The Magic of Christmas

It’s our first Christmas in a new home.

Unlike the last two years, we decided not to buy a real tree. I just wasn’t up for cleaning the fallen pine needles this year. So we bought a big, full, beautiful fake tree—and despite feeling like I ought to like real ones more, I just can’t help it … I love my big, full, beautiful, fake tree so much more than I did the small, sometimes sparse, pretty, real ones that we’ve had the last two years. It’s big enough to hold all our ornaments AND have room for more! It makes me very happy, especially knowing that we don’t have to hope for an equally good one next year; it’s already ours.

This is the first time in our married lives—my first time since I lived with my parents—that we’ve had an actual fireplace and a real mantel. For the last two years, we hung our stockings from shelves we’d put up in our dining room. Before that, they were draped from the top of the china cabinet. I like the fireplace much more.

My husband even found a use for the random strand of multicolored garland that I’m not sure we’ve ever used for anything …

And he found a similar use for a strand of green garland.

Our Nativity set from Cambodia first was guarded by Leonidas …

then witnessed by various incarnations of Dr. Who and his enemies, as well as a little plastic sheep masquerading as part of the original set.

We spent a couple of hours one afternoon making paper snowflakes, which we hung on twine in our windows and across the pass through between the kitchen and dining room.

Jeff made a special one in honor of his abiding love for Star Wars.

We spent more than a couple of hours one afternoon making our first ever gingerbread house. We bought a kit for the gingerbread pieces, but I made the royal icing myself, and Jeff bought Twizzlers, M&Ms, and gummies for decoration.

We’ve watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, The Grinch That Stole Christmas, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. We were reminded of the real meaning of Christmas in the Veggie Tales show The Toy That Saved Christmas.

We’ve read a book about the real Saint Nicholas, and another about Christmas traditions around the world. We read The Polar Express, Lucy’s Christmas, and a customized version of The Night Before Christmas.

We’ve added magnetic pieces to our Nativity-themed Advent calendar and discussed the birth of Jesus.

Lexa made Christmas cards for our neighbors, which will be delivered today with the cookies we made and the traditional good luck charms Jeff bought.

Our plans for tomorrow include gifts in the morning and a potluck Christmas dinner with my husband’s coworkers in the afternoon and evening. I’m prepared with ham, crescent rolls (God bless the Naval Exchange!), baked macaroni and cheese, and a couple of different pies—all ready to just go in the oven tomorrow, no further work required. And of course, we can’t forget the gluhwein, which just needs to be heated in the slow cooker.

On the one hand, I have felt so busy, and so tired, and so stressed, that it doesn’t much feel like Christmas.

On the other hand, this feels more like Christmas than any of the last few years.

The rooms in which I spend most of my time look like Christmas, full of simple, beautiful decorations.

Rather than deciding that Christmas activities are too much effort this year, or deciding to do them but not committing enough to tell anyone, I took the simple step of planning Christmas activities for each day (sometimes as simple as a book to read or movie to watch) and putting a slip of paper in the Advent calendar for Alexa to find. No matter how tired or unmotivated I am, I know I can’t back out of the activity when she expects one each day. You better believe I’ll be prepared for it rather than face her disappointment—no “I’m sorry, sweetie, but we don’t have the materials to do that today” this year.

Christmas didn’t sneak up on me this year, as it usually does.

I think this is what Christmas feels like as a grown-up. There is no more just having the magic happen—that’s what Christmas feels like for kids. The adults are the ones who make the magic happen. It’s still magical, but it’s magic with an effort. That may be the real reason it hasn’t felt like Christmas so much the last few years … I kept expecting it to just happen, without the work, the way it did when I was a child. That isn’t the way it is anymore. It’s my turn to make the magic happen for my daughter.

In the process, I made the magic happen for myself.

May you and yours have a wonderful, magical, Merry Christmas.

Our Year in Ornaments: 2015

It’s that time again! That time between Thanksgiving and Christmas (or between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, sometimes), when I write about the annual Ornie Competition in which we participate. For those new to the blog: Years ago, Jeff’s stepfather began a tradition with his family. Each person picked or made an ornament to represent his or her year. On Thanksgiving Day, all the ornaments were presented, and a winner was chosen. The tradition has continued for decades, since Jeff’s stepsiblings were children. We began participating in 2006, the year we married. This year was no different: Jeff, Alexa, and I each picked an ornament to represent our years, and we presented them to the family via video chat on Thanksgiving Day.

So what were the themes of our years? And what ornaments best represented those themes?

Alexa's 2015 Ornament: The Glove Balloon

Alexa’s social development took off this year. She’s always been shy and anxious, with no apparent desire to spend time with other children. Even when she did want to play with other kids, she wanted more to stay safely by my side. That’s how she was at the beginning of this year: she stayed with me rather than going off to play with other kids, even other kids with whom she’d interacted regularly for almost two years, even other kids that she called her friends.

Then out of nowhere, she changed. Suddenly she could not get enough playing with other kids. She didn’t need me to be there with her anymore. She happily stayed in Sunday school classes with complete strangers while we were in the States over the summer. She barely said goodbye to us before she was off and engaged in whatever activity was ongoing. She cried, not when we left her, but when we returned to take her with us. The one thing she wanted from our new home in Greece: the opportunity to play with other kids. No parents required or wanted, just kids.

And through it all, her obsession with all things Disney remained.

Of course the perfect ornament for her was from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse—how could her perfect ornament not be Disney? This year’s version was the glove balloon, floating off with a basket full of friends. It represents Alexa’s newfound desire to go off with friends, her interest in adventures, her need for similarly aged friends. It represents that our little girl is ready to fly off with her friends and leave us behind, at least as much as a 5-year-old can be.

Jeff's 2015 Ornament: The TARDIS

Jeff’s ornament also is from a TV series, though not one owned by Disney. Over the past few years, he and I have become a bit obsessed with the BBC show Dr. Who. Although it’s growing in popularity in the States, many Americans aren’t familiar with it yet, so here’s the basic rundown: The Doctor is a Time Lord, a master of time and space. He travels wherever—and whenever—he wants to go in his TARDIS, which appears in the form of a blue police box. (It’s actually bigger on the inside, though.) The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, but it’s very bad for him to be alone. Because of his abilities and his intellect, he tends to divorce himself from normal emotional experiences, which can result in rather psychopathic tendencies. In order to keep himself grounded, to remind himself of what real life is all about, he tends to travel with a companion, a human woman whose innocent delight and adventurous spirit reminds him to take joy in life, to be more human himself than he otherwise would be.

Jeff does not travel through time, and his travels through space are much more limited than The Doctor’s. However, like The Doctor, he travels from place to place doing work that is important enough that it sometimes threatens to consume him. He said that his ornament this year is in recognition that, like The Doctor, he needs companions to remind him of why he does what he does and to inspire him to enjoy his life rather than allow his work to consume him. He has found his companions in Lexa and me.

His ornament this year is a replica of the TARDIS.

Deborah's 2015 Ornament: Inside Out

 For my own ornament, I’ll tell the story much like I planned to tell it during the competition. (It didn’t come out exactly like this, because things never do when speaking without notes!)

I am a member of three online communities. One is a diverse homeschool community, where most members are homeschoolers, and most members live in their home countries—for most of them, it’s the United States. The other two communities are expat groups—one mostly Christian missionaries, the other Foreign Service personnel and their families. I first heard about the Disney movie Inside Out from these three online groups.

At first, I heard only wonderful things about the movie. Members of both expat groups raved about how amazing the movie was. It captures the experience of moving, it provides a vocabulary for discussing the emotional realities of expat life with our kids, it explores the purpose of those troubling emotions like sadness. It’s a must-see movie, a deeply emotional experience that had moms crying in the theater and kids making connections between their experiences and their emotions like never before. And in addition to all that relevance, it’s a fun movie too!

Then someone on the homeschool group mentioned the movie. The reaction was almost completely uniform: Disney missed the mark on this one. This movie is boring. They tried to make it relevant instead of fun, and made it neither. Don’t even waste your time on this movie.

Of course I was eager to see the movie myself, to see which camp I would fall in. I finally had the opportunity this summer, while we were on our Disney cruise. And I was blown away. I am not ashamed to admit that I sat in the Walt Disney Theatre, aboard the Disney Dream, with tears running down my face as I watched a young girl go through the emotional upheaval of a cross-country move. The analogies weren’t perfect, but I recognized my experiences in this movie—and just as importantly, I felt like my experiences were recognized by the movie.

I’m not certain if I would have loved this movie as much as I do if it had been released last year, or next year. All of the emotions associated with a move are close to the surface for me right now; they have been all year. The sadness of saying goodbye. The optimism that the next place will be good, too. The difficulty of holding on to that optimism when faced with difficulty after difficulty, both expected and unexpected. The desire to give up and run back to where you were … and the recognition that where you were doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not in the way it did when you were there. And eventually, the contentment that comes when you’ve made the new place your home. (I’m not there yet, but I’ve done this enough to know I’ll get there.)

Inside Out is definitely the theme of my year. But more than that, it’s the theme of my last 7 years. It’s the theme of my life as a global nomad.

Previous Posts About The Ornie Competition:

A Family Tradition  (2008)

Our Year In Ornaments (2011)

Our Lives in Ornaments: 2012 Edition

Ornie Competition: Extended Family 2013

Our Lives in Ornaments: 2013 Edition

Our Lives in Ornaments: 2014 Edition

 

Our Year in Ornaments: 2014 Edition

It’s that time again—the week after Christmas Day but before New Year’s. The time when we reflect on the year that is about to end. The time when we make plans and goals and resolutions for the year that is about to begin. The time when, as longtime readers know, I write about our little family’s participation in a tradition begun many years ago: The Ornie Competition.

Jeff and I have participated in this competition every year since our marriage in 2006 (though I didn’t begin the blog until 2008, and even since then there has been one year in which I did not blog about our ornaments). We have included Alexa every year since her birth in 2010.

This year was no different—we participated. Yet, this year was different—two of the three of us had a very hard time deciding what ornament best represented our year, or indeed, what theme the ornament should represent at all.

Let’s start with the easy one, shall we? Alexa’s ornament was so easy to pick out this year that she picked it without ever thinking about the competition or her year or anything other than her love for and excitement over it.

Alexa's 2014 Ornament: Disney Cruise Ship

It was September, and we were on our R&R: a 14-night transatlantic Disney cruise, aboard the Disney Magic. We planned this R&R almost a year in advance, and Jeff started talking it up to our timid girl right about the time the flowers started to grow in the spring. She was excited from the first time he mentioned it. She spent the spring and summer talking about meeting Mickey Mouse and his friends, looking at pictures of the Magic’s Oceaneer Club online, and convincing herself that she wanted to experience all the ship has to offer—including the parts that were offered to her alone, in the kids-only zone, without the security of Mama or Daddy’s presence.

On the very first night of the cruise, we visited one of the onboard stores. We’d heard from veteran cruisers that the good stuff sells out quickly and that it was wise to hit the stores on day one, as soon as they opened. As we looked around, I saw a small display of Christmas ornaments. My mind immediately went to the Ornie Competition, so I called Alexa over “just” to show her—and she immediately exclaimed that she wanted one. She picked out a relatively realistic depiction of the Disney Wonder, the Magic’s sister ship. As there was no Magic ornament, I was thrilled with her choice. We bought two—one for our Christmas tree, and one to leave with my mother-in-law as Alexa’s ornament for 2014.

The rest of the cruise did not disappoint. I have intended to write a blog post gushing about how amazing the cruise was, about the friendliness and dedication of the cast and crew, the beauty of the ship, the comfort of the cabin, the extreme deliciousness of the food, the stellar performances that were the shows, the fun and interesting people we met, the relaxation of temporarily forgetting the world outside the ship … but life has happened, and I never wrote that post. Rest assured, however, that Alexa has not forgotten the cruise: it inspired many of her requests for Christmas gifts, it provided the “happy thoughts” upon which she relies as she falls asleep to avoid nightmares, and it has spurred countless askings of the question “When will we go on our next cruise?”

It is safe to say that although Alexa’s (and Jeff’s and my) first Disney cruise lasted only 14 nights, it has been the theme for her entire year: excitedly anticipating it, thoroughly enjoying it, and longing for a repeat of it. She picked the perfect ornament to represent her year, and she did it without even trying.

Jeff's 2014 Ornament: Chewbacca

Jeff’s ornament was a bit more difficult to pick out this year. It was not because he couldn’t decide what theme he wanted to represent—it was because he wasn’t allowed to steal Alexa’s ornament. As he conscientiously prepared Alexa for the cruise, as he showed her pictures of the kids club, as he talked up the opportunity to meet the characters, as he introduced her to the idea of playing in the pools and going down the water slides (well, the one slide for which she was tall enough), he built the anticipation for himself as well as for her. When the time came to leave for the airport, to leave the hotel for the port in Barcelona, and finally to board the ship for the first time, he was as excited as she was. After a day or two onboard, he told me that he hadn’t realized just how much he needed that vacation, that time away from work, that ability to relax and have fun for an extended time, without being on call, without knowing that he had to be back in the office in a day or two. He anticipates our next Disney cruise as eagerly as Alexa does. Unfortunately, however, he could not simply point at Alexa’s  ornament and say “That one. Me, too.” He had to pick a different one.

He settled on Chewbacca. Chewie, as Jeff affectionately calls him, is a more subtle representation of the cruise than the ship would have been, but in my opinion, he represents Jeff’s year more fully. Disney recently purchased the Star Wars franchise, so despite Chewie’s absence from the ship, he now is a representative of Disney … as Alexa puts it, “Chewbacca works for Mickey now.” In addition to the Disney tie-in, though, Chewbacca represents hard work, and strength, and the provision of protection, things that represent my husband’s personality in general and this year in particular.

Deborah's 2014 Ornament: School Time

I am the loner in the family this year—the only one who did not even consider the cruise as a theme for my year. Although I thoroughly enjoyed it, heartily recommend Disney cruises to anyone and everyone, and am excitedly anticipating our next Disney cruise, I refrained from getting excited about it until just before we left. I allowed Jeff to do the preparatory work with Alexa, and he did all the planning for the trip in general—the flight and hotel reservations, the car rental arrangements for the week we spent in the United States afterward, finding and joining the Facebook group dedicated to the cruise. He did all that. I did not become emotionally invested in the cruise until a week or two before we left. I was too overwhelmed with what really defined my year: school.

We finished up Alexa’s preschool year in the spring, then began almost immediately working through the curriculum for pre-kindergarten. We schooled year-round because I knew we’d be taking a long break for R&R and a shorter one for Christmas, and I also knew that we need to be done with her preK year by mid-April 2015, before our lives get hectic with next year’s move. While working through her current curriculum, I also busied myself researching and making plans for her next curriculum—the one we’ll begin for kindergarten in fall 2015. I knew that I did not want to continue with Sonlight; I knew that I did want to purchase or create a classical curriculum; and I knew that I will have no time for researching curriculum during the most typical planning time—the spring and summer before the curriculum is used. So my attention was divided among teaching Alexa for preK, planning for Alexa’s kindergarten year, and fitting in my regular household tasks as I could.

Luckily, preK was mostly about reading quality books aloud, but there also have been some workbooks: math and handwriting (both of which Alexa loves), the preK Explode the Code phonics series (which she does not love), critical thinking (which Alexa loved until we finished the age-appropriate book and the next one was too advanced for her), and the Developing the EarlyLearner series (a mixed bag of activities—some loved, some hated, and all put aside for now since they’ve progressed to the point of being too difficult for her). I also began teaching Alexa to read, using The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, which has been shelved temporarily in favor of a subscription to the online Reading Eggs program.

Throughout the year, there have been times when I was excited to “do school” and teach Alexa new and wonderful things, times when she was excited to do school and learn new and wonderful things, a few blessed times when we both were excited, and too many times when neither of us was excited. Thus, this ornament with an excited-for-school Chip and a less than enthusiastic Dale seemed like a good fit … and the nod to Disney does help my ornament fit in with Jeff’s and Alexa’s, as well. And I did really enjoy the cruise.

In our family, it was a Disney kind of year, though there also was plenty of hard work. Next year promises to hold new adventures, with all the stresses, joys, and uncertainties that tag along with any new endeavor. One thing is for certain, though: next year, we will NOT be schooling year round!

A Simple Christmas

Am I the only one who often finds Christmas Day to be vastly different from the peaceful, joyful celebration of Christ and family promulgated by heartwarming family movies and rosy Facebook posts? As a child, my family’s annual celebration felt like what I saw on those movies. It had the feel of a Norman Rockwell painting—lots of gifts, a huge meal with the family gathered around the table, smiling faces. Maybe there was stress for my parents, but I never saw it. Christmas was perfect and full of magic.

As an adult, my experience with Christmas Day has been different. The first year that I did not go home to my parents’ (and later, after the divorce, my mother’s) house was the year that we moved to Egypt. It was just Jeff and me. It was a good Christmas, with lots of church activities, time with friends, and relaxation, but it was different from what I grew up experiencing. Jeff and I had bought gifts for each other, and we had gifts that we received by mail from family, but the morning gift tradition felt sparse after a history of bounty—my parents went a bit (a lot) overboard in gifts for us kids, and it was the first year in my memory that the tree had gifts for fewer than five people under it; in later years, it had been gifts for eight or nine people. The tree just didn’t look right to me with so few gifts under it, and the feel of a sparse Christmas was even greater since we’d only put decorations on the top half of the tree due to our two new kittens having entirely too much fun with the lower branches and any ornaments within their reach.

Our first Christmas tree in Egypt

 The meal that first Christmas on our own also was very different from what I’d experienced in the past. For the first time, I was responsible for preparing Christmas dinner. I had started learning to cook only after our move, so I had a scant six months’ experience, and the thought of preparing a full, traditional Christmas dinner was overwhelming. Jeff and I had talked about it and agreed that our Christmas dinner would be his favorite meal, one that was at about the limits of my cooking abilities at that time: meatloaf (using his mother’s recipe), baked macaroni and cheese (again using his mother’s recipe), green beans, carrots, and mashed potatoes. Even that meal was a stretch for me, though it turned out that we didn't eat it on Christmas day at all; we'd eaten a big breakfast and weren't that hungry, so we just ate pizza for Christmas dinner! It was a good Christmas, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't as perfect as it should have been ... even though I had no idea what a perfect Christmas would look like without a big family, a huge pile of presents, and enough food to feed an army.

The years went by. My cooking skills improved. Our family grew to include Alexa. Our cats became slightly less interested in the ornaments on the tree. By the time we had our first Christmas in Cambodia, I was ready to recreate my childhood Christmases for Alexa.

Or so I thought.

I carefully combed through Amazon’s website, looking for perfect gifts for my one-year-old. We put up and decorated the tree—again, only the top half of it, though, after the first lower-placed ornament was batted around the tile floor by one of the cats. I planned a full Christmas dinner, consisting of those traditional staples that graced the tables in all the movies and television shows, none of which I'd ever cooked before. I carefully planned out my cooking schedule, based on what time we wanted to eat dinner so that we could make it to a dessert party later that day. I was confident in my cooking skills and my planning ability. I hadn’t counted on the stress of cooking several new dishes in one day with the goal of having them all done, hot, perfect, and ready to eat at a specific time.

That day ended up being incredibly stressful, as I tried to enjoy watching Alexa open and play with her gifts (which still felt like not enough to me) while keeping one eye on the clock so I could start cooking on time. Then I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen, hurrying because I’d underestimated how long it would take to do certain tasks or stressing because the brand new recipe wasn’t turning out quite like I thought it should. By the time we sat down to eat, I was exhausted, grumpy, and all around not in a pleasant mood. And dinner didn’t even look or taste as impressive as I’d hoped. (Note, though, that my blog post from that year put a positive spin on everything! Christmas must be perfect, after all.)

Christmas dinner in Cambodia

 

Jeff told me later that he’d prefer we eat sandwiches and have me be relaxed and happy rather than attempt to have the Norman Rockwell Christmas dinner with me stressed out and grumpy. I had to agree.

The next year, we went to the States for Christmas. It was less stressful in some ways and more stressful in others—I didn’t have to cook, and I had my big family Christmas with the fully-trimmed tree and lots of presents under it, but we also had to juggle “doing Christmas” with several branches of the family, none of whom wanted to celebrate together. Our typical R&R stress of trying to coordinate with all the people we want to see, all the things we want to do, all the shopping we need to do, all the logistics of returning to post with everything we brought with us plus all the things we bought or were given—all of that stress was magnified because it was Christmas. Plus a reckless driver caused a car accident and broke my mother’s arm, resulting in a great deal of pain and an unexpected surgery for her. So it was good to be home for Christmas, but it was stressful, even aside from my mom’s accident and surgery. Not the joyful and relaxed holiday for which I longed.

This year, we decided to go simple. We bought a real tree—my first one ever. Alexa excitedly helped decorate it, which meant that it had ornaments all the way down to the bottom, and somehow the cats didn’t bother it this year … maybe because of the motion-detector-activated cans of compressed air Jeff set up around its base J . Most of the other Christmas decorations stayed in their storage bins. We bought Alexa one big gift—a dollhouse—and one small gift—a family to live in the dollhouse. (It came mostly furnished, and Alexa’s grandmothers finished filling it as part of their Christmas gifts to her.) We bought small gifts for each other. I planned a traditional, but simplified, Christmas dinner, which consisted only of dishes that I’ve cooked before: pre-cooked honey baked ham, candied carrots, green beans, Irish soda bread (as the commissary was out of crescent rolls, which Jeff prefers over any other bread in the world), pumpkin pie, and birthday cake for Jesus. We agreed that the whole day would be played by ear.

This year's tree and Alexa's dollhouse

We woke up when Alexa woke us. We had her wait for just a minute while Daddy got the camera ready, then went downstairs with her and allowed her to open her gifts. We had a surprise video call from Jeff’s mom at what turned out to be the perfect time, so she was able to see her granddaughter open the gifts she had sent … as well as the gift she’d sent for Jeff, since I wasn’t paying close enough attention and Lexa opened it before I noticed. We made sure to take pictures of Alexa opening her gifts so we could put them on Facebook for the givers to see. Other than one gift—a Play Doh set that would have been messy—we allowed her to open her toys completely (box and all) and play with them before moving on to the next. We made sure she knew who had given her each gift, as an exercise in gratitude.

After all the gifts had been opened, I made breakfast while Jeff and Alexa played with her new toys. We ate a leisurely meal, and then I started preparations for Christmas dinner. We had no set time when we wanted to eat, no place to go, no one coming over. I’d planned out in what order I’d cook everything so that things would be ready and at the right temperature at the same time, but it didn’t matter what time that turned out to be. There were no surprises and very little stress. When dinner was ready, we ate it, all of us content and relaxed and happy to be together. It was by far the most joyful, relaxed Christmas I’ve experienced as an adult.

Are there things that we “should” have done differently for Christmas Day this year? Yep, no doubt. Are there things that I’d like to do differently next year? Absolutely. For one, I want to incorporate the real meaning of Christmas into our family traditions in more ways than just having a birthday cake for Jesus. And I’d love to follow the more traditional church calendar with a season dedicated to Advent (which I did to some degree this year, but not as deeply as I’d like) and a 12-day season dedicated to Christmas, rather than just one day. These are things I’ll think about and discuss with Jeff and plan for next year. But overall, I’m very happy with the way things went this year.

We found the Christmas playbook that works for our family: Keep it simple and relaxed. Don’t try to make it television- or Pinterest- or even Facebook-worthy. Recognize that my family now is different from my family of origin, and it is not necessary or even desirable to recreate my childhood Christmases. Allow for flexibility throughout the day, and remember the most important thing—Christmas is about love, not perfection.