OK. So I hadn’t been feeling particularly “Christmasy” when I picked up a pair of tickets for the opening night of “A Christmas Carol” at the Bangor Opera House.

My outlook had not improved by the time Wednesday evening rolled around.

By the time I picked up my younger son, Isaac, my date for the evening, I was running a few minutes later than planned. When we got downtown, all the premium parking spots were taken. We made it to the opera house in the nick of time.

In a lot of ways, Wednesday evening was typical of most days leading up to Christmas, another looming deadline. Besides the time pressure, I was succumbing to the guilt of not having managed to produce the beautifully decorated sugar cookies and handmade tree ornaments that I vow I’m going to make every year. Other things I dread about Christmas are the running around, the search for the perfect presents and, sometimes, the family bickering.

You could say I was due for a good dose of Christmas spirit. It had been years since I’d seen a performance of the Charles Dickens classic. It also was the first cultural outing that Ike and I had taken by ourselves – without my husband Rick and older son, Jake.

As the only female in our family of four, I feel left out at times. Now that the boys are getting older (they’re 12 and 13), they and their father do more and more “guy stuff.”

In a few years, Ike and Jake probably will be more interested in spending time with their friends than with their parents.

That made Wednesday night all the more special.

As the play got underway, miserable, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, his loyal, underpaid employee Bob Cratchitt and his monetarily poor but emotionally rich family, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future came to life, sweeping Ike and me back to an era when life was simpler.

“A Christmas Carol,” after all, is a holiday tradition as enduring as few others. Its lessons hold as true today as they did when Dickens penned the tale in the 1800s. The story reminds us all that family and friends – not money and material possessions – are the paths to happiness.

During the show, I sneaked a few peeks at Isaac and found him wide-eyed and open-mouthed, completely absorbed in what was taking place onstage.

“This is good,” he admitted, fully expecting the performance to be corny.

And I – the one who cries at Hallmark commercials – only got choked up four times.

When Ike and I left the opera house after the play, the Christmas lights seemed to shine a little brighter and the chilly December air seemed infused with the scent of balsam and fir.

Maybe Christmas isn’t such an ordeal after all.