Merry Christmas!
We’ve reached the big day! I hope you all had a magical holiday season, and that your Christmas was full of love, laughter and joy. I know mine was. I thought this would be the ideal time to finish up my Christmas Spirit recap for the year.
My last post had me shopping for Christmas presents and wrapping everything on December 19th. In the days since, my Christmas Spirit has yo-yoed a bit. By mid-week, the forecast for Christmas Day was not looking good. There was a winter storm approaching and they were calling for 20-30cm of snow (that’s 8-12″ for the non-metric folks) starting on Christmas morning, and lasting throughout the day. This troubled me as one of our traditions is to have a family meal on Christmas Day. My mother, brother, sister-in-law and my in-laws were set to gather at my house for a delicious turkey supper, but this storm was threatening this from happening. Christmas Spirit spiraling downwards.
While this was not what I wanted to hear, I did come to terms with it. The logical thing to do was simply to push it off by a day and do supper on the 26th instead. I did not like this option because Boxing Day (as it’s known here in Canadia) is a tradition onto itself for Isabelle and I. Every year, we get up, take showers, put our PJ’s back on and crash on the couch binge watching TV shows and eating junk food. It’s a delightful day. The storm was threatening my tradition! But deeper down, I think it was also bothering me that I wouldn’t be able to have my Christmas Day meal with my family. As much as I’ve toyed with the idea of not doing it, I think this is so strongly ingrained in me that I didn’t want to let it go. In the end, my better senses won out and we made the call on the morning of the 24th. Our Christmas dinner would be pushed to the 26th.
I ended up being okay with that in the end, once we got up this morning. After waking, we had a delicious breakfast of cinnamon rolls (mmmm… thank you Ree Drummond for your amazing recipe!), bacon, orange juice and a nice mug of Guayaki Yerba Mate tea (my new obsession, even if I have to order it online). I think this will be our new tradition for Christmas morning.
Following breakfast, we opened our gifts and then sat there and realized, “we don’t have to rush into the kitchen to start prepping everything for supper.” Hmm. Maybe this worked out to our advantage. Christmas Day for the past few years has been a long, tiring day as I do the gifts and then spend the bulk of the day in the kitchen, not sitting down until about 8-9PM after everyone’s left for the day. Today, we don’t have much to do. Isabelle’s currently baking dessert for tomorrow (baking only, assembling tomorrow morning) and I’m writing a blog post. Once that’s done, it’s time for lunch, and then we’re crashing in the movie room to watch the latest episode of The Curse of Oak Island and then moving on to whatever tickles our fancy.
Earlier this week, my Christmas Spirit got boosted by a few activities. First, we made the aforementioned cinnamon rolls on Thursday night. This is a big recipe, making about 7 pans of cinnamon rolls (each with 6-8 rolls, depending on how we cut them). Isabelle was making them as gifts to her hairdresser and esthetician. Two other pans were bought by one of her coworkers, we kept one for ourselves, and one to both the in-laws and my brother and his wife.
On Friday, we headed off to work. Isabelle only had a half day (lucky teachers…), but had to stay until 1:30 after the buses had all left. She came down to meet me for lunch and we headed over to Piatto Pizzeria for a lovely late lunch. By the time she got to the office and we finished lunch, it was nearly 3PM. I decided to skip out on work a bit early (apologies if anyone is reading this from the office. hehe) and we headed to the mall for our annual tea and stroll to watch the craziness going on around us. Later that evening, we went for a drive around town looking at the Christmas lights and listening to Christmas music. The night ended with a viewing of my all-time favourite holiday special – The Muppet Family Christmas. Lovely way to end the work week.
Christmas Eve continued with the Christmas festivities. In the morning we hopped into the car again and made a stop at Starbucks before heading out to deliver gifts. The night of the 24th is nearly set in stone for us. First, we go to mass with Isabelle’s 93-year old uncle, Art, then we head over to my uncle Harvey’s house for a family gathering. The entire family meets up on Christmas Eve to spend a few hours together eating, drinking and laughing.
All said and done, the last couple of days did a lot to boost my Christmas Spirit. Despite the kerfuffle with the Christmas Day storm, it didn’t ruin my holiday season. In the balance, things were very fun and positive, yet also simple. I truly am blessed to have this life that I live.
Thank you for joining me on this ride. While my posts may not have all been uber-fascinating for everyone (and this one a tad long), it’s helped re-energize both my Christmas Spirit and my writing. When all is said and done, I truly hope that everyone has had a very merry Christmas.
Musings of A Boxhead 
