My oldest child has never believed in Santa and I don’t have any Christmas decorations up as of the 15th of December!
To address the first thing. My oldest child has never truly believed in Santa. I could speculate about the why, but honestly, I’ve asked her and she could never give me a real reason. She’s almost 13 and this year, I just let her have her way. I explained that we are going to observe the idea of Santa, for her younger sister and that the spirit of Santa lives within us. I can’t even say that I can remember when she first challenged the idea, but I feel like it was around 5 or 6 years old.
My kids were never early risers on Christmas, or any other day of the year for that matter.
Thank you very much homeschooling schedule! In fact, most years, I was up and trying to wake them, in all of my own holiday excitement. I do remember, however, that after she started questioning St. Nick, she also started getting anxiety and feeling “sick” around the week of Christmas. There was rarely anything we could do to comfort her and she would end up awake most of the night, which made it difficult to set things up before I went to bed myself.
Last year, in an effort to bring some extra Christmas spirit into the house,
I finally added one of those shelf-elves that are the winter equivalent to candy corn. Even though the girls were double digits, I thought “how fun this will be!” Oh how wrong I was! After about a week I was at a loss for ideas and was barely getting things set up before the kids woke up. In fact the week before Christmas my oldest finally took me aside and asked if she could help me with the elf shenanigans because she saw how stressed I was! Full disclosure, the elf has not shown up this year, partly because our house is in full chaos mode and partly because I can’t remember exactly where I put her…
Now on to the zero decorations!
So, if you’ve been following along here on the blog, on social media, or on my YouTube channel, you know that we have had quite an interesting year. Every month has been one new challenge after another. The girls and I have made so much progress though and even if we don’t have the house the way I pictured we would by this time of year, I must take a minute to acknowledge so much hard work!
You see, after my husband passed away at the end of April, my brother traveled across the country to help us for almost a month. I didn’t know how much we had been hoarding over the last two years and with the help of my brother and many other friends, family, and my husband’s co-workers we were able to get a lot of cleaning done in that first month. The garage started becoming my new work space, my old sewing room turned into a new master bedroom, my old bedroom becoming a guest room, one bathroom updated, and the kids rooms getting some new and much needed furniture updates as well as cleanings! But it seems that every time we start a “new” room, the living room becomes a catchall for the purge!
So here we are, past the middle of December...
The living room and small dining room have a vast assortment of random objects waiting to find their forever homes. To be honest, most of it belongs in my garage/sewing room, but I’m still trying to get a few random things out of there to make space for what needs to fit. And don’t get me started about how the kitchen never manages to stay clean!
So what does this all mean?
Well, it means that the holidays are a lot of work, but so is the rest of the year! I could sit and be frustrated for all of the things that are not done, but instead I am choosing to be grateful for the things that have gotten finished, and to just keep chipping away at what needs to be done.
Life can be like that, right?
We get so caught up in the things we want or the idea of how things “should be” and it can be so frustrating and disheartening. But I believe, if we have the spirit of Santa, if we are the ones that carry out all of the Christmas dreams and wishes, perhaps we need to give ourselves a little grace, a little kindness. To celebrate all of the milestones we have accomplished this year and be proud of how far we have come.
So if no one says it to you, I am proud of you. I am so happy you are here. I am so thankful for all that you are in the world. I am grateful for all of the struggles you have overcome and I celebrate all of your joys.
Wishing you the happiest of holidays this season.
