As December rolls along, my house continues to think it’s mid-October. There are no wreaths out, no tree, no decorations of any sort. It’s the fifteenth-of-fucking-December and there is still no Advent calendar on our wall. The only thing going for us is that the Glade plugin is pine-scented.
Every year, the same thing happens. I drive around town at 7:30 p.m. to get more medicine from CVS, hoping to stave off the fevers of at least two children, and I’m confronted with all the beauty of sparkling houses decorated with lights and lawn reindeer, a merry reminder that my house is the Scrooge on the block, the one place that still has an artificial jack-o-lantern on the porch that probably doesn’t even work anymore.
Last year was the exception to my mid-December lack-o-Christmas-cheer because last year I didn’t really work at a normal (any) job in December, so I had free time to put the Advent wreath out and dust the piano and maybe put out one of our three nativity sets. Last year still had sick kids up the wazoo, but at least I had the tree decorated and a couple of presents wrapped.
This year is a return to the mean. I’m working full-time again — teaching — thus it’s-end-of-the-term-and-grading-is-all-I-do-now mode has been activated, and I can barely blink to figure out which day it is, let alone figure out how to make my living room livable enough to put up decorations.
This time around, this December fifteenth, while driving home and enjoying other people’s Christmas lights, I realized there will never be a time (until my kids are grown, maybe, or we win the lotto) when I won’t be running around like a lunatic in December, stressed out of my gourd and barely hanging on. There will never be a time when my house will be gingerbready and ready for Christmas weeks in advance. (I’ll be happy with DAYS in advance, honestly.)
No, I will always be living my alternative Christmas. I will always be last-minuting the mistletoe. I will always be getting the tree up just in time, and wrapping all the gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve, watching It’s a Wonderful Life and crying my eyes out and self-soothing with spiked eggnog. That is MY December twenty-fourth.
And my Advent will always be ganky. It will always be helter-skelter and mismanaged. There’s just too much to fucking do in December. Too much. School stuff and work stuff and house stuff and illnesses. OMG the illnesses! Everyone cycles through three rounds of illness every flippin’ November/December now apparently. Apparently that’s a thing in my life for perpetuity or until my kids run off to college (or the circus). Apparently everyone must get sick in early December; it’s like an iron-clad rule. Everyone but me, apparently, which, I must admit, is a small but very grateful mercy.
I realized as I was driving home tonight and feeling bad about my lack of Getting All the Shit Done skillz, that I will always be living this alternative Christmas. My Decembers will always be wracked by chaos. I will never not be having hair on fire. This disordered life IS my life.
And then I sighed. A wave of relief washed over me. I’m living an alternative Christmas. I’m not like the rest of you, with your house lights and your tree up and your Christmas parties and whatnot. I’m living my own Christmas season, my own messed up Advent, my very own alternative seat-of-the-pants-flying-rodeo that is a blur and a burden, but hey-o, it’s MY burden. This is how I do Christmas. Not very nice, not very naughty either, just… well, it’s just how I do it.
It’s not my preferred way. Boy, howdy is it not my preferred way!
But it’s my way. My life and no other.
I need to accept it, embrace it, even love it. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe “love” is too strong a word. But something love-ish. Something that goes beyond acceptance into a kind of okay-ness.
It’s okay that I have literally no decorations up yet. It’s okay that I’m still behind on my end-of-term grading. And it’s okay if I don’t sign-up for something to send into my kids’ classes for their holiday parties next week. It’s all okay. It’s still Christmas even if I never put up the tree.
(Don’t worry, I’m putting up the tree. It’s just, it’s still okay EVEN IF I don’t. That’s all I’m saying. Christmas isn’t decorations. It isn’t cookies. It isn’t even presents. But yes, I do have presents for my kids; I’m not that horrible.)
Christmas is about the birth of Christ, celebrating the Incarnation, and kneeling in awe and wonder at the miracle of God becoming Man. No decorations or Christmas lights are required to celebrate the Light of the World.
So what if I’m horrible at Decembers? It’s how I roll. These hectic days are just the way things are. Can’t escape them, can’t solve them, can’t worry about them anymore.
As each new December comes around, I’m hoping it will the one where I turn things around. But that’s a vain hope. It’s a pressure I’m putting on myself that isn’t worth worrying about. I’m an alternative Decemberist. A free-spirit of suckitude. I’m just never gonna get my shit together.
And that’s okay.
