It's below 50 degrees, I can't make it up or down Airline Drive in less than 20 minutes, and the Boardwalk is filled with snow that resembles laundry detergent suds. This means only one thing: It's Christmas time in Bossier.
We're not even a week removed from Thanksgiving (and the epic beatdown LSU put on Arkansas, Le Sigh) and I already feel as though the holiday was about a month ago. It's weird how our media and culture makes your brain immediately switch to Christmas around the end of November. I guess it has something to do with the narrow window of prime shopping season.
And this was my first year partaking in Black Friday on my own. But by no means am I a Super Bowl of Shopping newbie. I have been experiencing Black Friday in Bossier-Shreveport for most of my life. My mom and I would make a yearly pilgrimage and hit up Southpark Mall — you know, that mega church in south Shreveport — oh, how times have changed.
I spent most of my time in the northern part of the city where I work and live at Stirling Shopping Center, specifically Best Buy, looking at tablets and talking myself out of going broke to buy an iPad (hint, hint Santa). I did get a few clothing items for work at Old Navy, but by and large, it was just a way to spend my valuable day off and say I experienced it.
Now we're almost into December and I already have my Christmas wrapped up. Due to an early spring wedding, it's a very demure holiday. There will be no grand gestures of love to the tune of a HD TV or shiny jewelry.
No, my gift is the renovation of my office. Ever since my boss decorated his office, we've all had an itch to make our spaces a little more homey. So there you go, big Christmas, eh?
But you know, as much as I love the secular sense of Christmas — Santa, gift giving, cookies, lights, trees, decorations, scented candles, nutcracker Snickers — it's the real reason for our celebration that belies my love of the holiday.
As fun as it is to indulge my inner consumer, letting myself go crazy making wishlists and buying myself (and others) gifts, it's that rush of giving someone something fun. It's the love you have for that other person, either brotherly or romantic, that drives you to the store in the first place. It's that spending time with him or her that makes battling crazed shoppers with mace worthwhile. And it's only an added bonus for your conscience that you can drop a $20 in the Salvation Army bell ringer's bucket outside Walmart.
See, Christmas is wrapped in the shiny paper of gifts and some might even say greed, but it's under that where we find the real gift and it's a heart that cares for his or her fellow man or woman.
It's a microcosm of the giving God gave us of his son for salvation.
While we can NEVER give something of that magnitude, we can remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and what it means. And that's where our selflessness and love comes from this holiday.
Now...Can I get a gingerbread man or what?
