This holiday season I’ve been feeling as though the holiday cheer has been sucked out of everyone. It just hasn’t felt much like Christmas or whatever holiday you subscribe to. Maybe it’s in part because I haven’t put my own decorations up since I’m going out of town and the last time I left my Christmas decorations alone for a week with the cats, it wasn’t pretty.
No, I went out to the mall last week and it just didn’t have that feeling. There wasn’t the hustle and bustle of shoppers. There certainly weren’t the crowds and I didn’t see a whole lot of over-decorations. Oh, there were the holiday kiosks that only come out once a year to catch those holiday shoppers — the homeopathic candle makers, the calendar guy, the home-make toy folks — but I felt neither stressed by the shopping experience nor cheered and usually at Christmas, it’s one or the other.
And people don’t seem as perky and cheerful this year. Very few people have been wishing each other “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” or some such. It’s almost as if no one realizes that the holiday is right around the corner.
Because I live in a depressed state, I always look forward to this season because the lights, the music, the decorations, and the cheer always lift me up. This year just hasn’t been the same.
So, I was excited to see a news report last Friday about a Starbucks in Florida where customers were generously making each other’s day, spreading good will and cheer. It didn’t start out that way; Arthur Rosenfeld bought the coffee for the man in the car in the drive-thru behind him because he’d been yelling and honking his horn at Rosenfeld and Rosenfeld wanted to “take this negative and change it into something positive.” His little act of Zen turned into a day-long chain of random acts of kindness as one after one, the drivers of each car in that drive-thru paid for the drinks of the car behind him or her. Customers and employees interviewed all were ridiculously touched by the cheerfulness fairy because of this little random miracle — a sign that the human race isn’t completely bereft of generosity, goodness, and holiday cheer.
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I left my bags at the checkout yesterday. When I got back, the next person in line had swiped them. Target just let me go replace my goods and took the hit. It made me feel a lot better both about Target and about Christmas (but not about the idiots who swiped my stuff).