Christmas is coming

I am feeling rather off balance this year about Christmas. It is rather like having a bit of a fever, where the world seems to fall away from your feet at a strange angle, but this makes it sound like a bad thing. It is not so much that it feels bad, as strange. Christmas is coming, but it is not what I expected. It is not like Christmas at our other house, with our little traditions not broken, and I miss the traditions, and yet I find I like having two Christmas trees, and my uncle over to make tamales in our large kitchen. I do not feel merry and jolly, like I did last Christmas season (or at least the first part of last Christmas season), but neither am I melancholy. My brother will not be here for Christmas, which is sad, but one of my very good friends will be here, which is joyous. Perhaps I am merely learning that Christmas, like Easter, is deeper than it seems, and has more than one manifestation.