It’s
less than a week to Christmas! Looking at my Christmas checklist, have I done
more than half of the holiday-associated tasks, or are more than half of the
to-do’s still hanging over my head?
Neither!
I have chopped my list in half with the machete of grace!
Cut
down and put up the live Christmas tree? Yes! Done on Thanksgiving Day.
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| Full disclosure: we may not have actually finished decorating the tree. We kind of just stopped after the second glass ornament broke and decided to move on to something else. |
Hang
up our artificial pine boughs as garlands over all the first floor doorways and
groupings of windows? No, not this year.
Decorate
the mantle with a variety of Christmas kitsch that makes me happy and wish that
I could be a professional junk collector who finds vintage Christmas ornaments
and transforms them into pieces that can be appreciated in the modern era? Yes!
Done the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Find
the perfect family photo, or at least a photo of the boys both smiling, even if
one of them isn’t looking at the camera, and evaluating at least four different
websites to compare card layout options and prices and adjusting those prices
once you see what shipping costs would be and then recounting how many people
we need to send cards to see whether I should go up to the next bundle bracket
which would bring the price per card down but the total still goes up…?
No.
Not doing it this year. I was late getting on board with photo Christmas
cards, instead preferring to just find a cute photo of Rye by an outdoor
Christmas tree on my phone, getting wallet-sized prints made, and tucking them
into an old-fashioned folding cardstock card that I bought at Marshalls. I
remember when cards used to be about reaching out to family and friends
personally, telling them a little about yourselves since the last time you got
together, asking them about themselves and maybe sharing a holiday memory with
the recipient. I put time into my cards — and I mean writing the messages, not comparing
websites. Even though I doubted my aunts and uncles got together and compared
the versions I wrote them, I made a point to write something different to each
of them. (Sentiments that they may or may not have understood because
apparently my cursive is indecipherable to others, which they told me in my
mid-30s, much to my horror.)
Last
year, or maybe it was the year before, I found a cute picture of the kids and
did order the photo cards, with one big photo of the boys having fun together.
People loved it.
Sadly,
that might have been the last good photo I got of the two of them looking happy
together, and since the people who were on the list last year have already seen
it, I didn’t think I could use it again. Plus the kids look so different from
one year to the next. Those who have seen my kids in person would be quite
confused by those baby cheeks and tooth-filled smiles, seeing how my
first-grader is rocking the “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”
look this year.
Yeah,
they fight a lot. And Rye also just hates having his picture taken. In fact the
only pictures he wants to be a part of these days are ones that he is
photo-bombing. Like this:
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| This wouldn't be too bad of a shot if Rye was wearing a shirt. |
I
don’t get envious of people’s lives and photos on Facebook or Instagram. I know
that it can really bother some people to see the “happy version” of other people’s
lives, and so a lot of my close friends aren’t even on there anymore, but it
doesn’t bother me. If anything, I just try to keep it real by putting the messy
parts of my life on display as well as the good things.
But
picture-perfect Christmas cards? They get to me. Because I know there’s no way
even a professional photographer could get a good photo of us, and if they did,
it would feel so fake to me it would probably make me angry to look at it. It’s
been a rough year in our household.* Like this:
You might have seen my last blog post about "vacation" with the kids. Well let's just say that around here, every day feels like that "vacation." So
there won’t be any matching outfits or fake smiles or even happy candid shots
that I captured. I was joking with some friends that if I had made a Christmas
card, this is the best picture I have to use.
That’s
right, we’ve rearranged the living room furniture and I painted the fireplace
brick blue. That’s the best I’ve got, everybody.
So
don’t worry, you’re still on my Christmas card list, and in a better year,
you’ll hear from us again on paper. In the mean time, for 2019, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
*For the record, Josh and I are doing great together. Don't want anyone worrying about that.
