Since I wrote so many weeks ago about what was going to be my attempt to stay calm during the Christmas season, I felt like I should come back with some kind of update on how I’m doing. In a phrase: not super well. Things have felt so busy, and while I vowed not to add anything to my calendar/obligations unless it was super important, a few of those super important things have come up and I’ve been busier than I expected.
Saturday night I went to bed feeling completely depleted (we had stayed up too late two nights in a row), and the next morning I woke up and told Gerrit that if I didn’t have a quiet morning alone I might have a mental breakdown. I told Gerrit that I’ve been fantasizing about Christmas being over, and this made me really sad.
So I sat on the couch and read. I daydreamed. I thought about Christmas and how fun it will be later this week. I listened to some quiet Christmas music. I folded some laundry. And then I cleaned up the kitchen (for what seems like the thousandth time this month) because we were having people over that night.
It made me feel a thousand time better.
Even though we’ve been busy I won’t give myself a completely failing grade though. There have been invitations we have turned down this month. I am buying frozen rolls for Christmas instead of making them. I have outsourced at least 75% of Christmas dinner. I stayed home from church Sunday and had my own kind of Sabbath. There have been nights where we have successfully done nothing. I served leftovers of my dad’s birthday cake to our friends on Sunday instead of feeling like I needed to make something else. (And since it was this chocolate stout cake, I heard no complaints. It is in my freezer now, too, and is coming back out on Christmas.)
The truth is though, that you just can’t escape the abnormalities of the season. And while it is fun and magical, I’m also trying to accept that there is nothing wrong with looking forward to things being back to normal and that it doesn’t mean I can’t simultaneously enjoy the season.
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