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The True Holiday Spirit - Harmony Harkema

The True Holiday Spirit

Dear friends,

One of the privileges of being the editorial director at The Glorious Table is that I get to write the first post of every month. As I pondered what to say to you this week, I confess I struggled to come up with something inspiring and uplifting. If you read my post last month, you know that my girls and I are approaching a somewhat broken holiday season. My husband is serving our country overseas until sometime in the spring. At the same time, my days have been shadowed by medical mysteries–a CAT scan, and now a PET scan next week. Being injected with radioactive dye doesn’t do much for my “holiday spirit.”

This has led me to ask myself, just what is holiday spirit?

When I was a child, the Christmas season meant traditions. They were everything. This ornament, that cookie recipe, this event on this date, that one gift to open on Christmas Eve. The “holiday spirit,” I thought, was a cozy feeling brought on by the sound of Christmas carols and the smell of gingerbread, the taste of eggnog and the glow of lighted branches. It can also be a feeling of wonder, the kind you get when you step out into a cold, clear night under a navy sky dotted with pale stars, and the sharp smell of snow in the air stings your nostrils, and the sounds of O Holy Night echo in your mind, and you know with glorious certainty that all of it had a Creator.

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But what happens when that cozy feeling, that feeling of wonder, suddenly becomes elusive? What happens when you can’t get there?

To read the rest of the post, please click on over to The Glorious Table . . .