Christmas is just around the corner. And before you blink it will all be over.

After all the presents are unwrapped, the cookies are eaten, the decorations taken down and put away and everyone is busy scooping up the half-price bargains for next year, it will be time to concentrate on taking that last look back at the year that was. One last glance at 2016 before we all jump ahead to the new year.

Time Magazine already took its annual look back to determine who would be the person of the year.
Radio playlists, TV newscasts and web pages will put together their top 10 lists of newsmakers, songs, celebrities, fashions, food, trends and every other list they can glean from the topics of 2016.

For all us Cubs fans and news junkies there were two main events … the World Series and the presidential elections, only one of which I would choose to live over again.

And for the last week or so social media too has jumped on the retrospective band wagon. Whenever you log into Facebook, you are offered to see and post your personal year in review to share with your friends and Facebook nation. The social media engine picks out specific photos and moments you posted along with aggregating all your “likes” and the number of friends you added in 2016.

I would be lying if I said it wasn’t interesting. However, I must report the photos that flipped into my year in review didn’t exactly coincide with what I considered my most pivotal moments of this year. So it got me thinking about what that glance back actually says about us.

Were the moments I posted really worth remembering? I started looking through what I had to say and the photos I shared. There were photos of my husband in the hospital, photos of our kids stopping over for the Fourth of July parade, camping photos and of course lots of shots of our little granddaughter and all the “firsts” we shared with her in her first year of life. There were photos of veggies from our garden, the ice cream I ate during a trip to Florida, and more than a few of our dogs.

None of these photos captured the behind-the-photo memories of the stress and anxiety of illness and of mounting hospital bills.

None of the photos represented family disagreements or the rain that ruined the campfires. The snot-filled nose and the midnight cries from the granddaughter’s teething didn’t make the cut either. And of course the garden weeds, the dented vacation vehicle and occasional doggie accident weren’t among the postable moments either.

Flipping through my year on social media made me wonder if someone else —  a historian, anthropologist, or archaeolgist — looked through the same photos would these really be considered postable moments? Would this be a true representation of my history? Would outsiders really know what my year was like? Most likely they would surmise that I, and most of my fellow Facebookers, choose to let the joy rise above the sorrows. And when we look back at our lives this year, or any year for that matter, it is the joy that propels us into an unknown future.

Yes, we take our aches and pains with us, but they don’t define us. And maybe we should remember that when we choose which moment to share. Should we really complain about an election or sound off about the messed up order at the drive-thru? Should that be part of the history that defines our having passed this way?

Think about it. Do you think if Mary and Joseph had access to Facebook they would have posted a picture of the lowly stable they were forced into or, instead, a picture of the precious newborn Jesus tenderly caressed in the arms of Mary?

 So what is the lesson in looking back? Use it as one of our Christmas gifts. Look back, but remember that our past can’t be a prison nor can it be a sugarcoated false existence. Our history and, most especially, our faith teach us that we study the past to understand ourselves and how we got to the present day and to better navigate the future. And that’s a good thing — to use our history as a tool to help us move joyfully forward

May you have a blessed Christmas and may your new year be filled with many beautiful postable moments.