Christmas Time Capsule

I imagine it might seem odd for me to say, since I have often proclaimed my distaste for marking occasions, that I happen to be a lover of history -- world history, American history and even personal/family history. I'm fascinated by the real benchmarks of time: a newspaper from 1938; a picture of my parents as teenagers; my hand to the wall of the tower of London; an old film that captures life on a regular day in 1906 . . .

But sometimes -- maybe most of the time -- the little things can be most profound. For instance, every year at this time, I get to shake hands with myself from the year before.

Always, around the end of November, I open up our outdoor Christmas decorations. And when I do, I get to do a kind of personal archaeology: I get to deduce what mood I was in when I packed up; where my head was at that freezing, rather gloomy time. (Were things tossed into the boxes and bags, or was everything neatly wrapped up and placed into careful categories?) What I get to see is how much "Chris 2010" was thinking about "Chris 2011."