I’m Dreaming of a Gray Christmas

Bright shiny red bulbs.  Twinkle lights on trees. Fragrant green garland. Are you seeing it, Christmas in technicolor?  What a wonderful time of year, but everything is not always shiny and bright. Oh, it may be on television, in the malls, or in the neighbor’s front yard, lighting up the entire block.

I’m just a girl, standing in front of…Santa, asking for gray this season.  Why gray, you ask?

This underrated color is a combination of white (as in brilliant glistening snow, and black (the lowest of lonely stocking presents: coal). 

Basically, I’m searching for the middle ground this season. 

This hard to find place is where the presents are not the perfect one of kind thingamajigs on your kiddo’s list, where every dessert isn’t handmade, and where you haven’t searched through Pinterest for the dreamiest tablescape.

Gray, touted as the perfect neutral, is a color that creates expectation.  I like that.  It is often the backdrop used by designers and photographers alike.  This, of course makes the subject matter stand out.  Isn’t that what we want, to see the true beauty of a singular moment? For me that may be my daughter’s smile when she opens my handmade gift, or watching the trollop of my son’s clumsy puppy paws, frolicking in spent wrapping paper.  Or sitting on the sofa sipping hot chocolate on Christmas Eve and seeing ten stocking feet propped up on the coffee table as we watch It’s a Wonderful Life.

In year’s past, I’ve worked magic, or so it seemed, and created many a glitzy Christmases. A good shake of the snowglobe and another holiday vision awaits, bigger, brighter, better.

For this year, I’ve decided to roll down my stockings and rest the reindeers, because I’m certain that somewhere between brilliant white and the blackest of coal, the loveliest shade of gray exists.