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Receiving my first holiday card some two days later sealed off my feelings like a jar of poorly canned tomatoes. Anger seeped in and grew like botulism inside me, infecting every sense I had about the holidays.

There is no spark, no element of goodness nor sincerity left in this made for TV production that this season has now become.  It’s like this year, they sucked the life out of it, tore out the core mythology (remember that cool fat guy in the red suit who gave stuff to people out of goodness??), added shlock, badly written ballads, covered it in cheap decorations and rereleased it as “Christmas 2: Now Made with Splenda.” And like every other crappy sequel, we all bought tickets to this event because, in our BUY BUY BUY world, it’s what’s for sale.

And then… well… and then something happened. Something weird. To me.

It’s not like I wanted to be bleak and black and angry. It’s not like I wanted to be the dour alcoholic in the corner of the holiday party, insulting the food and telling all the guests to go to hell. So it’s really no surprise that it happened, sucker punch that it was.

I baked cookies.

Good cookies.

GINGERBREAD cookies. Dozens and dozens of quite tasty, simple gingerbread cookies. And the kids and I decorated them, and proceeded to eat them with milk (or in my case, a glass of crisp Sonoma Chardonnay).

It was suddenly like seeing “Christmas: The Original” again. The old favorite, where all the gifts were handmade and people got into the spirit of the season AFTER Thanksgiving and one spent more time planning and thinking about what one wanted to give others out of the sheer JOY of giving, rather than the social expectation (“I wasn’t planning on getting them anything but noooowww I HAVE to”) of it all.

I felt it. That spark of “Let’s be NICE to each other! Let’s…. let’s help the less fortunate! Let’s be thankful for what we have, and show the Universe how very grateful we are for all the amazing things that we have.” 

It was small– like I said, just a spark– but with the right kindling, I’m hoping to build on the embers and get them up to a stoke-able fire. I’m working it. And I’m hoping this groovy, for-the-good-of-mankind feeling stays, because the dour, doom-and-gloom Wednesday Adams gig just isn’t right for right now.

I have gotta hope there are enough others out there like me, who want the old version of the season returned, and are working toward it, too.

By baking. And, I donno. Smiling. Being kind. And MEANING it.