Confession: We Didn’t Decorate Our House This Christmas!

“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
― Charles Dickens

[ Day 42 of 2000 ]

Before I start, I want to wish you a very very happy Christmas! We have been enjoying Christmas in spite of not decorating our home, and hope you are doing the same – enjoying, I mean!

Not decorating our home for Christmas was a hard decision to make. It wasn’t for the money – Our electricity bill never went up a lot in December. I knew that I wasn’t going to save any money by not decorating the house. I saved something else – my sanity.

Every Christmas, the list of things to do normally start at Thanksgiving. I put up the Christmas tree, GBoy helps. We enjoy having it there, watching it whenever there is a second to spare. We always use an artificial one, BusyDad cannot think of cutting down trees just for enjoyment. Even if they were grown just for that purpose – cutting them down. We put up strands and strands of blinking lights outside, and the house looks great from outside.

Before I realize it, it is January, February, March… And having the Christmas tree there is no more pleasant. It is just a reminder of the list of things I still have left to do!

We turn off the blinking lights outside once everyone else on the street has removed it. But it is too cold, no one wants to remove it. And then, grudgingly, we remove it in April or May, to put it up again in November. Earlier this year, I had promised myself that I would take things easier. Remember, I am tired of being busy. I had a talk with GBoy and BusyDad. I knew that BusyDad would be on board, but I didn’t want to break GBoy’s heart. Turns out, he was never interested in the decorating part, anyway.

Before you start asking me about traditions, we do have others. We made the gingerbread house (and ate it) together, and we baked some cookies. We still have gifts – nothing too expensive, and almost all for GBoy. We also have this tradition of taking him to the toy store after Christmas when he can pick out any toy for up to a hundred dollars, but usually picks something for about 20 to 30 dollars because the rest (is doubled, and) goes into his college fund. I spend the Christmas morning (before anyone else is awake) cooking their favorite food, and eating it together through the day. We also watch Christmas movies together – Yesterday, we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas, all the while munching on junk food. We played Clue, Sequence and Ticket to Ride and will do it again today; perhaps some other games as well. We also have other traditions, nothing to do with Christmas – GBoy always opens a new book when he is next to me because he knows that I love the smell of new books, and I hardly buy myself any. I really loved taking ~~a whiff~~ multiple whiffs (you can open it in multiple places for the first time!) of Dog Man #4, even though I don’t really like the smell of graphics books, just because I love the 9-year-old hanging on my neck and making me smell the pages.

Today, I know that my to-do list is a bit shorter – I don’t have to take down the tree, or the Christmas lights or pack up the innumerable Christmas items from around the house. I will start 2018 knowing that I am already ahead of what I normally am.

This Christmas, I learnt a valuable lesson. I only have to do the things that bring me and my family joy. And I can skip the rest. Even if it means that our house is the only one on the street not lit, and I have been trying to not go out once it is dark 🙂

Once more, hope you are having a great Christmas!