Holiday Musings

Christmas is my favorite holiday and as soon as November rolls around I'm thinking about all the good times to be had. Trouble is, Christmas in coupledom is wa-ay more hectic than those of my childhood.

In the old version, we'd go to my grandparents house a few miles away for Christmas Eve and have a holiday buffet and egg nog - I'd bring a dish or two. On Christmas morning we'd all go to my parents house for brunch and present opening and then I'd work on the Christmas puzzle in front of an endless loop of "The Christmas Story" on TBS until it was time to start the next round of dishes for Christmas dinner, again at my parents house. It took place over the span of 24 hours.

In the coupledom Christmas, we have three families to celebrate with, half of whom live on the Peninsula, which involves several hours of traveling back and forth, including a ferry ride. (Note: I'm told that by those who reside West of Puget Sound that "the Peninsula" to them means the Kitsap Peninsula, a small growth on the thumb of Washington's mitten. In my East-sider vernacular, the Peninsula refers to EVERYTHING West of the Sound.) Luckily, Sean's side of the family is notoriously gracious when it comes to celebrating on alternative days and leaving the actual day of Christmas to others. But, the drawback of this is that means two additional weekends are thus taken up traveling to Seabeck (his mom's side) or Sequim (his dad's side), which leaves oh-so-little time to shop, go to parties, and all the other holiday moments. So if we don't have all of our Christmas shopping done before the first trip of the season, we don't really get any more chances.

It's even more stressful for me because I didn't grow up sharing holidays and Sean and his family are old pros at it. Although, Sean's old version of events was doing all of his shopping in the two hours before he had to catch a ferry and then wrapping them on arrival using whatever gift bags his mom had set aside in her sewing room. I'd say we've progressed significantly since then, but maybe that's bragging? Of course, my version of progress involves lists. Shocking, I know.