On Savoring the Season (and the Egg Nog)

The Christmas season is a short one this year, with Thanksgiving coming so late and December, as always, coming so soon. There is usually a week or so of transition that we are afforded after Thanksgiving, where if your tree and decorations aren’t up immediately, you don’t have to feel too bad because you have a little time. But this year, while I wasn’t ready to put the tree up before Thanksgiving, as soon as Thanksgiving was over I felt like I was already behind in kicking off the Christmas season. I couldn’t win!

I am a very traditional person—in the sense that I hold fast to “The Way” things are done during significant times (especially Christmas). It is very difficult for me to think about (much less allow!) certain things to be different than they are supposed to be. Christmas trees must be real, and they must be cut from a farm. (And I pull the wagon with the tree on it after it’s been cut. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved doing that. It’s just a thing.) We drink egg nog while decorating the tree, and the experience isn’t complete until Elvis Presley has sung some Christmas tunes.

With the shortness of the season this year, I realized that I’ve been carrying some stress about how I will have time to fit everything in that has to be done for Christmastime to be “right.” My and Levi’s companies both have holiday galas we are attending over the next two weekends, and then we leave for a week in SC the following weekend. And then Christmas is over. And so far I have purchased a grand total of one Christmas gift, so there’s the shopping too. But sometime last week I made a confession to Levi that I never thought I would hear come out of my mouth. I told him that I might survive if we didn’t go to a farm to cut down our Christmas tree this year. I wasn’t ready to say it was ok—only that it might be.

I’ve come to realize that in this particularly short season, if I insist on everything going according to “The Way,” I may actually be robbing myself of enjoying and appreciating everything to the fullest. If I am so stressed about when we will fit time into our schedule to x, y, and z, how am I even going to enjoy it when it comes? We’ve already made choices to attend parties and take road trips, and we’re excited about those choices. But this year, they mean that other things may have to be different.

So we decided last night. We’ll go to Home Depot and pick out a tree. It won’t be at a farm, and we won’t cut it down, and I won’t pull the wagon. But it will be real, and we will drink egg nog and listen to Elvis Presley, and we will savor and enjoy the experience to the fullest. We also won’t host a Christmas party this year like we have every other year, and I think I might miss that even more than the tree farm. But we get to dress up fancy and spend the night at the Grand Hyatt in downtown DC, and then dress up fancy again and attend another party at the Ritz Carlton. It will be different, but it will be fun.

Everyone talks about slowing things down, enjoying every moment, not getting lost in commercialism, and all of these nice things that—let’s be honest here—feel kind of cliché sometimes. And this isn’t even about slowing things down and making people feel guilty for shopping. We haven’t exactly slowed anything down, and we’re not really interested in fabricating this special feeling where time stands still and you’re caught up in the mystical act of “enjoying the moment.” We will just appreciate the fun in every activity as it comes instead of stressing about all the things we “have” to do meet the requirements of a perfect Christmas season. (And when I say “we,” I mean “I.”)

(Don’t get me wrong though—real trees are still a legitimate requirement for me. And for now, I will just remember my wagon-pulling days with fondness. Now that is a moment to enjoy.)