Christmas was coming. There were so many things I had to do. And I wasn't looking forward to the yearly visit to my husband's grandmother. My husband and his family only saw her and her adult children from a second marriage at Christmas. Relations were strained. Everyone was uncomfortable. Usually there were arguments, and one year an uncle got drunk and hit his wife. My husband only went out of obligation. It was something I dreaded.
We always saw them the weekend before Christmas and all the bad feelings hung around over Christmas. I felt that Christmas would have been so much better if we could have skipped going there.
That day as I waited for my husband to pick me up after work, I was depressed about how things were looking. Every year I try to read through a little collection of writings on Christmas by Mary Baker Eddy that's called, What Christmas Means to Me. But that year I hadn't even started. Since I had the book with me, I decided that I could read some of it while I was waiting. I needed a better understanding of Christmas.
