A Different Kind of Christmas

Last Christmas, I knew there would be changes in the coming year. My daughter and granddaughters had moved out of the house we shared to her fiancés' house in Georgia. That resulted in my moving to a smaller condo. I had to sell many of my belongings and Christmas decorations at a moving sale, including my gorgeous, artificial Christmas tree. I let go of things right and left, not realizing the inevitable repercussions that would follow when Christmas time rolled around this year. Little did I realized how steeped I was in holiday traditions, until the thought of decorating a very small space perplexed me to the point that I began dreading Christmas altogether.

The first problems were that without the grandchildren being here and the probability of my not having any company during the holidays, gave way to a deep feeling of sadness which turned into my thinking, what was the point of even decorating at all? Then, having sold my Christmas tree due to lack of storage, I didn't even have a tree to decorate! What Christmas decorations I did have were packed in the back hall closet under boxes of other belongings. Too much effort! I thought, compounding my sadness even more. Meanwhile, I was seeing all my friend’s Christmas decorations spread out in numerous photo spreads on Face book and my sadness started escalating into an all out holiday depression.

I complained about my feelings of negativity to my pastor one day and he wisely confronted me on every excuse I came up with for NOT decorating my small space for Christmas. Finally, he gave a homework assignment: Go home and decorate and send him pictures when I was done. Now I had little excuses that I could come up with to argue with him, so I took his assignment to heart.

I went to a local thrift store and bought a single strand of Christmas multicolored lights, a small table top prelit tree, a Christmas rug for my front door, and some artificial poinsettias and greenery. I felt a little glimmer of excitement as I lugged my treasures home. Then I attacked the hall closet with vigor. No, I didn't unpack all my decorations, but I discovered a beautiful wreath, a tree skirt, stockings and some candles. I lit the candles and realized that I could play Christmas CD's on my DVD player. Wow-imagine that! I hung the stockings from the snack bar, and the strand of lights on my screened in porch. Then I covered my small patio table with the tree skirt and placed the small tree in the center. Viola! It was beginning to look and feel like Christmas. After I wrapped a few packages while listening to Christmas music, I began to feel the doldrums slightly start to lift.

Flash forward to Christmas day. A REALLY different sort of Christmas, if you will. I had the opportunity to spend the night on Christmas Eve at my daughter and new son in law’s beautiful home in Georgia with their four daughters. It was fun being there and being awakened at 5:30 am to unwrap presents! After the chaos had died down and the mess had been cleaned up, I took a short cat nap. Then came the realization that this was going to be a really different Christmas day for me. You see, I have always embraced the tradition of enjoying the proverbial Christmas ham or turkey dinner with ALL the trimmings- sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, dressing, cranberry sauce, rolls, and pecan pie. Of course there would also be TONS of Christmas sugar cookies hand rolled, hand cut and hand frosted. As it turned out, my daughter had envisioned something different; something quite different indeed.

Early afternoon, my son in-law asked me if I wanted to go out to the movies with him, my daughter, and granddaughters. “Sure” I replied, so an hour later we all piled into their SUV. I didn't pay too much attention while riding through the streets of Savannah until we pulled up in front of a Chinese restaurant. Sure enough, we were about to experience our own version of “A Christmas Story.” Remember the classic holiday movie where the family has to eat out on Christmas day because the dog ate their turkey and the only restaurant open was a Chinese Restaurant? Well, sort of the same thing except no turkey and no dog, LOL! After we waddled out of the all you could eat restaurant, we piled back into the van for yet another adventure. This time we headed to the movie theater to go see Night at the Museum 3. Unfortunately, we ended up arriving way over an hour before the movie started, so we ended up seeing Into the Woods, a Disney movies starring Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep. My youngest granddaughter Olivia and I loved the musical filled film, and also the popcorn and soda. We arrived back home where everyone scattered off to separate rooms of the house, and I relaxed on the couch where I enjoyed several Christmas movies on Netflix.

I learned several things this Christmas season. 1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. In the grand scheme of things, even though this Christmas lacked some of the more traditional elements of holidays past, it still turned out to be fun and a lot less stressful to boot! 2. Learn to embrace the new and let go of the past. I admit that is still a hard one for me, but I am working on it. And finally #3.  Despite it being a really different kind of Christmas, the most important things were still there; family and good health and those are the things that really matter in the end.

So what about you? Did any of you experience a different kind of Christmas too? After talking to several of my friends I learned that they too had gone to see “Into The Woods” and one of them had even had Chinese on Christmas as well! Who would have thought? LOL!!