Christmas Passed

Christmas Day Slideshow
The day has finally passed, there are now 365 shopping days until Christmas (the world breathes a collective sigh of relief). I have observed a bunch of interesting things about people and the holidays. First of all most people get so wrapped up in it they don't enjoy the time spent with family. Thankfully we have a relatively small family so we are able to just have a great time and it becomes more about hanging out and chatting then giving gifts. Speaking of gifts I have also found I prefer giving to receiving. I am a very bad gift receiver, it seems no matter what the gift is I just don't show any emotion or excitement, its not because I don't like my gifts, because I was quite happy with everything I received. Perhaps it is the neat freak inside who realizes I will have the gift at my house and need to store it somewhere. It could also be my rigorous process of picking out a gift and only buying the perfect gift for each and every person and my high standards being passed on to everybody else. So if you give me a present and don't really receive a reaction, its not you, its me.

Another peculiar thing I observed came at various points, but especially after the big day. Friends seemed to be a big part of our day, from the conference call with Vanessa to the visit from Ryan to the night at Nissa's and finally with the rush to the internet for pictures and IM's about each other's holiday. The internet and cell phones seem to bring us closer and encourage us to connect at times when we typically wouldn't have in the past, which is definitely a good thing. Maybe I am just noticing it because of my lack of friends at the holidays in the past, but it seems to be a little different than how things migh have occurred ten years ago.

Finally, I noticed my almost complete absence of girlfriend thoughts. In the past at the holidays I have typically been down because of a lack there of, but this year I didn't stop to think about it at all. Instead I just enjoyed the holiday and realized I have things pretty good anyway and while it would be nice, Christmas is still a bunch of fun. I will admit my complacency about the situation kind of makes me nervous, I don't want to become tooo comfortable with being single though, because it probably wouldn't be the best thing for me. We'll see what next year brings though.

I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday and it is now time to shift our focus to the past year for a couple days and then gaze ahead to the fresh start we will be given in a week's time. 2004 is upon us and I plan on living each of the 366 days to their fullest.

Peace to all,
Keegan