Christmas looked a lot different this year. Due to the pandemic, we didn’t have our traditional Christmas Eve and Christmas Day family get togethers. Instead I celebrated Christmas with my quarantine crew, my parents, at their house on Christmas Day. The three of us had a delicious ham feast my mom prepared, opened presents and ate dessert, and were very thankful for our health and that we could celebrate safely with each other. I missed attending our favorite Christmas events like the Festival of Trees, Christkindlmarkt and the Old World Village and Christmas Market, and did all of…
The days leading up to Christmas this year were a blur. They seemed to go by faster than ever and there were several things I did not get done in time that were on my to do list. In case you were feeling the holiday stress too, there was good reason this season was more rushed than ever. There were only 26 days (!!) between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, six fewer days than last year and also the smallest number of days mathematically possible between the two holidays! I always wait until after Thanksgiving to decorate, but with so few…
Christmas may be over but I always like to keep my decorations up for a few weeks afterwards. The twelve days of Christmas start on December 25 and run through January 5, so it just makes sense to me to leave my decorations up through then anyway. I start decorating after Thanksgiving, and this year I finished decorating pretty late (mid-December), so I’m not tired of looking at my Christmas décor yet. I usually start taking my decorations down in mid-January, beginning with the tree, with the goal of getting everything put away by the…