I was listening to a NPR podcast about Christmas a couple of weeks ago (I am typing this on January 22nd but post-dating it for December 31st) and the story teller was talking about how disappointing Christmas is. He talked about how much pressure we all put on having "The Perfect Christmas" and how all that pressure of perfection only leads to disappointment.
I was surprised at how much I disagreed with the NPR guy. Sure, I feel the pressure of Christmas, it is a lot of shopping, decorating and giving all while trying to maintain sight of the Savior and teach that to my kids. But I never feel disappointed with Christmas. It always feels wonderful--perfect or not. The Sunday before Christmas the speaker at church talked about how disgruntled he had become with Christmas. He was annoyed with the mass marketing that started in August and how all these stores that make so much money on Christmas greed cannot say "Merry Christmas" to their shoppers.
He was pretty disgruntled.
Again, I disagreed. I don't give a hoot if the Target check out person says "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas" when I grab my bags of loot and head for the door. I am celebrating Christmas, and I am merry.
Anyway, this year (despite hearing about other people's disappointments) was really great for us. I got the shopping out of the way nice and early and I took the massive pressure of extended family gift giving off my shoulders by deciding not to give presents to extended family.
Easy-peasy.
Maybe that was my Grinch moment this year but it felt great. I just let all of those panic stricken moments of trying to figure out what-in-the-heck to get all of those people go. I decided I didn't ever have to set foot in the Post Office this year. I decided I did enough to make my siblings dislike me in childhood and they couldn't dislike me more for not giving them a gift this year. I decided, if my husband wanted his siblings to like him more, he could do the shopping and mailing himself.
It was awesome.
Moreover, with that pressure removed I got to focus on my kids and doing little Christmas things together.
So, without further rambling, here is a recap of our Christmas 2011.
We got a Christmas tree and made our home all festive-looking.
Our new place isn't huge but it is the biggest place we've ever lived in. Our Christmas decorations fit really nicely. I didn't feel overwhelmed by holiday decor two days after it was all up.
We went to two different church Christmas Parties. We crashed our old ward party one Friday evening--they were serving free food--we could not resist. The kids really loved seeing their friends and easily fell into old habits of behaving like hooligans. They did pull themselves together long enough to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Except for Adell. Who we learned has a deep and incurable mistrust of any man dressed in red, with a white beard, offering to hold children on his lap.
I think her very wise.
The next ward party was at our new ward and our children figured out how to behave like hooligans there too. Will and I played in a "closet instruments" band and Adell cried whenever she came within sight of Santa. Weeks later, if Adell sees a Santa on TV, on a sticker, on wrapping paper--anywhere--she says "I don't like Santa, he makes me nervous." We did the charitable thing and not tell her that any of her presents came from Santa Christmas morning.
We sent out Christmas cards. With plenty of child-labor on my side I managed to get the cards in the mail before Christmas day (miraculous)! Wyatt really wanted to help lick and seal the envelopes. I warned him that licking all those envelopes would not taste good. I told him I could only lick about three envelopes before getting a damp sponge to do the dirty work. With the goal of licking every. single. gluey. envelope. he set to work. I think he made it through 30 envelopes before caving to a glass of water and damp sponge.
Then there was the gingerbread house saga. We make gingerbread houses every other year. Some times I buy the houses pre-made and other years I make the gingerbread by hand. This year I made the dough. It was time consuming and nerve wracking. I doubled the recipe but there still wasn't enough dough to make the four houses we hoped to make. Adell ended up with a house that only had 1/2 a roof. She did not seem to mind.
I gave the kids a tally sheet of all of the parts we needed to make gingerbread houses: 8 roof pieces, 8 house front pieces and 8 house side pieces. The picture up there is of Wyatt figuring out we were not going to have enough dough to finish all the houses.
And of course, there was the actual Christmas day. We opened presents, went to church, opened more presents and had our traditional "wrapping paper-snow ball fight". I loved going to church on Christmas. It was an easy and pleasant way to remind the kids (and myself) that Christmas is not all about Santa and presents.
Like I said, it was a pretty great Christmas. One for the record books--the record books of awesomeness.
