Anticipation

If you spend time with people in the under age ten set this month you may notice they are vibrating at an uber high frequency.  December excitement causes their bodies to bounce and their voices to get loud.  So much counting down exists with calendars and wreaths and candles and telling ancient stories and rehearsing songs or dances or plays.  There are sparkly cookies and handmade candy we can’t eat yet and bedecked boxes we aren’t supposed to shake or peek into.  Yet.  Parties are planned and people are coming.  In a few days.  All this preparation for celebration creates an electric atmosphere of anticipation. 

Dictionary.com offers these entries for the noun anticipation.
     1.  the act of anticipating or the state of being anticipated.
     2.  realization in advance; foretaste.
     3.  expectation or hope.
     4.  previous notion; slight previous impression.
     5.  intuition, foreknowledge, or prescience.

Much like extreme sports, December gets a place unto itself in terms of gift giving.   We hear reports of how consumer holiday spending may make or break retail profits for the year.  Every day news notes what percentage spending is up or down in the mayhem of money being dished out right now and if it will affect positively the economic slump.  I hear, “No pressure, folks, but get out there and spend, spend, spend.”

Immersed in the December time table and my role in bringing fruition out of anticipation, I’m working on a new perspective.  As in years past, I try to meditate on mysteries – darkness and light, birth and mission, simplicity and the sacred – while I make lists, decorate, run errands, buy and buy and buy.  I go back and forth, tugging both ends of the rope, over the intense gift giving this time of year and its place in my life.  I have tried a myriad of ways to make peace with it by valuing things we make ourselves and making lists of items other people might like instead of only what WE want for ourselves.  I also know that when my kids don’t express desires Santa can sometimes mess up so their wish list can be a blessing, too!

My emerging perspective is that maybe all this expectation and hope of buying and getting gifts can be a good way to capture the anticipation of light coming in darkness.  I am learning I can be more available to moments when I find a gift I think someone will love.  There is a foretaste of joy while I wait to give it to them, to see them receive it.  We can embrace the foreknowledge of gifts we may receive, too.  This is a good thing.  We can also accept mindfully ways to let ourselves off the hook of heedless buying. 

The trick for me is to both know miraculous things are in store and honor the miracle of our present selves by not becoming bludgeoned by the shopping.  In December we reside deep in festival anticipation of spiritual and material gifts coming.