A Home For The Holidays

How is it that after Halloween things just snowball and then it’s a whole new year? Thanksgiving has always been a favorite American pastime of mine because it’s the one day you can eat too much, drink too much and start the merriment with no judgment. Plus there’s pie.

I’ve always liked Christmas. When I was younger we would spend Christmas with my uncles and cousins and share in a huge gift exchange where my cousins and I would all rip open our toys to instantly make a mess. My parents and I decorated the tree, my dad made a feast and sometimes my sisters would come home. I always remember it being warm in our big old house from my childhood. I always wished for snow on actual Christmas and it never happened, but there were still many amazing Christmas stories created.

We all have good Christmas stories and bad ones. The holidays are crazy times. They are filled with fun, celebration, love, tension, stress, anxiety and then some. One of my greatest Christmas stories from my childhood was when I was about 11 or 12. I had been collecting dolls from American Girls and I had Samantha. This year I asked for her clothing trunk and it was one of the most expensive things that was a part of the collection. I realized that if my parents bought it for me that the box would have the American Girl return address so I started watching the mail for boxes came.

One day one came that was the perfect size and I was so excited. I told my dad I knew that’s what it was and he said, “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s what it is.” Later as I was acting like a know-it-all about the box my dad said, “Oh yeah this is that lamp that your grandma said she was sending for the living room.” My dad reached down to the corner of the box, slit a hole, dug in with his fingers and pulled out a chord with a plug. My heart dropped. On Christmas morning he asked me to help him open that box…and there was Samantha’s trunk! It was an amazing Christmas moment.

Most of my recent Christmas memories worth keeping close to my heart involve my husband.
For as long as I remember in our relationship we’ve ended up spending every Christmas together, even before we started dating. Our first Christmas that we were dating my dad let him spend the night with us and he bought me a jewelry set with my favorite gem, a moonstone. It was earrings, a bracelet, and necklace and ring. Sadly two of those pieces of jewelry were stolen but the memory is still there.

We’ve always loved spending the holidays together. It’s like so long as we are together we are “home,” no matter where we are.

We both come from split up families and when we lived on the West Coast, splitting everything between households was too stressful. Somehow we always did it though. Whether it was his dad or my dad, my sisters or my step-mom’s, my husband and I were together through it all, even before we were married.

The holidays are tough and they always stir up emotions and memories. I feel more sentimental throughout the holiday season than most other times of the year. Sometimes I feel more Grinch-y than in the Christmas spirit but with my man by my side it usually passes.

When my parents split up my dad ended up with all the Christmas ornaments from my childhood. He gave them to me when I moved out. My husband’s ornaments are with his mother so I like to buy him at least one every year. It’s when we pull them out that the memories start flowing and the shapes and figures trigger a lot of specific experiences.

I love Christmas movies, I love the cold, the snow, the smell of the tree and I definitely feel fortunate that I’m not a Grinch at heart. People ask if we are going home for the holidays, and then they ask which place would be home. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and my uncles and cousins are all there. I met my husband in and my entire immediate family lives in Oregon but neither of us feel like we have a specific “house” or space to call home there.

Inevitably our home for each holiday is just “us.” Wherever we can be together, at dad’s, at uncle’s, sister’s, at our apartment, in a hotel room, wherever, so long as we have each other, we are home for the holidays creating more and more amazing memories and positive emotions to carry us through the years. Corny but true!