My Grown Up Christmas List

Since I’ve been a grown-up, this has been one of my very favorite Christmas songs (and if you’ve never heard Kelly Clarkson sing it, open a new browser with iTunes and buy it now. I’ll wait….).

The fact that it wasn’t written until 1990 explains why I don’t remember it from my childhood, but even so, I think it resonates far greater with grown-ups than with children.  I was going to say that sadly it resonates greater, but I actually think that sentence should have read, happily it resonates far greater with grown-ups than for children. Happily and thankfully. 

It’s not fortuitous that as we grow up we become more jaded and have a much more heavy-hearted view of the world we live in and Christmas becomes a time less and less about magic and childhood fantasy but of wishes for peace and a world where we can live without fear (the events of last Friday obviously weighing heavily on our hearts and minds).

Today I was ‘tagged’ by one of my new blogging besties, Teri, from Snarkfest in a post chain that is making the rounds called “My Christmas Wish List” where I’m supposed to write a post listing 5 of my wishes this year.  I’ve spent some time this morning reading a handful of these posts and spitting out my coffee with laughter at the wishes for invisible muffin tops, husbands that knew how to do laundry and the ability to disapparate. I actually had a list of 5 humorous things all set to go as I sat down to write this post, but when my fingers typed that title all on their own and the lyrics of that song came flooding out immediately after, this post took on a whole new direction.

So my post isn’t going to be about how I wish that once Christmas was over, winter in Minnesota was too, that Ellen DeGeneres would ‘like’ my facebook page and read my blog, or that my cat would stop cleaning her fanny when she’s lying on top of me — I’m going to put on my serious face today. Everyone keeps asking me what I want for Christmas (and by ‘everyone’ I mean my kids and my mama – I do not have a host of people wanting to buy me things – just wanted to clear that up) and I know they want me to tell them about a book I’m dying to read or a cool new case for my phone that I must have, but at the risk of sounding like the mother Mary, I’m for want of nothing material this year. I’m good.  And even though I’m sure the things I do wish for are shared by most of you reading this post today, it’s what’s on my mind…so with apologies for the unoriginality of my list, here’s what I’m really wishing for this Christmas.

I wish for a world without fear. A world where I can shop in a mall or sit in a movie theatre and not constantly wonder if I’m safe; a world where my husband can have a disagreement with a co-worker without me wondering if he’s going to go postal (the co-worker, not my husband) and where I can stop looking over my shoulder and being suspicious of practically everyone in line behind me.  But more importantly, for a world where my children can grow up without doing the same.

I wish for tolerance. For people to accept and celebrate the differences in each other instead of judging and bullying and tearing apart. For everyone to be able to be comfortable in their own skin and to proudly let their freak flags fly.

I wish for goodness. At the risk of getting all Pollyanna-ish here, I wish for a world where people would simply be good and true and kind. Like the song says, “….and right would always win.” 

I wish for peace. Not just for the obvious peace overseas and for my brother-in-law currently serving in Afghanistan, but for peace in our own country’s hurting hearts – for a multitude of reasons. 

I wish for magic. And not the kind David Blaine can create (although on second thought….). I wish for the kind of magic I used to believe in; the kind of magic I know my 11 year old still believes in.  We should all be so lucky. 

It’s not much, really, this list.

It’s (hopefully) a few of the things we learned as children and that we are teaching our own children the importance of. 

Sadly, as is the case when you grow up, I’m not sure I believe that all my wishes are possible anymore. 

So I think I’ll start over and make the ever-popular and cliched ‘Third wish’.

That is my greatest wish this year.

Peace ~ 

Michelle