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| My myriad hair bows |
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| My Nutcracker collection |
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| The girls, two weeks ago |
Christmas rivals Halloween for my favorite holiday. I have really fond memories of Christmas when I was a kid.
We would decorate the tree one Saturday while watching Christmas movies, and even though we got distracted, it wasn’t a big deal. We always got a new ornament from my mom, and I always got a new Nutcracker to add to my collection. I don’t quite remember how old I was when this started, probably in the vicinity of five or six. I got one each from my grandmother and great-aunt, and I’ve gotten at least one every year since. I now have thirty-eight, but only thirty-four are in the picture. I ordered a Dracula one and an Elvis one off Amazon, and I couldn’t resist the dirt-cheap Santa and Elf set where the Elf’s hair looks severely windblown. I have quite a few, ranging from a snowman to a pirate to a jester, and of course the crazy new ones.
We would also spend quite a bit of time making cookies, but I don’t remember it feeling like a long time. We used to make pecan pies (tiny little tarts), pecan balls, chocolate crackles, spice cookies (cutout cookies), espresso crisps, brown cookies, and Oreo snowmen. Those ones sucked to make, but they look really cool.
It was fun (and materialistic, I suppose) to notice the presents multiplying under the tree. My mom also made it a fun, stealthy thing to wrap my brother’s presents. We also drove around and looked at Christmas lights. I’ve grown to love Christmas lights over the years, and I would definitely be one of those people with figurines all over the place if I could. I’d also be one of those people crying in January when it’s time to dig them out of the snow. But I love me some Christmas lights.
We always had egg puff (a weird egg...casserole thing?) on Christmas Day, and ham on Christmas Night. My parents also made a big deal out of taking pictures of us at the entry to the living room, before we got to open any presents.
As silly and cliche as it sounds, Christmas hasn’t been the same since I found out the truth about Santa. We’ll overlook the fact that I was a bit old when I found out. I had gone to the Warner Bros. store at the Burlington Mall with my mom in November or something, and picked out a Harry Potter shirt that she had me try on to make sure it fit me. I watched her buy it, and then I got that shirt from Santa. The rest of the day was ruined. She made me promise not to tell my brother, and I didn’t, but it sucked a lot of the joy out of the holiday.
The older I get, the less time it feels like I have, and the harder it is to step outside of work (and at my job now we can’t acknowledge holidays) and take time to celebrate real-life things. It feels like this month has just flown by, and I haven’t even finished one of the things I wanted to know (sorry, Amanda and Hannah!). It’s kind of a bummer, and for some reason the past few days I’ve been feeling the lack of time a bit more keenly. I’ve been super nostalgic for my childhood.
BUT I’m doing what I can. I’ve been a sock fiend for some time now, and I have a respectable collection of Christmas socks. I also have a slew of Christmas earrings, and the above pictured gaggle of Christmas hair bows. Thank goodness it isn’t weird for someone to wear hair bows at my job, because I freaking love hair bows.
I’ve been cranking the music this month, and coordinating my socks/earrings/hair bows daily, but I just miss when it felt like I had time to bask in the atmosphere of Christmas.
In a sort-of-related vein, New Year’s. I used to think it was such a cool, mythical, mysterious holiday. Suddenly, in one minute, it’s a whole new year! Now that I’ve stayed up past midnight as an adult on totally normal nights, it’s like, big whoop. I was never a big drinker, so there’s that. And there’s the fact that if you go into the city like “everyone” does, it’s still cold as balls. Add to that the fact that two years ago on December 30, that guy I *thought* was my friend assaulted me. I kind wish I could skip a majority of next week. After Christmas, honestly, we can skip straight to January. Thankfully, the day after the assault, I had planned to babysit the girls with my brother (look at how big they are!). We had chocolate milk in champagne flutes, and ate pizza and munchkins and painted our nails. I had found a Party Kit at Walgreen’s for like $8, so we had party hats, those cheapo plastic leis, strings of beans, and noisemakers. We were only there till like 9:30, I think, but we “celebrated.” We also watched a Princess Sofia movie, and now I’m pretty into Princess Sofia, but that’s another story.
So! In summation, earlier today, when I had one baby, he was asleep, so I was listening to a Christmas station on Pandora and feeling some hardcore nostalgia. I hope the kids I teach don’t grow up to be jaded like me. They’re so full of joy (except when they throw super pleasant tantrums), and I hate the thought that someday Christmas will leave a bad taste in their mouth. I hope they don’t get lied to about Santa when they point-blank ask their mom, and I hope they don’t open a present from Santa that they watched their mom buy. I don’t want these poor babies to lose the magic of such a fun holiday.
