This week I am decorating the house for Christmas, alone. J brought the tree up, and we slogged all the heavy containers up from the basement, and now I'm going through decorations and ornaments and lights and Christmas-themed coffee mugs and dishes. Trying to decide what to put out or box back up. Trying to decide what to put in a yard sale pile, and yes, even what to throw away because it's so old and beat up it's virtually useless. My front entry looks like a thrift store exploded, as I unpack and unwrap it all. I know this is the time of year that puts even the hardiest of souls through undue stress. You can both love and hate the holidays simultaneously.
Thanksgiving is over, and that's a big one for me, because it's lots of miles on the road (800), lots of time (7 days) with both sides of our family, and time away from the comforts of home. I don't hate Thanksgiving, I just dread it because it's always completely out of my control. My family rents a mountain cabin, his family gathers at their childhood home. We just show up at doorsteps with bags in hand. I always feel a bit like an autumn leaf falling from the tree, gyrating to the whims of the wind. I always feel out of place, even though it's family. We get together to eat a meal that takes fifteen minutes, then I'm sitting around in a stupor and thinking, if only I was back at our house. Thanksgiving is fun, but with the typical strained episodes and uncomfortable conversations that happen in all families. Admittedly I'm always glad when Thanksgiving is over, so I can shed the unwieldy mantle of being a daughter/sister/aunt and come back to roost in my own castle. And be my old miserable, cranky self.
Having said that, the last few years, Christmas has been more of a chore than a joy. Maybe because I try to do too much, and do it all by myself. Too big of a tree, too many strands of lights in the shrubs outside. J and I do not exchange gifts anymore, and I've told my parents to stop bringing us unwanted gadgets and gizmos, just for the sake of giving gifts. In fact all the adults in the family have agreed to stop exchanging gifts, and the younger nieces and nephews simply get gift cards from us. I don't bake. We don't have parties, and we don't go to them, even the ones we get invited to year after year. Ignoring most of the names in my big address book, I send out only a select few Christmas cards to those people I honestly care about. But I do enjoy Christmas, don't get me wrong- I am a sucker for blinking lights and shiny ornaments and parades and hearing carols from a choir and watching Rudolph pull Santa's sleigh across my TV screen every December. I just prefer my holiday moments to remain the same as the rest of the shorter daylight hours of winter days- quiet, calm, private, uneventful. And quite frankly, with the time change, my days wind down earlier and earlier.
This year of course, J is working on the road. Normally I would decorate all day long and at night, he would come home from the office to help or to motivate me to get off the couch and do just a little bit more. I would be equally as vexed as I would be grateful- loving the help but annoyed at his prodding me on when I was tired and wanted to clock out for the evening. But the sooner we get it finished, the sooner we can sit back and relax and enjoy it all, that's his philosophy. So this week I am trying to do just that. I've placed little snowmen here and there all over the house (I'm not a Santa person), I've found a few treasures that I don't want anymore but will list in my Etsy vintage shop, and I've been sitting on the floor plugging up every strand of lights to make sure they work before I haul them out to the bushes. And boy, it's sad and strange how many lights that were bright and happy last Christmas, seem to die alone in the dark of the basement throughout the year, without anyone there to witness it. (Maybe that's a metaphor for life, I don't know.) So I just sigh and resign myself to buying more, instead of spending hours trying to figure out which cancerous bulb is causing the entire string to stay unlit.
The tree is always the biggest obstacle to getting the house all decorated. But it's the most rewarding as well. I don't care what anyone else says, I think my Christmas tree is the most beautiful tree ever. I might flip through glossy magazine pages and admire professionally tinseled trees, or ooh and aah when we see the trees decorated along little town main streets. But they are not as pretty as my tree, the ten foot tall behemoth J bought for me our first Christmas as a married couple. When we travel, I always buy ornaments as keepsakes, and every year when I put up the tree I can remember exactly where and when each glass memory was purchased. Putting up the tree is a pain in the ass, because it's so big and it takes so long. But it's also my favorite part of the holidays, and hanging ornaments gives me a reason to pause and think good thoughts and be grateful for the years I've spent with my amazing husband. But I don't decorate the rest of the house too fancy, I just have a lot of doodads that I wander around with from room to room, trying to find a place in which to display each one.
After this week is over, it should all be complete. J will come home Friday night and the inside of the house will be done, and then together we will do the outside of the house. My old back and worn out knees will make their best effort to get the boxes cleaned up and carried back downstairs before he returns home. It sucks because it's warm here, in the 70's this week, and it's been zapping my strength. Warm winters are an unfortunate side effect of living in the south. Yes I said unfortunate, because I want the weather to match the season, and everyone knows that Christmas should be all snowflakes and mittens and hot chocolate. Me, I'm in shorts and sweating and running my AC right now. Hopefully we will get a nice arctic blast soon. Maybe it's just me, but I always feel safer engulfed in a gigantic sweater.
My family won't be here for another three weeks, so I will get through this week and after that, I can have a bit of a breather. I made J cancel our mountain trip that was planned for this upcoming weekend. We just got back from the mountains with Thanksgiving. So he pushed the reservations off until January. I feel as though I'm just coasting along, and that's okay. I do not envy those folks with full social calendars for the month of December. I am okay with sitting by the fire and reading a good book in the evenings, wearing cat-shaped slippers and enveloping the house with the scent of sugar cookie candles. When I get sleepy, I will close the pages on my homemade bookmark- a long slip of paper covered with a photo collage of our smiling faces from vacations past, cleverly laminated with packing tape. Many of my acquaintances will gnaw their fingernails to the nub as they pencil in one more office party on the calendar, add yet another gift to buy to a growing list, and try to hurriedly get just one more batch of cookies in the oven. There is nothing wrong with all of that. It's just that I don't have to do any of that, so I don't. Instead I can take a leisurely hot soak in my tub at the end of my winter day. There is no one to disappoint, no one to notice my absence, no one who needs my attention.
And I have even more reason to be happy this year. Normally J works through every holiday, always letting his guys with families have the time off while he mans the fort. Every year J would slog home late on Christmas Eve, have only Christmas Day off, then slog right back to the office again the next morning. This year, with the travel job, he comes home on December 23rd and doesn't have to go back to work until January 4th! That, in itself, is the best holiday present I could ask for. Right now I don't have to use the fake smile. I actually feel real happiness. And that's a good thing, because the previous months were soul-crushingly harsh and I didn't think I would ever get through them or get over them.
I plan to blog again next week, about non-holiday related items in my life. But right now, I still have a bare tree staring at me from the corner of the living room, and I must go tend to it.
MISS GEE
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