Christmas is Coming

(By Sally)

It's quieter now that Christmas is approaching, but things have been busy chez nous for the last several months.  Both Harry and I have started blogs of our own, and although I can't say we've been burning up the internets with posts between us - he's doing better, both materially and numerically - these pursuits have taken some of the energy out of our joint venture.  I miss it though and  think there are still things I want (us) to write here.

You'd think we'd be busier, like the rest of the world at Christmastide, but this is not the case.  In the summer we lived through a heat wave, some major surgery and a bathroom renovation, so for us things  actually quieted down after Thanksgiving.

Oh, Christmas. There are lots of things I love about Christmas but mostly I love them at other times of the year when they evoke the childhood sense of magic and possibility; like when I see characters in a movie choosing a tree, or hear a bit of a christmas carol (whatever happened to carols, anyway?) somewhere.  The very first christmas-decorated house I see (sometime around the end of October, recently) before the deflated vinyl elves and reindeer on the  lawns get old, charms me.  Fairy lights! Green swagging on the fence, how pretty.

The fact kids no longer wake me up at the  crack of dawn to rip open their booty means I have fewer obligations.  I don't have to bake Christmas cookies or string lights around the door if I don't want to. (Harry wants to) I don't have to mail Christmas cards (not that I ever did, but I used to feel vaguely apologetic about it)  There aren't any office  parties to buy secret santa gifts for or any high pressure shopping in big box stores for over-packaged plastic junk. (I've always vowed annually to boycott the malls but it's only the last couple of years I actually managed to get through the season without at least one fraught foray.)  All this leaves me without a lot to contribute to those conversations that begin "So have you started your shopping yet?"  When people talk about how much they have to do yet I have to fumble around for my end of the conversation.

What is there to do?  Well, we have to shop for gifts for our children, but since some of them really  just want gift cards (ie money) and the rest can be gifted with thoughtful ethnic-y gifts from small stores I actually like shopping at,  or online, this is more fun than onerous.   We bought a tree and had a half-hearted argument about how crooked it is but left it not-quite decorated.   We're planning to have a Christmas day brunch to exchange gifts with our children, and have scheduled two events to celebrate with friends and family.  (Harry's family, that is.  The planet most of my family members live on doesn't do Christmas.)  That's it.  The rest of the time our contribution the the madness has been to complain about how much traffic there is where ever we go.

The tree argument notwithstanding, Harry and I continue to be happy, happy together.  In a way the "argument" was a way of celebrating that: More of a nod to history than anything else.