One little Christmas wish for you

Christmas dinner has been eaten, all the presents have been opened, the family has been visited and A Christmas Carol has been watched (the Disney version of course): Here in Austria the most important part of Christmas is over.
The climax has been reached and passed, all the anticipation, all the preparations don't count anymore, they have become nothing but a memory: another year, another Christmas.

If everything is already over, then why is it that I am writing this post now?
The reason is, while I have wished everyone a Merry Christmas, I have found that there is something far more important I am wishing you with all my heart.
I am fully aware that this will sound really kitschy now, but I mean it more seriously than you can imagine, and if Christmas is not the time to be sentimental, what is it?

My small but dear, so very dear, community of readers, I wish you happiness. Not just happiness over your Christmas presents or the holidays, not even just happiness over your beloved ones.
I wish you a blitheness only for yourself, a joy and delight inside your heart that no one can take away from you.

How often do we beam with joy, just so that someone spoils it the next moment? How often do we give someone a carefully selected and affectionately wrapped present, a sign of our love, and they toss it away, barely looking at it? How often are the ones we love more than anything stubborn and proud and hurt us without even noticing?

These are some of the things which ache so much more than bodily wounds and there is only one way to avoid all this senseless hurt: cultivating an inner elation, a private gratification which cannot be spoiled by anyone or anything.
This is what being at peace with oneself means I think. It doesn't mean that one is always happy, but that the way to happiness is not hidden behind impermeable clouds when one is upset.

Doubtlessly this revelation is my most valuable present this year and since I have shared it with you now, there is only one thing left to say, and for that I will stick with Frank Sinatra:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas!