January. I don’t have much use for it; hate it, really.
January is a dark and cold reminder that we’ve eaten too much, drunk too much, spent too much, perhaps slept too little, for way too long. Boom. The scale. The credit card bills. Dry, cracking, pasty skin. Freezing pipes.
Every January I’d like to turn myself inside out and hide until the first crocus peeps through the thawing ground.
Not today.
Call me nuts, but today I added about 20 Christmas cards, which have trickled in over the last two weeks, to our sprawling display. Every year I use nearly two full rolls of masking tape to affix incoming cards to the molding around the doorways in our home. One hundred seven in all this year–so far.
Today it hit me. One hundred seven people or families expressed their love and good wishes – to us!
One hundred seven people went to the time and expense to buy or hand-make cards. Some signed their names or wrote lengthy personal notes. Some even addressed envelopes. They spent 46 cents apiece for stamps. They went to the mailbox. To wish us a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year.
Today, in the frigid darkness of the month I despise, I counted 107 expressions of good wishes. And, as I counted these blessings, I saw light. I felt warmth.
In the rush of opening the mail, we can forget that there is meaning in the wishes that honor the holy event we celebrate in December, and there’s immeasurable hope in the wishes for a happy and healthy new year.
Fellow January-haters: Let us thumb our noses at seasonal affective disorder by re-reading our Christmas cards (if they haven’t already gone out with our dried out evergreens) or remembering at least one person who wished us well, and appreciate how much we are loved.
And let there be light.
Over the years, our kitchen has developed a chili pepper theme, and there’s an iron chili pepper wall hanging that says Feliz Navidad. It’s been hanging for 20 years, as much for the peppers as for the Navidad. There’s a carved wood statue of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus; it lives on the dining room mantel year-round. There’s a collectible 
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