking forward to my holiday plans with my parents, dinners out, movies in, no "kids" seems a little anti-climatic to me. Maybe this is just my Christmas Karma from a few years ago coming back to haunt me. I opted to spend one Christmas traveling in Germany with a good friend, rather than at home... In my defense, my parents had just moved to a new State so being "home for the holidays" didn't have quite the same appeal, not to mention the fact that I had ten paid vacation days, and a friend who was fluent in German with no Holiday Plans... It was an amazing trip, but now I cannot really give my brother a guilt trip about spending the holiday elsewhere. So here I am two days before Christmas, trying to fake the spirit and the magic and get my holiday mood kicked into gear. I have all the presents (95% of which were purchased locally!)  I've got wine mulling on the stove, gifts to wrap, and Christmas music in the cd player.

I adore Christmas Music. Recently I've been listening to  Christmas with the Beach Boys... ok before you even judge, this up-beat an unique holiday music takes me back to my childhood. Somewhere along the line my mom sold the cd at a garage sale (much to my holiday dismay) but the year I went to Germany she got another copy, for us to blast at our "fake Christmas" celebration before I left. It's the perfect cd for prancing around the house in your pajamas (ok and maybe some years reindeer antlers). 

But my absolute favorite is When my Heart Finds Christmas by Harry Connick Jr. On a side note, let me just add that I am so in love with everything about him. I've had a giant crush on him since I was about 7! That voice! That sex appeal! (please keep in mind that this album is from 1993... I was eight... regardless I still think he is sexy) I cannot help but swoon. One Summer I was home from college, and he was playing a concert two and a half hours away, and I made my best friend take the afternoon off work so we could go and see him. I think throughout the entire thing I had my hands clutched at my chest in full swooning mode... I will probably never live that down. As a little girl I would decorate my room with Christmas lights, and play this CD on repeat as I played with my American Girl Dolls. This cd makes me think of snow, and decorating, and anxiously awaiting the UPS deliveries, and Christmas morning... It's jazzy, and has a wonderful mix of classic songs, I don't even mind his version of the little drummer boy... well ok, I still hate the song, but this is the version that I tolerate the best. I used to wistfully listen to "What are you doing New Year's Eve" and dream of being a grownup at holiday parties wearing fancy cocktail dresses and dancing to that song... really who am I kidding, I still have that fantasy (friends why have we not done this?) and get a little wistful when listening to that song. Sigh...

Maybe all the music and reminiscing is pushing my spirits towards festive? Who knows... but the wine is mulled, and I am surrounded by wrapping paper, so regardless, I need to get into gear... the holidays are happening ready or not. In the meantime Harry Connick Jr. says it best. "When my heart finds Christmas, I hope it finds you too".