shHHHHHH! I think I hear Santa out in the living room!

I love getting up early on Christmas morning. Been doing it since I was an excited little kid, anxious to come out into the living room at the 6109 and see the Christmas tree all lit up, the manger scene all lit up, and everything else real quiet.

I have especially loved the peaceful quiet couple hours in my 20-something years as a Dad. There is a deep feeling of comfort and gratitude when you are a parent and the rest of your family is sound asleep in warm beds on a cold, snowy winter morning and you are sipping coffee and staring out the window at the fresh falling snow and just thinking about life in general.

I guess you morph and change and go through a bit of a progression in your life as to how you view Christmas. As a kid, it is just brilliant color - lights and presents, jingle bells ringing, church all lit up and festive and decorated. Red and green dresses, bright ribbons in your hair, starched white shirts, blue slacks, sweaters, shiny black shoes. As a teenager, a lot of those presents turn into clothes, money, in this day and age lots of ipod downloadable music, dvd's with the first 87 seasons of your favorite tv shows (note to parents: kids don't watch tv on tv's anymore, they watch it on computers, dvd's, hand held devices - weird, I know).

Then many of us come out the other side of childhood and teenager- on into young adulthood. Some of us come out kicking and screaming, trying to hold onto those days and those memories as a kid growing up as long as we can. The importance and focus of me, me, me, hey what about me? What did you get me for Christmas? kind of fades for many, and something inside you turns a bit. You start heading a bit more toward the true north of pondering and reflecting on what the spirit of the season really is all about.

Giving? Is it the season of giving? You see such inner kindness come out in people as they tromp out to the MOA's in their lives, the e-retailers, the little shops along Grand Ave (Tavern on Grand, Dixie's, Billy's, oop's sorry, I'll stay focused on shops on Grand that actually sell trinkets and Christmas presents and such, sorry), and of course the street vendors in Cali to find the perfect gift for the perfect someone in their life. You see people ringing bells in the cold outside the grocery stores for the Salvation Army, you see people singing Christmas carols at the nursing homes, you see people dishing up food for folks at the Dorothy Day Center.

And then for the grand finale, there is the human giving of oneself to another person, or for another person, or for a cause. We are an Easter people as we celebrate Christmas each year. As we morph into teens and young adults and not-so-young-adults (that's me folks!), and we have the true spirit of Christ and of Christmas stamped deep into our hearts from all those family moments and family gatherings, we look into the eyes and the souls of those same folks who raised us and gave us all those presents and all those brightly lit memories, and we give back the best and only gift we've ever had to give -- ourselves. We look into their eyes, and sit with them on the couch or out on the porch, or take a little walk, or write a little letter, and share a little laugh, and we ask them "how are you doing? What have you been up to? How is life treating you?" And we tell them a bit about our own lives, they love to hear how we are doing and what we are interested in, how things are going.

So I realize that Christmas day is only one day, and it's all over in a hurry... or is it? Can't you bottle it and pull it forward into the rest of the year? Into the rest of your life? I would think based on the natural laws that govern the heart and the soul that if the Christmas spirit has moved deep inside your heart that you could not help but carry it with you throughout the year.