Boxing Day: 2015

I enjoy my Christmas traditions, and this Boxing Day post has become one of them. The day after Christmas is a natural time of reflection. The holiday is now officially over, but the season continues for another few weeks. We generally stretch our observances all the way to epiphany. But when I say observances, I mean our rather low key local practices, which include a certain number of almost festive meals, a good deal of seasonal music, and Christmas movies. An then somewhere in there is my birthday, which is a sort of counterpart to Boxing Day in that it falls on the day after New Year's.

But as I began by observing, my personal Boxing Day practices are focused more on looking backwards and forwards, and this has been a rather different sort of holiday season for us. Our marginally festive meals have been even more marginal than usual as a result of J's continuing dental woes, which also disinclined us to engage in much social activity. Added to that many of our friends and family seemed otherwise involved this year, and so we were thrown back onto our own quieter practices and generally slower pace as the year has drawn to a close.

And so this year I'm enjoying a quiet Boxing Day, listening to some old Christmas CDs and counting my blessings as I glance furtively at the coming of 2016, when I will encounter my seventy-year-old self, but of that more anon. Meanwhile I will continue in my pensive mood and take things easy, as indeed I'm rather always inclined to do; 2015 has been a pretty good year. We visited with family and friends and amused ourselves in the various ways we like to do: saw some expert rock stackers, played some music with friends, visited with my brothers and their families, went out to some museums and theatrical and musical performances, and did some projects around the house. What more can one ask? Life is good, or good enough, anyway.