'Tis the season!

Well, it's that time again.  Christmas!  A bright shining light to many, a source of major stress and general ill humour for me.  For quite a few years now, I have had a love-hate relationship with this time of year.  Oh, I guess I enjoy the lights and trees and whatnot, but they always seemed to get overshadowed by certain stresses that slowly, over the course of the month of December, pile up.  One of the big things, especially since we've had children, was that Christmas morning was always at someone else's house.  Even before the kids, it never seemed as though my wife and I had any opportunity to create traditions of our own.  Instead, it was a mad dash between families and households to participate in other people's Christmases.
This year, however, I feel a sense of renewal this as with our new (and more accommodating) abode, my wife, my children, and I will be hosting Christmas at our house.  Once again, I feel excited for Christmas morning!  I'm looking forward to our kids waking up and opening presents from Santa without dreading the part when we have to abandon the newly opened joy to get dressed and loaded into the minivan for to make the rounds.
Please don't misunderstand me.  I love my family.  It's great to get together with them and all.  As someone who doesn't believe in gods, virgin births, or that Caesar Augustus would be so inept as to supposedly create a census that required Joseph to return to his place of birth, Bethlehem, to be enumerated there instead of the common, and much more logical practice of having individuals counted where they presently reside (but then, that's only one version of the story), I have instead focused upon Christmas as a time to get together with family and to enjoy the company of loved ones.  That is why, with the splitting of time and the feelings of guilt for spending more time at one house or another, I have longed for a Christmas without the rush.  I can see how this comes off as selfish, and I suppose in a way it is.  I fret about getting the "right gift" for others, I despise asking for gifts from others, but what I do wish for is a Christmas of joy and leisurely pace.  There, that's it.
Now I am not naive to the distinct, nay, certain possibility that our house will be completely mental on December 25th.  I am prepared, if only by way of delusion, for such a scene, for I am looking forward to the point in the day when things start to wind down and instead of looking painfully at the prospect of gathering the little ones and making our way back, I, for once in a long time, will take refuge in the fact that I am already home; and I will have been glad that I was able to open my door and my home to my family.
In the end, Christmas is important to me, and even though we may not be able to do Christmas at out house every year, I am glad for the opportunity to do it this year, and we'll go from there.
As a final note, here is one of my favourite Christmas songs.  I still like that standard hymns, but this one brings a tear to my eye.  It reminds me of why this time is important to me and why, in the end, I guess I do love Christmas.  Happy Christmas!