Today marks the turning of another page on the calendar.  Goodbye November, hello December.  And with December comes all of that holiday bliss that is Christmas.  I should be clear that I am a confirmed Christmas junkie.  Or more aptly, I was a Christmas junkie.

Over the past few years, I seem to have lost some of my zeal.  Looking back, I think it all began following my maternal grandparents’ passing.  They both passed over the summer of 2014.  Until then, Christmas was a big to-do for us.  Our entire family would gather together on Christmas Day for supper.  This consisted of my grandparents, my mother, my brother and his wife, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, and occasionally my in-laws.  We were usually a good 15-18 or so folks around the table.  After my wife and I bought our house in 2011, we took over the duties of hosting this meal.

In the autumn of 2014, after everything had settled down following my grandparents’ passing, I came to the decision that Christmas 2013 would be the last full-family Christmas meal that we would celebrate.  At least at my house.  If someone else wanted to pick up the mantle, they could.  It just didn’t feel right, at least to me, to continue with this tradition, since my grandparents were the glue that held it all together.  Everything was going to start changing, so I might as well be the catalyst for the change, right?  The family understood my choice.  Christmas Day, going forward, would consist of my immediate family only – Mom, brother, sister-in-law, my wife and my in-laws.

Over the next couple of years, I lost some of the interest I had in the holiday.  I wasn’t as gung-ho about decorating; I massively scaled back the volume of Christmas specials and movies I watched; I stopped sending out Christmas cards to my friends.  I even began making changes to the Christmas meal I prepared so that it wasn’t the same thing we used to do.

I’ve decided that it’s time for a change.  Over the next 24 days, I will make a concerted effort to rekindle this passion in me.  My wife is wholeheartedly on board with my mission.  Though she has never been a huge Christmas lover, she too wants to boost that Spirit of Christmas in our lives.  As a means of getting things started, she even bought me a special Advent calendar to count down the days until Christmas.

I hope that by talking about this publicly, it will make me feel more accountable.  It might be enough to push me to do more.  I truly am that stubborn that I’ll do it for that reason, even if I’m not feeling it at the time.  My goal is to make me feel it.  I want to feel that Christmas magic.

What are some of your Christmas traditions?  Do you watch the same specials/movies yearly?  Do you do any activities?  Help me boost my Christmas spirit!