(Photo Illustration Editor's Notes Alt - Christmas - MetroCreativeConnection)

You know the feeling of barreling headlong toward Christmas and thinking of all you have to get done combined with all you are looking forward to?

As it always does, everything either gets done or wasn’t important to begin with. And though it may have been that you were looking forward to a big gift about which you had been dropping hints since September, or maybe a little travel, just some time off work, or that one dessert that is prepared ONLY for Christmas (and don’t ask for it any other time of year!), it turns out it feels way better than you remembered just to have all the people you love in one place (or maybe two) and be able to spend a few uninterrupted hours with them before moving back out into the real world again.

Christmas can be bittersweet. My last good clear memories of my dad are from the Christmas before he passed less than two weeks later. But because he was who he was, those memories involve both a lesson to the grandkids about the importance of helping others … and a Spider-Man web-slinging gadget that shot silly string. He did not know that if some stuck to the wall, it would stain. But hey, that’s what spare cans of paint in the basement are for, right?

It is impossible at this time of year not to think about my grandmothers, and all the people who would gather around their tables who are not here to do so anymore.

But I like to think that the mistiness in my eyes when all those folks come to mind means they are still celebrating with us in spirit. They’re mentioned often enough, they almost must be.

Meanwhile, Christmas is a once-a-year chance to realize just how fast those kids are growing up. They are harder to shop for, that’s for sure. But also smarter, more interesting, more able to offer a little perspective on our upside-down world … and because of the family they grew up in, still likely to bust out some silly string of their own.

I know Thanksgiving is supposed to be the holiday of gratitude, but Christmas always does it for me. Nothing hammers home how much there is to be thankful for like an evening lit by little decorative lights during which you learn your sister DOES know you well enough to give just the right gift after all; and it’s OK that the music in your mother’s Christmas village Will. Not. Stop.

Because you’re listening to it together. Laughing about it together.

And it doesn’t matter that the pants you bought your nephew are already a size too small, because that means he’s healthy and growing and maybe didn’t appreciate your Gen X fashion sense, anyway.

It doesn’t matter that everyone is covered in the fur of our mother’s very, very cuddly and wiggly Golden Retriever, because that means a good girl got some scritches from everybody.

I could go on and on, but I bet you all are thinking not of your own presents received, but of the everyday gifts this time of year gives us a chance to remember.

They certainly help to make this the most wonderful time of year, don’t they?

Try to hold on to this feeling in about mid-February when some of us tend to forget that the sunshine will return soon enough. Close your eyes and put yourself back here, if you can.

Unless your memories also will include a musical Christmas village that just won’t quit. You don’t have to hold on to that part.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com.