Maybe We Could Make Gingerbread Houses and Eat Cookie Dough

For the past three years, the holidays have culminated in a week-long trip to South Carolina so I could gurantee that I would not wake up on Christmas morning alone. Therefore, most of my preparation revolved around buying presents that could travel well and that fit within my schedule. I always celebrated Christmas with Steve and his family after I returned which meant I always had an extra week (and after Christmas sales!) to prepare for them. And on top of spending Christmas at my mom's, we always took a day or two to drive to NC to see my dad and my grandparents, which meant I avoided the hassle of having to go near a Post Office during the holiday season.

All of that has changed and I haven't decided if it's for the better. This year, I don't have to fly home to SC because I'm already here and due to circumstances with work and time, we unfortunately cannot go back to Pennsylvania for Christmas. This will be the first year that Steve and I will actually be together on Christmas Day in the morning, as in we go to bed together on Christmas Eve and wake up together to see what Santa has brought. Which means I have to have his present ready and under the tree by Christmas Day, something I'm really not accustomed to doing. And this year, I don't have any excuses for, say, giving my dad a "gift basket" in a shirt box because the shirt box was so much easier to travel with than a fancy basket. Or for locking myself in the bedroom on Christmas Eve to wrap presents because I couldn't wrap them until I got to SC since the airlines would have made me unwrap them anyway.

But I do have to have some presents ready by, well, tomorrow because we are traveling, really, but it's only a four hour drive to NC to visit my dad's side of the family and celebrate Christmas with them. This isn't working all to well into my schedule either because previously, we had to pack the NC into the Christmas week, which happened at the end of the month. This year, we will be spending Christmas weekend with my parents and I don't have any time off which means NC has to be squeezed into a weekend; this weekend to be exact.

I had a routine and that has all changed. I started shopping at the end of November and got all of my SC presents done right before Christmas. I would make my lists and stay up until 3 am packing the night before my flight left. I'd then brave the airport, praying to God that the bottle of wine I got my dad didn't bust all over my clothes and that the person sitting next to me on the plane would be at least semi-interesting. I'd arrive in SC all fresh-eyed and excited because I hadn't seen my parents in about six months and we'd decorate the tree and do some last minute shopping (this is when I did my shopping for NC) and go to the Festival of Lights and open presents and then go visit my grandparents. I'd then get back on the plane to PA and be met at my apartment by boxes of presents that I'd ordered online for Steve's family. They'd get wrapped up quickly and brought over to celebrate Christmas for the third time. And then it would all culminate on New Year's Eve somewhere with our friends and beer and champagne and just like that, the lights would disappear and the Christmas carols would stop and bleary January would stomp in making me all sad and depressed that I'd have to wait another 365 days for the warm and fuzzy feeling that always washes over me at Christmas.

Now, there's no vacation time, only weekends. There's closer deadlines that I have to meet, both for our trip to NC and to mail presents back to PA. There's Christmas cards that depend on two people instead of one, and having to wait for the other person to fill them out. There's no waiting until after Christmas to exchange gifts. There's our own tree to decorate and our own shopping to do and there's never enough money to do it with. There's no trips to the airport (I'm almost thanking God! for this one) and no bittersweet goodbyes. There's a rush, but a different kind, one that doesn't seem so stressful because I'm not traveling all over hell and creation. One that I'm sure will change next year when our vacation time builds up and we can go back to PA for Christmas.

Things will be different. One of the things I do miss the most is the snow and the cold chill in the air that gets into your bones and makes you thankful for being able to cozy up in front of a warm fire. There was something about the sparkling of Christmas lights against the backdrop of newly fallen snow that made me feel all warm and gooey inside. And something about the quiet calm that settled over the world as the snow fell. There were many nights Steve and I would go out driving during a snowstorm (his vehicle was more than equipped for it) and would get out somewhere in the middle of nowhere and just stand there, listening to nothing. It was an eerie quiet but comforting and there were times I swore I could hear the snow fall.

Now, there's a calmness about the fact that I'm not going to have to say goodbye to anybody this year. I won't be leaving one person I love to visit the other. I won't be choosing. My heart won't tug for the part that's missing on Christmas morning because he will be sitting right beside me. But at the same time, we won't have that time apart that, as much as it hurt, always seemed to bring us closer together (because seriously, the saying about absence making the heart grow fonder has always been true in our case).

I gues this is just all a part of the bigger scheme, of how my life has changed over the past year. There is something greater developing here, a better sense of family and comfort and home. And despite all of the familiarity of what we used to know, there's something comfortable about this place.

A few nights ago, I was so tired and run ragged from all of the Christmas preparation that I couldn't decide whether I wanted to nod off or burst into tears. I'm actually still like that at this point because not everything is done. Regardless, I had reached a point where I was cursing Christmas because of all the stress involved with it. And I swore up and down to Steve that it had never been this bad but looking back, it always has been, just in a different way, in a different capacity. Things have changed but the stress of Christmas hasn't. It has just shifted. And therefore, I can't blame that on the difference in location or circumstances. I can only blame it on my undying need to buy the perfect Christmas present for each person and to have my home cozy and decorated and to send out Christmas cards to each person we love to let them know that we're thinking of them over the holiday season.

And I can bitch and complain about it but I know very well that Christmas morning (or, tomorrow night in NC) all of those feelings will be gone. Everything leading up to that day will have been completely worth it to see the look on my family's faces when they open their gifts or to see how excited my little brother is at what Santa has brought him. And then I'll do it all again next year and the year after.

Sometimes I let myself get so wrapped up in the "have to's" of the season. As in, I have to buy these presents and I have to send these Christmas cards. And sometimes I need to step back and just deal with the "want to's". As in, I want to have Christmas dinner with my family or I want to drive around and look at Christmas lights or I want to see the Christmas tree downtown.

If we could all do that - if we could all strike that healthy balance between our obligations and our desires, we may very well be able to get back to the good feelings about Christmas, instead of the vapid commericialism that plagues this holiday. The old cliche that "it's the thought that counts" really does hold true. It doesn't matter how much you spend if you actually put some thought into the gifts and have something the person could really appreciate.

So this year, I've resolved to do things that keep me from becoming an embittered Scrooge for the holidays. I did most of my shopping online so I don't have to deal with every asshole that doesn't know shopping etiquette. I printed out the envelopes for my Christmas cards. I put up all my decorations December 1st so I wouldn't have to worry about them. I baked cookies for people whom I just couldn't think of gifts. I plan on spending the night at my parents house on Christmas Eve and on all of us piling into the same vehicle to go to the Festival of Lights for hot chocolate and some sparkly Christmas cheer.

It's all about making the "have to's" balance perfectly with the "want to's" and doing it the easiest way possible. And even though the "want to's" always outweigh the "have to's" (as in, I want to go to PA or I want to buy everybody everything they ever wanted), things always seem to work out and I always find myself on New Year's wishing that the season didn't have to end.

And I'll be doing the same this New Year's even though right now, I wish it was all over.

As I said, I'll be in NC for the weekend, in a tiny town with no internet access so don't expect updates from me (as if you ever did). If I'm not back on Monday it's because I went into convulsions from the lack of online interactivity.