This year is not like other years…a mild understatement. Whether you find yourselves in quarantine, whether you Zoom your Christmas, or whether you are able to make the Yuletide season feel normal doesn’t matter. What matters is that we celebrate the Christmas season, in whatever fashion available to us.
What is the Yuletide
season? Long ago it was a Norse pagan holiday, but over time it has come to
symbolize the season of Christmas. Broader than just Christmas day, more
expansive than putting up a Christmas tree, it envelops all the feels. It’s
both Hallmark movies and hot cocoa on Christmas Eve. It’s the traditions that
spell C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S. What are those traditions in your home?
- We all decorate for Christmas. I have a glorious
artificial tree I purchased more than thirty years ago, and it will not die.
I’d love a fresh tree, but have to content myself with branches on the mantle.
This year it will be a smaller gathering, but the tree is up and I can already
feel that Yuletide spirit coursing through my veins. Is your tree up yet? Do
it. You’ll thank me later.
- It is cheesy movies. Make a list of the movies
you see every December, and watch them again. We watch It’s A Wonderful Life
every Christmas Eve, but we also love Elf and all the traditional Hallmark
movies with perfectly choreographed scrips. Smarmy, but they conjure up all the
feels.
- Plan a holiday dinner. No matter how small the
gathering, make it special. Plan a lovely tablescape. Choose foods you love.
Look forward to Christmas Day. Instead of 17 familiar faces around the table,
it may be just be the two of us, but Christmas will be special. On Thanksgiving
our home was a revolving door, as each small part of our extended family came
for part of the traditional dinner. We ate pie shivering on the deck, and it
was all the more delicious for the shivers.
- Put together gift lists. Get those Christmas
cards in the mail. In a society disconnected by germs and social distancing,
it’s those human connections that hold us together. This is not the year
to think, “Oh, it’s just too much bother.” This is the year you’ve been
preparing for all your life…be the connection inviting a ho, ho, ho to all you
know.
Start a bucket list of winter pleasures. We can
all stop feeling sorry about the mess we’re in by making the best of it. We’ll
be driving by lovely light displays. We’ll be making door drops of Christmas
cookies. We want to walk in crunchy snow. We want to enjoy a lovely winter
fire. As you start your bucket list, sour attitudes turn to hopes, and that’s both
healthy and magical.
You have within you the creativity
to make this holiday season one you’ll forever remember. Do just that. Make it
holly, jolly, memorable.
