I LOVE Christmas

I love Christmas. I didn't realize how much I loved Christmas until S loved Christmas. We really do it up for Christmas. And, we don't feel run ragged by it. I love that we seem to have settled into our favorite traditions. We cut down a tree (a silver tip -- our favorite), we decorate it -- and the house. We get two trees. (Last year we bought a 3rd for the porch because it was $1.50 & way too cute to pass up.) As we unpack our Christmas things, we greet them as dear friends who have been away from us. We bake, we craft, we donate, we volunteer. We shop, we wrap, we make tags, we make gift wrap (not in that order!). We make gifts for friends and for each other. We have 3 different advent calendars! We go to the Nutcracker, a Waldorf winter faire, and we go for "light cruises." We live on Christmas music. We watch Christmas movies and specials. (We even watched the Garfield one this year... yikes.) We add to our Santa collection, our snowman collection, and our Christmas tree collection. We read Christmas books. We buy more Christmas books. (Little House Christmas Stories has been a very sweet addition this year -- I highly recommend it.) We make a gingerbread house (or two). We eat candy canes and drink hot cocoa. Lots of hot cocoa. Everything is celebrated with hot cocoa in December. This year I chose a book for book club with a winter theme (Mr. Popper's Penguins, just in case I could squeeze in a little more winter fun. It worked -- I have a great excuse to use the igloo cake pan I bought last year!).
We love celebrating so much, we've branched out this year. S asked if we could light Hanukkah candles. So we are -- with the most beautiful Hanukkah candles I've ever seen. The colors are beautiful and soft, they smell so good (beeswax) and even feel good to touch. We also celebrated St. Lucia's Day with St. Lucia buns (inspired by Kirsten, the American Girl who is a Swedish immigrant). We are neither Jewish nor Swedish. Just very festive, apparently.