Sap

I joke with Tim all the time that he married the world’s most emotionally impotent woman. Sure I have a wide range of feelings but I rarely show them. There is a myriad of reasons why, most requiring extensive therapy I’m sure. Since I’ve become a parent I’ve been better about expressing my emotions. I don’t want Sophia to grow up and be compared to a cyborg like me.

There has always been one exception to my emotional dam though and that would be Christmas time. The sound of jingle bells and the sight of Currier & Ives prints turn me into a giant ball of mush and I want to love ALL.THE.THINGS. It’s like the part of me that controls my emotions goes into overdrive and tries to make up for all the feelings that I held off on all year. Songs, movies, commercials…they all get me. Here is a list of the biggest offenders…be prepared with your tissues.

• “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole. Nothing says “Christmas” like this song. It doesn’t get me teary eyed but I do get all nostalgic over it. I think back to all the Christmases of my childhood and imagine what Christmas was like for Tim when he was growing up and what it was like for my parents when they were children. I also flashback to a scene in Catch Me If You Can when Frank shows up at his mother’s house on Christmas Eve only to find his mother has essentially replaced him, all while this song is crooning in the background. His mother and her new family are having that ideal Christmas that he so badly wanted and just find myself feeling for him because who doesn’t want that?
  
• “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Frank Sinatra. I know Judy Garland originally sang this in Meet Me In St. Louis but there’s something about Frank’s slow and sad tone that makes me think of all those away from their loved ones during the holidays…especially our troops. The line that just stabs me in the heart is “if the fates allow” because it’s true…we don’t know when we’ll see one another again…it’s all in fate’s hands.
• The Campbell Soup Snowman/Little Boy commercial. I get the warm and fuzzies every time I see this commercial. Who doesn’t remember coming in from playing out in the snow and your mom serving you something to warm you up from the inside out? (For me it was always hot chocolate.)
  The airport scenes at the beginning and end of Love Actually. I’ve been at the airport for tearful good-byes and equally tearful reunions. And Colin Firth. Enough said.(Skip ahead to 0:31 in this clip.)
  

   

What tugs at your heart strings during the holidays?