Christmas cheer.

There were a few years when I was little, when my dad would use these pre-made paper links to celebrate Advent with me and my family.  Each night in December after dinner, we'd read the little blurb about an aspect of the Christmas story on one side of the paper strip and then would do the word puzzle together on the back side before my dad would lick the adhesive end to add to our paper chain that we hung on our real Christmas tree.  I absolutely loved that tradition of Advent celebration, but we only did it for a few years (I think the company where my dad ordered the paper strips from stopped making them) and Christmas just hasn't been the same for me since then.  We'd still light our Advent candles each day, adding a new one for each week, and my dad would go through some Advent booklet, but I longed for something more creative and exciting and fun.

Even though I do think the materialistic hubbub, shopping dash and overly-done crazy Christmas stuff can be a bit over-the-top and isn't the real meaning of Christmas, I still love the Christmas season and the things that come with it.  I love the decorating process, real Christmas trees, 24-7 Christmas music radio stations, and learning about people's quirky family traditions while enjoying my own.

This is the first year I won't be spending Christmas with my family.  This is also the first year where I felt like I had a chance to really be free in getting my creative juices flowing to start my own quirky family traditions, go all out with Christmas decorations, and celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in creative ways.  But November was quite a crazy month of emotional roller coasters, which made focusing on preparing for Christmas season the last thing on my mind.  And with so much traveling and planning for work these past few weeks, the most I've done this season is put up a Christmas wreath on our apartment door, set up a nice nativity scene on our windowsill, and sometimes listen to Christmas music on Pandora all day.  Nathan and I thought it would be silly to get a real Christmas tree since we wouldn't be home for most of the month.  Things went by too fast for me to think about sending any Christmas cards or gifts for friends, family and co-workers, and I haven't even baked anything.

Thinking and lamenting over how I haven't done anything for Christmas has got me thinking of some ideas for next year.  For example, we don't have many Christmas decorations (though we did get some as wedding gifts from some pretty brilliant friends!), but I was thinking maybe there would be some after-Christmas sales that Nathan and I could catch (hopefully there will still be sales after Urbana!).  Also, I got this other idea (initially as a joke) for if I know Nathan and I will be traveling a lot during December for work and visiting  family next year, maybe we can get one of those little Charlie-Brown-Christmas type Christmas trees to keep when we're home and to bring with us when we're traveling.  Portable Christmas tree?  That'd be a quirky tradition :)

Anyway, sorry about the lack of spreading Christmas cheer from the Bixlers.  Hopefully we'll be in a better place to do so next year!