Dear Childhood,: Christmas In Japan

You know you're in Japan for Christmas when 4 Asian Santa's ride by you on your way to a sushi restaurant on 2 mopeds.

I unfortunately didn't spend my Christmas off-base, otherwise I'd have more interesting stories to tell you than that. I was happy to once again spend Christmas with my parents. I really would've liked for my older brother to be here, and maybe have to whole family together for Christmas. But families often disintegrate, sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in bad. I hope that soon we can all get together for the season again, but it might be another 4 years. With me being in college, Joe deploying all over the world, and Ron and my parents to be moving and retiring soon, it may be a good while before we're all together. But for the time being, I am glad I could spend this Christmas with my younger brother and my parents. I am accepting the fact that as we all get older, it is harder for us to be together.

Another thing I realized about getting older is that things change, most notably Christmas. Not only is the spirit of Santa Clause gone, but your parents get worn out. I cannot imagine, nor do I want to imagine, how much work goes into preparing Christmas for children. I'm sure my parents are relieved not to have to go through holiday charades for us anymore. However, it's sort of a sad thing. Christmas can seem to come and go like the wind when you live through the seasons like this. And you find yourself surrounded in wrapping paper, Mom and Dad are slowly standing up and moving back to their work thinking after a half an hour of gift wrapping, leaving you thinking-- "This was much different years ago".What happened to my brother and I surveying our wrapped gifts while waiting for our parents to wake up? What happened to the Christmas songs on the radio and the furious tearing into of gifts from 8am to noon? Don't be mistaken, the time you find out that Santa Claus isn't real is not the time your childhood dies. Your childhood dies when everyone is too busy in their adult lives to see the spirit of Christmas.

But a positive part of growing older during Christmas is that you have a better appreciation of gifts. For the first Christmas, I found myself NOT gift counting or calculating prices in my head to see if I got better stuff than my brother, or if I got my worth in gifts. For once, I found myself really appreciating the thought that went into my gifts. My huge bag of ume candy and yoga magazine, and cookbooks were the best gifts because my parents know that these are the things I like.

So while my childhood may be gone, my adulthood seems to be quite a promising replacement.

And there's really no better way to illustrate my Christmas than with pictures.