bed humbugs

I find myself, this year, not so into doing Christmas. Most years I am the epitome of a Christmas elf. I stay up late every night knitting sweaters for my children and boiling moisturizing concoctions for all the ladies I know. I patiently roll out cookie dough with my children, and don't scream at them when the put a sigle cookie cutter RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the space, then pull the rest of the dough away in clumps to extract that one, tiny, lumpy star. I go to church and stand up front and scream with all my might, "OH COME OH COME EMANUEL!!!"

This year, whatevs.

I am depressed from sleep deprivation that has long ago passed the "stage" mark and gone into constant chronic immune system suppression. I started a new job and have not yet figured out how to schedule both motherhood and "work." Every time I look at my phone I am reminded that the world is a terrible place, where these concerns of mine are not so much a drop in the bucket, where the net volume of human woe is so so deep, and to many people this year Christmas will arrive and pass and it will not seem at all like Emanuel has come.

I have lost my Christmas hopefulness. Christmases have come and past and Jesus keeps being born and life does not get much easier.

What do you do when you feel this way? When all you want for Christmas is a nap? All advice welcome, practical, spiritual, or jokes.

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