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.)
