Here we are, a week away from Christmas, and as usual I am muddling through. We have a few less gifts to buy this year without Craig's extended family gathering and without an exchange on my side (assuming COVID lets it happen this year), so I'd say as a whole I'm doing okay on gift buying but I feel like gifts might be a little underwhelming this year.
Big kid Christmas is different. I think the evolution out of the little kid stages is starting to make the holiday change for me. We're definitely going much lighter on the toys this year, which is both a relief and a little depressing. We don't need them taking up space, but Christmas feels so different without the toy catalogs and constant rehashing and revising of lists. Carter mentions things once in a while still, but it's not like it once was. I'm not even entirely sure he's still sold on Santa. He mentions his desire to "trap" him each year, this year included, but I feel like the references have been far less so I wonder if he's wavering. The magic has just seemed to fade a bit. The Advent calendars sit unopened for days, and the overall excitement is just...less.
I think as a whole there are just far fewer reminders that the holiday is coming, and I think it's contributing to me not being in a full Christmas mood yet. It feels like most days I'm just going through normal life, and almost forget it's Christmas aside from the tree and decorations. We hadn't even had real snow until late this week, and even then it was just a dusting. I haven't done much store shopping, we didn't get any Christmas cards until about a week ago, there aren't a lot of kid school or church events, and even work has been pretty much a non-event other than a box of thank you chocolates arriving to the office Wednesday and having a party on the schedule for this coming week.
I was going through a few Amazon boxes the other day and laughed a little because most of the kids' gifts are unrecognizable in their packaging. The reactions while opening them could be a little weird. Some are things I decided they needed or that they asked for in passing ages ago. I still want to get a couple more things--I did a panic buy via Target pickup tonight and I think I have some running around to do tomorrow--but at least I did pick up some stocking stuffers and some of the other stuff that tends to hang out there at the end. I mostly took care of my niece and nephew the other night, and crossed by parents off the other day right before I had to cancel my Prime trial. Craig is mostly taking care of his family, so we'll just have a couple stragglers there. Part of me feels a bit ahead but I know I'm still going to have some form of last-minute scramble.
Jacob finished school on Friday, but Carter still has a full week coming up. Craig is only working a couple days this week, but I'd be working the whole week had I not taken off the 23rd. I have a feeling that day is going to be CRAZY with last-minute stuff. I realized the other day that I need to start wrapping this weekend because I don't want to sentence myself to endless weeknights of wrapping next week, and I never like to let it go down to the 23rd...though let's be real, it usually does. It's hard to believe this is the last weekend before it all begins--I hate when Christmas is on a weekend because it seems so far away at the beginning of that week but then the week always flies! Not to mention that it makes a full week of work just completely distracted because I always want to be getting ready for Christmas instead of working.
I've really been struggling to do the "extra" stuff this year. I haven't gotten around to figuring out a gingerbread house, and cookies seem nearly impossible. I bought more peanut butter and some Hershey Kisses in good faith today, but we'll see. I had said I was going to find a new, better recipe for Christmas Eve morning cinnamon rolls but I have struggled to do it because I'm worried they'll all use yeast and I dread getting that fancy when I can barely make my easy ones with the time I have (usually a frantic half-hour on the 23rd around 10pm). I finally just put up some window clings the other day that had been sitting on my dining room chair since I put up my decorations. Sometimes they're a bit of a pain to wrangle and I just never got back to them. But I do love the ornament ones and finally did them on a night this week when I pounded through all sorts of long-undone tasks because the clutter was killing me. I got snowflakes up on our hall mirror, too. But I'm sad there's only a week left in the anticipatory stage of Christmas and one week in the Christmas afterglow before the decorations start to weigh on me with the stress of taking them down.
I think I've begun to feel a tinge of mourning for the last two COVID Christmases. While they were both fine in their own way, I think I'm getting to the point where I realize that COVID may have permanently changed the face of our Christmases. For one year and then two, we just had to keep telling ourselves, "Get through this Christmas, just sacrifice now and we should be able to get back to normal." And now it's becoming apparent that those sacrifices may have been somewhat in vain--I mean, we could have spread sickness and lost someone, and we didn't--but traditions seem to have now changed and may never go back. Our extended families have grown with marriages and babies, and on Craig's side it made a gathering too much, and on my side it's making things more crowded (although we should be just about done growing for now). But I think all the COVID uncertainty killed the gift exchange we used to do, which makes Christmas prep easier but cost us that one last hurrah for gift receiving. The family time is most important but that was always a fun one. It's hard to believe Christmas 2019 was the last "normal" holiday we had. Re-reading those posts, especially the New Year's one thinking ahead to a new decade, we had no idea what was coming just a few months later. I look at 11-year-old Jacob, still a little kid, and poof...here we are three years later still feeling a bit "on pause" in many ways, but he's now this giant man-child. And Carter went from a very little boy to a borderline big kid. So much can change in three years, and I'm a little sad Christmas had to change with it. I do think we made the best of it, but they feel a bit like lost years in retrospect since they were in the midst of this epic shift. Big kid Christmases would have happened without it, but the last couple just didn't feel like the gradual progression I was expecting.
Well, one week left (less if you consider our home Christmas is a day early), so I guess we'll see how well my last-minute scramble goes. I know in the end it always seems to work out, but big kid Christmas is different and I'm just not sure this time. Hopefully the magic hits me soon, though. I need it, in more ways that one.
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