A Christmas Journey

Here’s this week’s reflection. I hope it resonates with you and ask that, if you enjoyed, please comment and share on your social media. Heartfelt thanks for all your support!

Keeping the light on for you,

Carol

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Grandma and I were rebels, eating raw cookie dough and drinking high octane coffee while we baked Christmas cookies. This gloriously naughty habit started around age five, spawning a respectable sugar and caffeine addiction in my later years.

Nothing shrieked fun – literally –  like my older brothers careening down the hill on their sleds, jumping the driveway with gravel sparks, catching the next hill into the field below. Coaxed onto her porch to watch, Grandma loudly prayed for their safety amid her even louder gasps.

A six-foot toilet brush tree heavily laden with silvery icicles graced our front window. Illuminated by an electric candle, the Bible, opened to the birth of Christ completed the decor. Angel cameos in church pageants, twinkle lights, and watching Rudolph, Charlie Brown, the Grinch, and Ebenezer Scrooge were traditions etched in stone. This coveted time of year could not arrive soon enough for me.

While my parents agreed on most things, the holidays were always a source of angst. Mom went overboard. Dad gave up trying to stop her. No wonder Dad could utter a fierce “Humbug!” We kids swam in excess as our parents sarcastically joked it was “another modest Christmas” while surveying the river of gifts winding its way around our small living room. My parents saved all year for this debacle.

Not until our adult years would we learn the degree to which Mom’s chronic overspending had caused irreparable damage to their modest income. Fifty years later, Mom revealed startling but profound happiness and contentment with minimal possessions and limited spending. This spoke volumes to me, as the ornament had not fallen far from the family evergreen tree.

Yuletide with my own children had been magical and fulfilling, and … excessive. The excitement of Santa’s visit in our daughters’ faces provided wonderful memories and photos; their school programs were heartwarming; and carrying on traditions from both my husband’s and my past was lovely. Yet growing up with the extravagant rodeo, an explosion of gross consumerism, I took up the same habits. The result? The same pathetic sleigh ride of expectations, expense, guilt, and overwhelming fatigue. 

Like Charlie Brown, the Grinch, and Scrooge, I eventually lost my Christmas spirit.

I had let this beautiful season turn into perfectionist hell. Clearly my turn to drink from the proverbial punch bowl, the time had come for healthier merriment, and for my kids to no longer see a vestige of the Cranky Mother of Christmas Past.

A  voluntary journey ensued to nix the cynicism, deliberately peeling the stinky layers of a foul mindset. While seeds of change were sown by Mom’s late in life revelation, my husband’s painful practicality provided the giant snowball smack that less really is more.

Hailing from a household of meaning, not extravagance, my prince loathed the madness like my dad did, yet possessed a far louder, stronger, and persistent conviction to end the insanity.

I agreed as I eyed twelve large bins of holiday decor in our basement. Needing shelf space for more frequently used items, the first purge eliminated a staggering fifty percent of those decorations. The simplest and least expensive items made me smile the most, those that possessed the richest history, from heartfelt to humorous. Texting pictures back and forth to our college students, they too were ready for change and willingly parted with a large percentage of their excessive trappings.

While impulse shopping prowess honed in adolescence and young adulthood never incurred the consumer debt befalling my parents, a weariness took its place. Tired of repeated shopping urgencies to secure the best price, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were no longer enticing. Switching to focused, online shopping from a few quality retailers saved time, money, and mental fortitude.

With needed items purchased throughout the year, gifts passed between us as family became fewer, yet more meaningful. Local philanthropy became our thing, a much larger expression of love that supported many. And gifting consumables felt fun and creative – and eased landfills and our homes.

In the kitchen, despite happy memories from the first fifteen minutes of a dough spree, our daughters’ short attention spans routinely left me holding the frosting bag of baking blitzes. Craving the same flavors every year, dialing back on how many varieties to tackle rekindled the fun in this tradition.

The feast was pared down as well. My family craves the same annual menu. After repeated and unsuccessful attempts to gourmet up this tradition, perfectionism has been bid adieu. Their simple cravings, I now realized, define their personal comfort and sense of tradition.

Fiercely protecting uninterrupted family time is priority. Our daughters prefer relaxed family fetes complete with our pooch. Even more sacred now that they are college students, our decidedly countercultural (and a tad antisocial) bucking the system to stay home and stay small has become our thing, long before a pandemic. The conscious decision to allow ourselves space and a smaller reverie has not eliminated the festivity, but restored laser focus to the habituated blur of prior years.

The coronavirus will limit all gatherings this year, but I look forward to the hygge of family time in front of the fire, watching favorite movies, and most importantly savoring gratitude. Without the clutter of an overembellished frenzy, we have been freed to enjoy what truly matters to us: the humble birth of Jesus, our family, and the blessings we’ve been given, not to mention more sanity.

With new seasonal priorities, a quiet heart can grow three sizes and whisper what really matters for your unique existence this time of year.

Listen for it.

Embrace it.

Be part of a movement for peace, clarity, and less.