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The Trouble with Christmassing

Last week, Swistle wrote a blog post, called “Having Trouble Christmassing” that really hit home with me. A lot of you have already read it, but for those who haven’t, here’s how it starts:

I am having some trouble Christmassing. Which is not surprising, given the state of Everything, and really I am doing better than I did in 2016. But: I am having trouble. I have a to-do list that gets longer every day. I feel as if I might genuinely not be ready in time, and also that I am highly likely to feel regret that I didn’t enjoy this last holiday season enough before it was bleak, bleak, BLEAK late January, which is scheduled to last for many years. I have not started the Christmas cards. I have not been listening to Christmas music. I have not brought down the Christmas dishes, or put up any decorations except for the tree, which I was highly motivated to get up and decorated while the twins were home for Thanksgiving. I have bought very few presents. I am getting that quiet, dazed panicky feeling I get when I seem to Simply Not Be Doing something that needs to be done.

When Swistle posted this, we’d completed our Christmas card photo shoot, Noah had edited the finalists, and I’d written the text, but we had trouble making a final decision about the picture and the project stalled.  I had only bought gifts for one person. The only decorations I had up were the few cards we had received so far and a green dish towel with a Christmas tree topped with a sea star on it that I hung from the oven door handle.

I’m thinking we may go minimalist with inside decorations this year, not so much out of political despair but because of the kittens, who knock everything off everything else all day long and who are such good jumpers and climbers (especially Willow) that there’s nowhere we could put anything that they could not reach. I am certainly not setting up the Christmas village I inherited from my mother, which has many small, fragile pieces and is important to me. But here’s what we have done in terms of preparation and celebration:

10 Efforts to Christmas

1. It took me longer than usual to start listening to Christmas music. Beth and Noah wanted to on the long drive from Oberlin to Takoma Park the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I didn’t mind, but whenever it was my turn to choose the entertainment, I went with podcasts. I eventually started to listen to some at home, but until today when I really dove into it, my ratio of Christmas to non-Christmas music was lower than usual. I listened to a lot of music that’s Christmas-adjacent, like the soundtrack to Rent or albums with one Christmas song on them, like Dar Williams’ Mortal City.
2. The first day we were home from Wheeling, with grim determination to be festive, I put on a pair of reindeer and holly socks, went on a walk, and took pictures of the neighbors’ Christmas decorations. The two skeletons that change costumes with the seasons are a perennial favorite—one has a Santa hat right now and the other one has a Christmas light headband—but I also like the inflatable Santa riding a shark. Who wouldn’t?
3. Noah left for London the first Wednesday of December. I asked him to send me at least one photo every day and most days he has. Many of them were of Christmas lights in the city. He attended the lighting of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square and had this to say about it: “It took forever to get to the tree lighting. People had to sing and play music and give speeches and Jesus and WWII.” If this sounds crabby (especially coming from a musician), it was his first day there and he had barely slept the night before on the plane and because he didn’t check in by the deadline at his hotel, they cancelled his reservation (which was for a whole week!) and gave away his room and he found himself exhausted and without lodging in a strange city. The hotel eventually found him a room in another one of their properties, but he’d had a stressful day.
4. Before he left, Noah wrapped his present to Lily-Mei, and he found the perfect paper for a preteen Goth—black with gold snowflakes in white circles—in the closet. I wrapped the rest of the gifts in the same paper and mailed them on Thursday. It was pleasing to have one person checked off my list.
5. Beth and I finally picked a photo for the card—by this point we’d forgotten which ones of the final three the kids preferred, and to make it less complicated, we decided not to ask them to remind us. After all, the four of collaborated in the narrowing down from almost forty to three so everyone had already had a substantial say. Beth designed the card and ordered it.
6. On the first Saturday of December, Beth and I went to Agricultural History Farm Park. The idea was to take a walk somewhere new and to take in some Christmas cheer. We walked on trails through woods and over a creek and along harvested cornfields in golden late afternoon light. In the barn, there was live music (oddly, someone playing guitar and singing Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) and free hot cider and gingersnaps plus more treats for sale. Outside the barn there were people taking a hayride and there were goats in a pen and a man giving a blacksmithing demonstration. (It made me nervous that he was not using any eye protection, and it wasn’t because he was in period costume because he wasn’t.) On the way home, we stopped at a coffeehouse where we got coffee, hot chocolate, and macarons (peppermint for me, chocolate-hazelnut for Beth) and we picked up a wreath at a grocery store. It was a pleasing outing.
7. That night, Beth and I went over the kids’ lists and decided what to get them and which ideas to farm out to relatives. Over the rest of the weekend, I communicated with my mom and sister about who was getting what. This exchange is still in progress and it’s not Christmas shopping exactly, but it’s a precursor to shopping.
8. Sunday Beth put up the wreath and started the outside lights, both the candy cane lane and the strings of lights that go in the trees and on the porch. She finished on Monday.
9. On Monday morning as I was walking in a chilly drizzle, I got a text from North, asking, “Hypothetically, if you were getting an Oberlin ornament,” if I would prefer one of three options. I’d asked for an Oberlin ornament for Christmas, so this was not exactly a surprise, but it was cheering, nonetheless. I chose the white squirrel, which is Oberlin’s unofficial mascot because of its small population of albino squirrels. North had been waiting impatiently to see one and finally did recently. (Before that they saw gray one with a white tail, probably the offspring of a mixed-color squirrel couple.)
10. Monday evening, in a flurry of focused online activity, I nearly finished my shopping.

So, things are moving along. Cards on are their way to us, most presents have been purchased, decoration is partly complete. When both kids are home later this week, we’ll decide which if any indoor decorations to put out, get a tree, and walk through the lights display at Brookside Gardens.  

I’m looking forward having everyone home and to the tree and lights outings. As I prepare for Christmas, I’ve been oscillating between feeling I’m dutifully going through the motions and enjoying the tasks. I think that’s okay. We can’t always feel the same way and sometimes duty slips into merriment when I give it a chance. Either way, we will manage to Christmas.