54 days is an eternity when you’re little. That’s enough time to outgrow all your clothes and lose some teeth. When you’re an adult, and the responsibility and preparation for all the Holidays falls on your shoulders, 54 days is barely enough time to draw a breath.
It really seems like just last week we were all dressed up as the cast of The Greatest Showman, chasing a pair of Elmos house to house but this is the 54thday. Since then, we’ve celebrated one major National Holiday and in our family, the birthdays of one sister, one brother, one son and two nephews. You begin to see why my parents, back in ancient days, abolished giving birthday presents. Especially when you add in that before the Christmas season ends with Epiphany, we’ll celebrate the birthdays of two more brothers, two grand daughters, a nephew and a handful of in laws. It’s a lot.
I’m a firm believer in not doing anything to stress yourself out and wreck the Holidays for yourself. If you don’t like baking cookies, don’t. If you don’t like decorating your house, don’t. If you only want to give gifts to a few very special people, do that. If cards are too much, don’t send them. Christmas is, first and foremost, the celebration of the birth of Jesus. He was born to save our souls for Heaven; this is an occasion for JOY, not an excuse to fry your nerves by trying to prove you can go six weeks without sleep and outdo Martha Stewart when it comes to entertaining. If you can’t perform a task without love in your heart, skip it.
I like baking Christmas cookies. When my kids were little, I used to bake a different type of cookie every day from Thanksgiving till Christmas Eve. I also used to stash them all away so as to have an insane amount of cookies to spring on everyone on Christmas. The operative word there is “insane”. It makes absolutely no sense to bake all those cookies and not just eat them as you go. I realized that a few years back so now I let everyone indulge and if there’s any left from one batch when the next batch comes out of the oven, that’s what we save for the parties. If the cookies are all gone, I’ll bake more later…maybe. The point is, I’m not going to worry about it. I stock up on supplies while they’re on sale: I bought enough baker’s chocolate and molasses to keep me in Devil cookies and ginger snaps all year!
I likeChristmas decorations. Putting up a tree is a lot of work. I can see me some day going the pre-lit route. I like a lot of lights on my tree; a six foot tree usually takes 14-15 strings. Josie lit it for me this year and she knows her stuff. It took me another two weeks to get the mantle done. I only hung the White House ornaments last week. They look gorgeous.
I like Christmas music. I’ve been listening to stations that play it since Thanksgiving but they don’t play the Roger Whittaker Christmas Album, which is my favorite.
I was perfectly happy to take off a few years off, after Josie graduated from eight grade from attending Christmas Concerts at school. But I like them, so the last few years, I went to see Nanners and Bean sing their hearts out at school. This year, in addition to Xena’s school show, I went to see her and Babalouie put on their show at church.
The weekend before last, I went out to their house on Saturday. Ty’s birthday was that weekend so he and Megan went out with friends to celebrate and the kids and I watched A Christmas Story. They’d never seen it before! I stayed the night and the next morning we went to the kid’s Nativity at Church. Megan made us blueberry coffeecake for breakfast, so we were all in a very festive mood. Xena sang with the choir and Babalouie was one of the Three Wise Men. He had a line, which he delivered perfectly and on cue. Then we all went out for lunch! I could have hung out all day but I had to get back into town for more fun.
Zack’s Christmas present was taking me to the Guthrie to see Noises Off! I hadn’t seen a show at the Guthrie since it moved to the river in ’06. I’ve been in the place a few times and I saw Mark Steyn speak there a couple of years ago but I hadn’t seen a performance so I was really excited. Katie managed to snag a rush ticket, so she left BoopityBoop with Adam and joined us.
Noises Off! Has been my favorite comedy since I first saw it back in the early nineties on video. I remember watching it by myself and having to pause the tape so I could roll on the floor laughing without missing the next moment of hilarity. The Guthrie’s production was so good, all the performances so brilliant that I laughed until my sides ached even though I know all the jokes! The movie stars Michael Caine, Carol Burnett and John Ritter, yet the Guthrie managed to put together a cast that was even better. Judging from the reaction of the audience, I think that assessment was unanimous.
It was a fantastic weekend but I couldn’t help thinking “thank God it’s Monday.”
I got a little bit of work done that week, along with baking a few more batches of cookies and even getting some Christmas cards out to our friends who live far away. Jay was in Texas and Phoenix on basketball -related business, so I stayed up too late every night and didn’t sleep well. I did break myself of my addiction to bad Netflix Christmas movies by binge watching The Office (US). I loved the BBC original and always intended to catch up on the US version someday. It’s great! Michael Scott is a very different boss from David Brent but both would be horrible to try to work for. I feel so much better now that I’m not being sucked in by spectacularly beautiful sets to watch awful actors read plodding scripts none of which have ever met an original thought, night after night.
Actually, I think it was watching A Christmas Story with Xena and Babalouie that broke my addiction. Nothing like watching a great movie with people who’ve never seen it before to highlight what dreck the current offerings are. The only new one I saw this year that I’ll ever watch again was Hot Santa, starring Kurt Russell. I know that wasn’t the title but it should have been.
This weekend was nearly as jam-packed as last weekend. It started with a huge family brunch put on by my Mom’s cousins. The family has gotten so huge, what with four generations now accounted for, that the Christmas party had to be moved from someone’s house to a neutral cite decades ago. I just love and appreciate that they always include our branch of the family. Some years, none of us can make it and some years a whole bunch of us do; this year, my crew had to represent for all of us. Mom and Dad love the party but weren’t sure it was wheel chair accessible and besides, Mom was hosting her own huge shindig later that day, so she decided to make her apologies to the cousins.
Jay, Josie, her friend Teal and I were there for the Pivec/Hubbell/Hartigan branches. We had a lovely time!
Mom’s dinner came about when she found that three of our cousins, who live overseas (Italy and Egypt) would be in town for Christmas. She invited everyone over for dinner. This would be the first large scale entertaining she’d done since moving into the new place. For a crowd this size, she reserved the large conference room, which the staff outfitted with long tables for food and lots of tables and chairs for dinner. There was also a grand piano, but my nephews who play were among the tiny number of relatives who couldn’t attend. The on site restaurants can handle dinner parties of up to a dozen but 50 is beyond their capabilities, so it was pot luck, which we excel at.
So after the brunch party, I came home and threw together a big lasagna. Mom had delegated everything from cutlery to table cloths to food and the party began nice and early. Many of the grandkids hadn’t been to the new place yet so it was really nice that their first visit was when it was all decorated up beautiful enough to use as the set of a Netflix Christmas movie!
BoopityBoop kept trying to escape the party room so I enlisted the help of Xena, Nanners and Bean to take them for a walk. I imagined them running harmlessly down the long, wide, beautiful corridors. I didn’t take into account the Christmas tree or the jigsaw puzzle on the table in the game room. Boopity tried to undecorate the tree while Boop wanted to eat the puzzle. We hustled them back to the party room as fast as we could.
The food was great, the company even better and before it was over, BoopityBoop discovered the drinking fountain. Eventually they were soaked to the skin and got to run around mostly naked before their Mom wrangled them into their pajamas.
It was a great party!
Sunday was a day of rest. I baked some Austrian Chocolate Balls and got a little bit of work done. Xena and Babalouie came over for dinner so Megan and Ty could go to a movie. I introduced them to the Monkees. I’d given Josie the show on DVD back when she was Xena’s age. Naturally, the kids loved it! It’s the perfect blend of manic silliness+ music for kids under the age of 10. Xena noticed immediately that Davy is extremely cute, that Mike is the smart one, Mickey’s the funny one and Peter is kinda stupid but she loved them all. Babalouie just liked the slapstick comedy and music video breaks.
Advent ends in just a few hours.
All the shopping, wrapping, baking and decorating are done; now it’s time to celebrate.
We’ll start with Mass.
Merry Christmas!!