no one wants to be alone at christmastime.

Christmas is undoubtedly my favorite holiday. Whenever I hear Christmas carols going, smell the fresh pine, and see people putting up the tackiest winter decorations known to mankind - I don't know, I just get filled with this enormous sense of satisfaction. It's like the feeling you get when you're drinking super hot chocolate while your face is about to fall off from the cold; the warm liquid reaches into the depths of your stomach, and the numbness you feel with your skin is nothing like the tinglingness you feel with your heart. 

I always feel like I need time to prepare my tingling heart for Christmas. I need to get into the zone - start listening to my Bing Crosby/Amy Grant c.d.s, get a permanent peppermint and cinnamon smell stuck up in my nose, and read Luke to commit the nativity story to my mind. I think the worst Christmas I ever had was my junior year in high school, when I think we ended like the 22nd or something, and we just rushed into Christmas. It really sucked, because I had just finished taking finals and I had to worry about my already-awful calculus grade, and etc. etc. But otherwise, I've always looked forward to the season like a madwoman. I'll be craving Christmas in July, waiting around for that simultaneously-cold-and-hot feeling that I, for an inexplicable reason, love.

I love giving gifts, and this is also why Christmas is a perfect holiday for me. If I had all the money in the world, I would spend a lot of it giving people amazing gifts. Unfortunately, I don't have all the money in the world, so I make do with what I have. But just finding the perfect gift, finding something that I know they'll love because I'm a creeper that keeps files on people (just kidding) - it gives me so much personal satisfaction, more than getting gifts of my own. 

But today, when I went Christmas shopping (belatedly, because I didn't have the time or the resources to do so at school), I found this sort of dreariness that you get when you try to find a size 2 in the J.Crew sale section. I needed to find the perfect gifts, but it was mad difficult. I ran into this one store at least four different times before settling on what I wanted to buy from there. And then, I stopped to think: what exactly is all this gift-giving about? Yeah, at the core, it's the whole God-gave-Jesus-to-the-world-yay-joy thing, but really? In our religiously-diluted society? It's about consumerism. And another level, it's just about doing something special for our loved ones, (and sometimes people we don't even care all that much for,) because we didn't have time to really do it during the rest of the year. It's like when guys feel burdened to do something nice for their girlfriends on Valentine's Day when actually, doing small sweet things once in a while makes more of a statement. 

Who gets you? When they give you a gift, saying, "Oh, I know he/she will love it" to the person next to them, how often are they justified? And as much as we, including myself, like to think we get the people to whom we are gifting, how often are we justified? That pair of holiday socks, that vanilla candle set, that copy of the new Dan Brown novel that you'll speed-read through once and place on the shelf - are these truly ideal gifts?

Well, let me let you in on a little secret: the best gift of all time is love. 

Just watch that one scene in "Love Actually", when Keira Knightley's character gets a surprise visit from a guy holding a stereo and a bunch of signs in which he tells her that he loves her. I'm sure most of the human world will agree that that would be an ideal gift, just to hear from someone that he/she loves them. Sure, call me cheesy and cliched, but it's true. Mariah Carey sings "All I Want For Christmas Is You" in the cars that people drive miles and miles to be crowded into a house full of family members that normally drive them up the wall. Spending Christmas alone is one of the worst things that could ever happen to me, even worse than spending my birthday alone. But of course, you can be alone in a sea of people - that's why we need to give love.

So, let me give you three tips on how to spend this year's Christmas. 

1. No matter how you feel about your relationships with the people around you, be it family or friends, be it animosity or full-out unconditional love, make sure you take the time to really be with them. Listen to them. Talk to them. Smile and laugh with them. Be mature for one day and don't let past arguments and hard feelings get in the way.

2. As you're preparing your Christmas gifts, make sure you add in a special touch to let them know you actually care about what you're handing over. I have never bought a card for my parents; for as long as I was able to fold a sheet of paper and hold a pair of scissors without poking myself in the eye or chopping all my hair off (the latter of which I have done), I've made them their holiday/birthday cards. And the best birthday card I've ever received was a handmade one from a friend on my 17th birthday where he included 17 reasons why we're friends. So, even if you aren't the next Van Gogh, I encourage you to make at least one card for someone you care about. 

3. Tell someone you love him/her. If you feel uncomfortable saying those three words, then at least say "Thank you for being my (insert role here)." 

Yeah. Love can be a miracle, and Christmas is a time of miracles, so put those two together and you'll find yourself with more magic than what Hermione Granger's brain can contain.

I'd say Merry Christmas, but I'll save that for a Christmas post. : )