Perpetual Ruminations

Our Christmas

Our December holidays are Christmas and New Years. When I was younger, New Years celebrations were always fun, usually attending some kind of party with friends or relatives, but as I grew older this faded into just staying home for New Years Eve. We still sit up and have a drink to celebrate the arrival of the new year, but these days the evening is spent playing games, reminiscing, and relaxing.

Christmas, however is still the most favorite holiday in our home. My wife decorates the Friday after Thanksgiving and we keep the decorations up until after New Years. She does most of the decorating around the house, but I do add a little of my touch to a few things. We have an artificial tree we set up and decorate while listening to Christmas songs on Alexa. My job is to take out the decorations and hand them to my wife who finds their places on the tree. While we had children at home, it would be her and the children hanging decorations, but now it's just her and me. It has always been our tradition, after all the decorations are hung, for me to put the topper on the tree.

Gifts are placed under the tree as they are wrapped, and we still enjoy stuffing a few little things into the Christmas stockings that hang above our fireplace (electric). While there were children at home, there were always a lot of gifts left in hiding until after they were asleep Christmas Eve which would be from Santa. We did this as long as there were children in the home. In fact, this was the first Christmas that we didn't have gifts from Santa under the tree. Our tradition has been to open gifts from each other Christmas Eve, but the stockings and gifts from Santa were left for Christmas morning. After, we would get together with relatives for a festive Christmas day together.

This year hasn't been a very good Christmas for us. Our two adopted children decided last spring they didn't want to live with us anymore and it has been a long ordeal that finally came to an end right before Thanksgiving. On top of this, there wasn't any snow for Christmas, the first time in over one hundred years for our location. Much of our shopping was done together for things we needed or wanted for the home, but we did get a couple of gifts for each other that were unknown. It seemed like neither of us really got into the holidays like we used to. But, next year, I want to make Christmas a lot more special for my wife, even if it's just her and I at home of if we decided to spend the holidays with family.