Summer vacations are longer, but Christmas vacations are sweeter.
From the children’s perspective, anyway.
They have a long vacation during the summer, yes. But because it is long (and most parents cannot take that much), we organize them: weeks of day camp, weeks of summer camp, weeks with grandparents. Then, despite the absence of the school calendar, there are all these sports which continue to punctuate the days with their names. Monday and Wednesday: baseball for one; Tuesday and Thursday, soccer for the other. Saturday: swimming lessons. It’s important to know how to swim. Oh…and, yes, a week off here and another there, quickly flew through the summer.
But at Christmas it’s different. There are no day camps. There’s no soccer, no hockey, no piano lessons. There’s so much nothing that it’s possible, for example, to stay in the same pajamas two days in a row. And what day is it again?
The magic of the Holidays is when somewhere between the family disorder, the decompensation of burned children after three parties, a third dinner of leftover turkey or sandwiches with no crust and between pieces 743 and 744 of a puzzle head impossible, we enter quietly, almost without our knowledge, into the week of four Saturdays. So time remains suspended, like a snowflake blown by the wind and refusing to touch the ground. The hours no longer pass quite as usual: that’s because the hourglass has also remained horizontal, lying in bed or bundled up on the sofa.
Somewhere between December 24 and January 7, I hope that the magic of the Holidays brings in one of these four Saturday weeks. It’s not much, but when time stops, it’s precious.
Happy Holidays !