Holidays On Our Terms

The holidays can be a really tough time. It used to be a lot harder, but this is a time when grief can jump up and twist my ear, bringing tears instantly. A couple years ago it was an unexpected stab from the movie A Christmas Story, yep, the "You'll shoot your eye out!" one, but that scene where they watch the kids come down the stairs and that magic... oof, it hollowed me right out. Even so many years later. A week or so ago I had a sudden hit of sadness, holiday-related, but I just couldn't put a finger on it. Just general "I'm sad we don't have kids" tied to this time of year, that isn't debilitating but does still pop in to say hi. 

Grief is like that -- you can think you're fine and healed and doing great and then just the right trigger reminds you of loss. But the great thing is, the more time that passes and the more acceptance of life as it is, not as it was hoped for...the less it ruins your day. 

Anyway, because we don't have kids, we can tweak our traditions. We can rearrange things to suit our needs. 

And so, we had our Christmas today. Like, full on breakfast/stockings/music/under-the-tree presents, the whole deal. Why today? Because tomorrow we will be on the phone with, on zooms with, and in person with family. This is a good thing -- but in the past we would open a present (we are very slow and appreciative of each one), then get a call, then get back to our thing, then get a call, and people always thought we should be done by the time they called. We never were. It made for a very interrupted experience.

So, when it's just you and your husband and the cat, you can say "Guess what? Christmas Eve is now OUR Christmas." No one calls, the day is totally ours, and we can draw out our traditions as much as we'd like. It is quite delightful. 

We also moved our big tree. God, that sounds bougie. We got a fake tree a year or two into being in this house, and we've never looked back. I think it's 7.5 feet tall, which is monstrous, and we usually rearrange furniture to put it in front of a big window in the living room. We also have a smaller tree that has moved around (sometimes in our bedroom, sometimes on the stairs landing in the window, sometimes in the first floor bedroom/guest room/Bryce's D&D room). It looks kind of like a cedar (particularly if you squint) and we hang an assortment of owls, gnomes, and wooden snowflakes on it. 

Well, we didn't like the idea of rearranging furniture, especially because we were behind on getting the tree up. We also really like the seating setup we have now. So...we put the cedar tree on a table in the living room, and put the big tree in the dining room. Because we can! We have a smattering of snow in the following pictures because we had a brief covering that promptly melted, but for a second we had a white pre-Christmas.

We keep some traditions just the same, like our photo card:

I loved the picture of Lucky on the back so much that I ordered a photo ornament so he can always be an angel on our tree. 

And, my annual Book Flood from Bryce that I am SO excited to crack into: 

Also, Eggi enjoyed the new tree locale (doesn't hurt that Bryce made the lowest ring of ornaments cat toys):

And we have some fun new ornaments: 

D&D ornament from me to Bryce

Annual Danforth Pewter ornament for us (I also get the annual Snowflake Bentley ornament)

Per Bryce's tag to me, a "literate sea unicorn"

And from the side, since it's so stinking cute! 

We love our traditions. We love that we can shake them up every once in a while to make them more us. We love our family of two (plus Eggi). 

Happy Holidays from our family to yours!