This Christmas

So I find myself fighting back tears as yet another holiday season rolls around and nothing is as it supposed to be. No decorations are up. No happy music about the family and being together playing. No smell of homecooking flooding my nostrils every time I wake up. Nothing. It couldn't be farther from it. My mom is always storming talking about bills, money, loans, jobs, or something to that nature. My dad always talking about gas prices, my car's fuel effiiciency, repairs it might need, grades, sports, something he saw on the news, or something to that effect. Unlike normal is the fact that we don't have a whole rack of family coming in for the Holidays and no big presents under the tree. The presents I don't mind because I'm never really big on gifts. But the changes of our annual tradition I don't like. I keep watching all these movies from the Grinch, to Jingle All the Way, to Home Alone, anticipating the moment when this sense of good will towards men will wash over me and I will be transformed into a version of myself that is brimming to the top with loving optimism and charity. However, that warm sensation never comes. I keep pacing the floors, metaphorically speaking of course, til the moment when my Christmas Miracle or deus ex machina will come and rain supernatural sunshine upon me. But that too leaves my expectations unmet and my naive dream unfulfilled. Not that I want to start back believing that some fat, old peeping tom comes down my chimney every winter to give me gifts, but it would be nice to have something to help rekindle the magic of a season that meant so much to me. I 'd give anything to have the innocent naivete and false hope of Santa coming to bring me my just reward for a job well done all year. ::crying:: Why did Christmas have to change so much? What I wouldn't give for one chance to feel that magic one last time.