Ok, here's my dirty little secret... I don't really enjoy the holidays.
I've been living in California since 1991, and early on I used to go back to Connecticut for Christmas every year. I enjoyed the midnight services at our church (fabulous music, sightings of high school boyfriends) but in Connecticut the weather is usually cold and you end up stuck in the house, with the double whammy of no exercise but lots of cookies. And inevitably every year my sister and some of her kids would be sick. The last time I was there she cooked a fabulous dinner and as we were sitting down she said "I'll be right back" and went upstairs and vomited for 12 hours.
So I don't go back anymore. Plus, now that we have two kids there is absolutely nothing in the world that could tempt me to go through JFK on the holidays.
But now I'm finding that I don't really enjoy the holidays here either. Somehow I can't quite get into the spirit. Sure, we got a tree with the kids. And after I spend an hour sorting through all of our ornaments to pull out the unbreakable ones, we decorated it. And then I spent the rest of the next three weeks encouraging Mia to put the things that she'd removed back onto the tree. We also read Christmas books - Polar Express and the Grinch - and we watched the Grinch video about fifty times.
But the week before Christmas was rainy and both the kids were sniffly so we spent most of the week inside. Not only did we miss the two kid parties that we'd been invited too, as well as a showing of Peter and the Wolf at the symphony, but I still had to deal with a week of sick kids indoors.
And there's the incredible stress of getting holiday cards out (I tried for FOUR months but never could get a picture with both kids looking at the camera at the same time) as well as making sure we have presents for everyone in the family. (Last year I gave Mike such a hard time because I had only ONE thing to unwrap that I had to make sure he had some good stuff this year). And mailing gifts on time. Not to mention the teachers, babysitters, contractors, etc that all need gifts too. And getting ready for visiting relatives.
So by the time we get to Christmas itself I'm making last minute cookies so we have something to leave by the fireplace for Santa, and wrapping the last few things (I used to pride myself on wrapping beautiful presents, now I'm just happy if they are covered), and trying to pull together something nice for dinner. And the whole time my kids are acting like crazy people because they've had so much candy!
I'm not a religous person, but the thing I always enjoyed most about Christmas was the music. But I don't have anyone to make my annual trip to church with, and anyway after everything else i'm too tired anyway.
So now the holidays are over. I'm exhausted. But I'm unpacking toys and trying to fit things into the recycle bin. And I still need to do thank you notes! And take down the tree and get rid of it. And replace the goldfish that didn't survive "babysitting" by the neighbors.
But unless I sound like a complete Grinch myself, there were some wonderful moments of watching the kids when they saw Santa, or opened a gift that they enjoyed. Making sugar cookies with Miles and Mia. And of course when we took our 20 month old daughter Mia skiing (see gratuitous picture)....
