A Month Late and a Present Short

        This may seem crazy. You may read this and think that I am a little off my rocker. But that’s ok, I don’t mind. In this post I want to talk to you about Christmas. I know that it has passed and I am well aware that I was upset about its appearance in October. I very much believe that Christmas belongs in December and should never leave. There should not be decorations up in October, the stores should not play music is November, etc. I think that the music should be played after Thanksgiving and decorations should not be put up until December. In fact, when I was a kid our tree wasn’t put up until at least the second week of December; if not later. Having said that, I must confess that we put up my tree on the 1^st of December this year. In a few ways, I’m glad that we did, though I felt a bit like a hypocrite at the time. But that tree is one of the reasons for this post. I want to tell you about my holidays; Christmas and New Years.

                This Christmas was different for me in many ways. The first way being that it was the first Christmas where I did not travel to be with my family. My boyfriend and I visited our families the weekend before, but the actual holiday was spent at home. In fact, I worked on the morning of Christmas Eve. It was a nice quiet Christmas in our little apartment, just the two of us. We watch Christmas movies and just hung out. Our tree was also special to each of us for different reasons. For my boyfriend, it was the first real tree he had ever had. For me, it was the first Christmas tree I have had in about 5 years. Since I always traveled, it seemed silly to have a tree at home. And I personally hate fake trees. As a kid I always had a real one and thus never liked the fake one. As an adult, I understand the advantages of having a fake tree, and even considered getting one for our apartment. I wouldn’t have loved it as much as a real tree, but I would have been happy enough just to have one. For all its advantages though, a fake tree just wasn’t possible due to our lack of storage space. This is New York, and affordable apartments aren’t that big. So we bought a real tree on the street corner that was about my height (which is not tall at all), and bought a minimal amount of decorations. While the tree was not covered in ornaments, it was nicely decorated with lights, balls, bows, candy canes, and childhood ornaments of my boyfriend’s. We also got lights for the window, a Santa countdown from my childhood, and stockings with bells on them.  It may not sound like much, but it was perfect for our first Christmas at home.

                The reason that I am sharing this with you is that it was a significant event since I have been away. There isn’t much to say because this isn’t my normal holiday post. Maybe next year I will give you details about the holiday itself. But this year, things were different. I had fully intended on writing a great Christmas post but then there was a death in my family and I stopped writing all together. The holidays were not bad but the person we lost wasn’t distant and that made them (the holidays) a bit sad. Thus there was no Christmas post for you, and you have to read about it at the end of January. I will tell you more about the sadness in another post, but here I just wanted to tell you about my simple and sweet Christmas. I will also add that I had a relaxing New Years with just my Boyfriend as well. He was sick so we just watched TV and played board games all night. For me it was great because I am not the type to go out on the town. Given the choice, a simple night at home wins every time. So those were my holidays. I have a picture of my tree that I will share with you too. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and your new year is going well thus far.