All your Christmases in one room
“Why does Christmas make me feel so many things at once?” Maybe it starts when you open the box of ornaments. One is from the year the kids were small. One is chipped, and you keep it anyway. And your heart is full in four directions before you’ve hung a single one.
You’ve had seventy-five Decembers. That’s a lot of kitchens, a lot of mornings, a lot of voices. Christmas is when they all seem to come back and sit together: the girl in Duluth watching snow pile up on the window, the young mother up past midnight with the wrapping paper, the woman you are now, watching a grandchild tear into a box.
With the Sun in Sagittarius, and your birthday so close to it all, you’ve always carried a bright, open spirit into this season. You love the gathering, the noise, the table that’s never quite big enough. Your Moon in Capricorn keeps the traditions steady: the same recipe card, the same carols, the same spot for the star.
And your Scorpio rising feels what’s under the surface. So while the room is laughing, you also notice the voice you wish could hear this song, the years that went by quicker than seemed fair. Joy and missing someone sit side by side in you, and neither one cancels the other.
Could it be that so many feelings come at once because you’ve loved so much, for so long? Tearing up at a carol and laughing a minute later doesn’t mean anything is wrong. Your heart isn’t confused. It’s full, and Christmas is the day it gets to have everyone in the same room.
If you want, one evening sit near the tree with only its lights on. Close your eyes, let your hands rest palms down in your lap, and let your body be open. Feel your chest from the inside, with attention, and let whatever is there be there, the sweet and the tender together. If you want to stop, you stop.
There’s room in you for all of it. There always has been.