Today is Christmas Day 2017. The holidays are hard for a lot of people, the older I get, the more people I know who dread these weeks as we close out the year. Christmas is the hardest for me because Christmas was Shayna’s favorite.
My secret to getting through the holidays is to manage expectations. Thinking that Christmas will ever be the same again is setting myself up for failure. The goal isn’t to make Christmas as magical as it once was. It’s to make it as good as it can be and to get through it. This year I have given myself permission to do what’s healthy for me. I still enjoy buying for Kayla and Tywana, but Tywana’s handled all of Kayla’s shopping for this year. Tywana and I have agreed to not exchange presents (as we have done many years), but this year I’m sticking to it. On Christmas Eve I bought one present, a spontaneous purchase for someone not expecting a present for me. I went in with siblings on a gift for my mother. I’ll have to pick up something for Dad before I see him this coming weekend and something for my brother, whose name I drew in the exchange. That’s it for me for this year.
I get up around 7, my normal time. I get the prime rib into the sous vide so it can be done for our meal around four or five o’clock. We have done Cornish game hens since Shayna was around five, but this year we’re changing it up. I take my walk- seven miles. I think about cutting it short. But, why? It’s just a day like any other day. In seven miles I only see four cars. It’s bitter cold, but the sun breaks through a couple of times. When I get back home, Kayla gets up and we prepare for gift opening. The gifts are mainly clothes for Kayla from us. Tywana has bought a couple of things for me. She unwraps the Kindle I ordered for her (that she knew about) and that’s that. I get my meditation in. I notice there are almost twice as many people meditating on my app today as on an average day. We watch a little TV and get ready for our new tradition of going to a movie on Christmas day. We se The Shape Of Water, head home, and Tywana goes to pick up her mother. Christmas dinner is the four of us now, until things change again.
After dinner, we watch a little more TV, taking advantage of Hulu that I just ordered to watch The Mindy Project and a couple of episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale.
All in all, it’s been a manageable day, even a good day. One more Christmas down. That’s three. I’m glad it’s over. I’m looking forward to New Year’s Eve on Sunday when we’ll close the books on 2017.
