Donna Highfill
  • Home
  • About
    • About Donna
    • What People Are Saying
    • My Other Blogs
      • Dame Nation Blog
      • Huffington Post
  • Services
    • Power Up BUSINESS
    • Coaching
  • Books and Tools
  • Blog
    • Fave Products
  • Contact Me

Why Christmas Gave Me Pinkeye

Donna HighfillBlogNo commentsDecember 21, 2015

 

Take a look at most of my childhood Christmas pictures, and you will see my brother looking excited, my sister smiling at the camera, and me looking a lot like Captain Hook with one patch over a swollen eye. Every single year, Christmas gifted me with an obligatory case of pinkeye.

I’ve often wondered how and why conjunctivitis found me every Christmas Eve, settling in for a warm winter’s nap, ready to spring into its full glory on Christmas morning.

I used to think it was a biblical curse of some kind, striking my eye for its greed as I gazed upon my gifts under the tree. Now I know it was something else.

My swollen eye represented how overcome I was with the visual signs of love that the holidays presented. . .

Our church, which was normally decorated with the Christian Flag and a wooden sign noting how many people were in Sunday School the week before, came alive with the red and white hues of one hundred poinsettias. Our choir, beefed up with holiday congregationalists, sang as they had never sung before.

Offering plates which usually held dollar bills from very wealthy people now included envelopes with special Lottie Moon offerings.

In our neighborhood,  people put extra time into decorating their homes with flickers of light that broke the darkness in a beautiful way.

And Crazy Charlie, our local Otis who made a business of falling in front of cars to collect insurance and was loose enough from the booze to do it unharmed, would stop his scheme temporarily. This allowed us to just wave at him as he focused on riding his bike in a straight line, which took admiral effort.

Even the opossum which normally crouched beside our metal trash can and hissed at my brother every time he took out the trash took a break on Christmas Eve.

Maybe my eyes just couldn’t take in the laughter and love in our house . . .

I remember the family standing around the piano singing Christmas carols in harmony. Every person in my family could play the piano, or the melodica, or the drums, or the harmonica, or the ukelele, and we all could sing. So music rang supreme.

Mom would make her special Sundae cookies for the deacon’s dinner, and we would hide as many as possible so that we could treat ourselves later. On Christmas Eve we would go to both church services, see the people we loved, hold candles and sing Silent Night together. . . .which frustrated me because I preferred the power of Joy to the World.

I went to one service at Wake Forest where Joy to the World was sung, and on the last verse that starts with “When we’ve been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun,” we held our candles up over our heads. I cried like a mofo while dripping hot wax on the neck of the woman in front of me.

I often wondered if my pinkeye was caused by the sheer light of Christmas day . . . 

No matter how few the gifts under the tree (financially we were much like the people of Whoville, only the thief was not the Grinch but extremely poor pay for Baptist preachers), we still had a joyous Christmas morning.

We would get up ridiculously early and go see our gifts from Santa who had just gotten in bed. We would approach the living room slowly, knowing that Santa’s gifts were always unwrapped — because who has time to wrap everything when you have to visit every kid on earth?

We would gaze at our gifts for as long as we could, then pull the candy from our stockings which were at least 30% filled with an orange to save Santa a little money.

But the most blindingly beautiful thing about Christmas was the scene of everybody hugging, smiling and appreciating each other. Except for the year when I made one of my siblings a last minute gift. It was a dog constructed from a toilet paper roll with a face, leg and ears which all fell off immediately because the glue hadn’t dried.

Despite that one lesson about being prepared in gift-giving, Christmas filled me with enough light to last the entire  year.

The glow of the holidays bombarded my  little spirit with joy which apparently gave me pinkeye

Perhaps the holidays were just decorating me with a little color.

Happy Holidays to all of you. If I could see you, I’d hug you. But I won’t touch my eye first.

Tags: Christmas, donna highfill, holidays, inspiration, inspirational stories, power up

Related Articles

Why People Stop Believing in Change

November 28, 2011Andrew

10 Tips for Motivated Change Coaches

November 30, 2010Andrew

Three Ways to Appreciate Life After Holidays

December 30, 2014Donna Highfill

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn How to Tell a Better Story and Achieve Success!

Sign up below to receive 48 FREE Energizing Messages.

Connect with Me

Email
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest

Recent Posts

  • A Cab Driver Who Appeared as if from Nowhere
  • Here’s Some Honesty For You
  • Laughter is My Hero
  • A New Year in Old Clothes
  • Why I Will Face the Fall

CHECK OUT MY BOOK

highfillcover

As a leader, do you implement change only to watch the projects, processes and initiatives stall because you can’t get the people driving them to change? In my new book Real People, Real Change: Stories of a Change Warrior in the Business World I share real stories to illustrate how leaders can move people to action.

Archives

Where Donna Will Be Speaking Next

  • April 22, 2015 - SunTrust Women's Networking Group
  • April 23, 2015 - SunTrust Women's Networking Group
  • May 12, 2015 - LPGA Championship, Kingsmill, Williamsburg VA
  • May 21, 2015 - Education Association of Fundraising Professionals, Eerie, PA

Certified_hi-res

mbti_certified
huffbadge

Learn How to Tell a Better Story and Achieve Success!

Sign up below to receive 48 FREE Energizing Messages.

Recent Posts

  • A Cab Driver Who Appeared as if from Nowhere August 9, 2017
  • Here’s Some Honesty For You March 16, 2017
  • Laughter is My Hero January 10, 2017

Contact Me

804-370-6665
[email protected]
  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright
  • About Donna
  • Contact Me
Copyright Donna Highfill 2014