Indulging in Christmas
Categories: Holidays, Where We Live, Beverly Breton Carroll
Every Christmas season, we can find plenty of newspaper and magazine articles, and even a few new books, on how to streamline our holiday, how to do less to make it more, how to give ourselves permission to not overachieve. I’m sure these are good suggestions for a lot of people.
But I’ve discovered, for me, Christmas is the perfect time to indulge. I don’t mean buying gifts or eating extravagantly or spending money at all. I mean immersing myself into single-minded, excessive creative bliss. There is a reason Martha Stewart became a household name. Lots of us common folk really like to do this stuff, too!
I like decorating the house. Gathering an armload of the discarded cut-off branches where we buy our Christmas tree and adding cut holly from our yard, pine cones from the woods behind our house, and raffia and burgundy velvet ribbon, to make a swag to frame the front door. Unpacking the ornaments and enjoying my favorites once again–quirky Humpty Dumpty sitting on a Christmas drum that I bought for myself, the spotted wooden pig on wheels which I bartered from a former boyfriend, the Pinocchio my husband and I bought in Italy the first year we were married, the teeny tiny ceramic handmade gingerbread man I found at a church booth at our town fair, the felt snowmen hanging from a candy cane snapped into their arms that my now high-school-aged son and I sewed together one long ago Christmas. Setting up the black wrought iron sleigh and reindeer candle holders that once graced the center of my Grandmother’s heavy mahogany dining table. And displaying as much beaded fruit as I can possibly get away with.
I like wrapping gifts. I try to start early so I won’t get rushed. I want to enjoy going through our big box of saved Christmas cards and picking out ones to match my carefully recycled paper, appealing to the environmentalist in me and providing variety so I can match the personality of the recipient. The card gets cut in half, the back discarded— but not before I reread good cheer sent by friends on holidays past—and the picture taped to the gift. To finish, on goes raffia, gold star-studded wire, tied tulle or good old curly ribbon.
And although I no longer enjoy trying to get my family to pose for me for the Christmas card picture–it was a lot easier when our son was little–I do still like designing the cards. I’ve had our baby son holding a Christmas dove (Peace on Earth, of course), our toddler son hanging a nutcracker on the tree, our elementary-school-aged son posing on the porch of his bewreathed playhouse. Lately (at his insistence) I’m giving our son a break. I've featured my husband peering from behind a 19th century female warden (made of wax) in the entryway of the female prison museum in
Joy to the world indeed.
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