The last of the decorations were up, the lights turned on and the house was ready, or at least as ready as it was going to be, for the holidays. I was sitting in my chair, fire in the fireplace, some Christmas jazz playing in the background and I felt content. Happiness during the holidays is often elusive for me, a lot of family baggage I suppose, but contentment is a great feeling. You feel as if you are not missing anything, nothing more could be needed. There is even a sense of calm and peace that comes with contentment.

As I sat sipping my Irish glass of Irish Whiskey, in honor of my roots, it occurred to me that we use the word content sometimes to mean something less than happy, close - but no proverbial cigar. I remembered my recent French lesson where I discovered so much about the French, the word for happy in French is pronounced much more like "error" than the uplifting, smile inducing "happy" that we use. The French also use "content," same spelling, though with a variation on pronunciation, to mean a form of happiness just as we do. But, true "happy" seems to be an error in French...I just can't get my Irish mouth around those sounds and make them come out correctly. It seems that happiness is much more elusive for me regardless of what language I use.

I know, you are probably thinking what is with this guy. He writes about being happy in the Pacific Northwest and then goes on to say happiness is elusive. Listen to yourself. But, while I do have moments of happiness, that true joy created happiness that makes one smile from ear to ear and want to shout from the roof tops, I find that for me I find life general to be much more contented than happy. Case in point, the decorations are up, the rooms feel quite comfortable in their holiday dress, the sounds of the Christmas music, the fire in the fireplace and even today's smell of fresh baked cookies all just give me a feeling of contentment, a sense of peace, I can feel my shoulders drop a bit, my jaw relax a bit, and I suspect even my heart slows down a bit, but that is not happiness.

Where did the happiness go? How did that feeling of excited anticipation that use to be the Christmas season get buried so deep that it is now just a content feeling and not the exuberant joy that use to be part of my holidays. I miss the fun, family time that was so much a part of the season to me as a child. Getting together with extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and life long friends . I miss the craziness of the Traynor clan celebration each year...forty people gathered in a house sharing drinks, food, stories, laughter, even football games in the street or on TV. All those special dishes, Aunt Vada's pies, Great Grandma's plum pudding, the stuffed date cookies, the sugar cookies, and the occasional bourbon ball sneaked from the table when the parents weren't looking and even the hiding of Grandma's cranberry tart so that nobody else would get any. There were the three sisters singing in the kitchen, nothing Christmas oriented that I remember here, it was Shirley Temple's Good Ship Lollipop as they danced a soft shoe across the greasy floor when the turkey spilled. Where did those days go? Where did that "happiness" go? How did we lose track of that over the years?

It is not just that we grow up...I remember happy times with our own children at Christmas. The trips to Yosemite each year to have some quiet family time. The dressing up for dinner...you silly man you gave me four forks. There was hot chocolate in front of the fire, board games, walks in the snow, and snow angels, and those enormous Christmas trees. I remember surprising my daughter with a bike that rode three hundred miles in the back of the van behind the seat she was sitting in and she never saw it until Christmas morning. I remember driving around to see the lights, the nights at Grandma and Grandpa's house after church with cousins to open family gifts. It was smile inducing to see the cousins play together and share the children's table.

Today, for so many Christmas seems to be a chore. We "have" to put up the tree. We "have" to put up lights on the house. We "have" to shop for gifts. We "have" to bake cookies. I miss the spontaneous joy that came from walking in the door after school and smelling the cookies that had been baking all day. I miss the party to decorate the tree. I miss the happiness that came from the anticipation or excited expectation of things to come. Maybe I'm just getting older, maybe my memories are filtered though the lens of time, maybe it is just the times in which we now live that are different. I don't know.

But, still, I think it is good to be content as you sit and enjoy the fire in the fireplace, the Irish coffee, the music, and smell the cookies the lights on the tree. But happiness would not be an error.