All is calm

After all that panicking -- it all came together. Of course.

Before:


(and imagine a bare mantel and foyer console table...)

After:





Merry Christmas to all.

Already?

I know I sound like a grownup/mom saying this, but I cannot believe how quickly Christmas has come upon me this year.

Truly, as a kid, the wait for Christmas was interminable. I mean, it even took forever for just the Christmas season to start, which to me was basically December 1. I couldn't wait to help my mom write (well, she wrote, I sealed and stamped) the family Christmas cards, to display the received cards, to wrap presents, and of course, to put up the tree. The latter we normally didn't do until December 20-22; it involved moving furniture around in our cramped living room and my dad hated change.

In recent years -- say, since I've been living on my own -- I've enjoyed doing those tasks at a fairly leisurely pace. Some years I'd put up my (small, artificial) tree shortly after Thanksgiving, work on the cards in the first couple of weeks of December, and have a lot of fun wrapping gifts decoratively with festive music playing in the background.

So what's changed? Why do I feel so very far behind this year? I can't figure it out. My first guess was that it's different living with someone (other than parents), but actually I already lived with the Dude by last Christmastime. (I moved in with him Thanksgiving weekend.) Is it because this year I'm in our house instead of his? And that now that we're engaged and living in our long-term home, I feel more responsibility to do everything "right?" I just can't figure it. (I will say this: in the future I will not make big plans for two consecutive December weekends. I hadn't realized how much that would set me behind.)

Our household was festive last year.

And then I think: so what? I've gotten most of the cards out now (so they'll almost surely arrive before Christmas), I've (hastily) wrapped and mailed most of the out-of-town gifts, and our tree is up, just not yet decorated. I even put up my nativity display last week, and put some other little decorations around the house, and we've had the "candle" lights up in our front windows since Thanksgiving weekend. So why do I feel so overwhelmed?

I never fathomed how my mom could view Christmasy things as chores. And I never, ever wanted to feel that way myself. My dad and I called her "Scrooge" for at least the last five Christmases of her life because she got more and more stingy with the Christmas spirit. I don't want to be like that. I've always loved all these Christmas tasks.

I don't know what the answer is. I think next year I will try to budget my time better (and it might help that I won't be preoccupied with wedding planning at the same time) so that I can take the time to really enjoy doing these things, instead of rushing through them late at night just so I can get them done when I'm "supposed" to.