Grown Up Celebrating

I have been reflecting on our Thanksgiving with Mr. A's family.

Our families are pretty different, and the older I get, I realize that even more.

My family has two spiritual parents, three girls, and a boy.

His family has no spiritual leaders (his dad never went to church, and his mom took the kids, but never displayed any devotion/involvement herself; side note is that his dad recently told me that he regrets not being an example of spirituality for his sons), and three boys.

My family does family celebrations (e.g. Thanksgiving, Christmas) in a big, organized, scheduled and Christian way.

His family does family celebrations in a casual, laid back, whatever-happens-happens way.

When Mr. A and I first met, it was refreshing to spend holidays (I use this term only to describe the months of November and December. I would never refer to Christmas itself as the "holiday".) with his family because it was so much more casual than with my family. With my family, you better count on spending several hours at a time on one evening all standing around my mom at the piano singing verses of The Little Drummer Boy. For a 22-year old, who is used to living by herself in peace and quiet, that was a little too much.

I thought it was great how his family was all together, but you could still sneak off for a quiet nap or reading time in one of their recliners and no one was begging you to go sit by the tree all together.

But now, years later, times with his family have grown a bit too casual for me. I want the excitement and priority of family time and togetherness.

Case in point, Thanksgiving with them was good but missing something. I called his mom the Friday prior to ask about the menu and what I could bring and she told me, well, I haven't really thought about it yet!

"Say what!!!," I thought, "Thanksgiving is next week and you HAVEN'T THOUGHT ABOUT IT?!"

Meanwhile, I had been excitedly hoping for at least two weeks to bring the pies and the natural turkey and looking forward to spending some time with Mr. A's brothers.

Turns out that one of his brothers left just hours after we had eaten Thanksgiving dinner (lunch), and the other brother left Friday morning, and there just wasn't that feeling that everyone was so happy to be all together. It was like any Sunday dinner.

That was a bummer to me. Clearly the boys take their cues from the parents, and I just don't think they set forth that they were wanting us all to make it a priority to spend some quality time together this Thanksgiving.

And I'd like to take this opportunity to blame infertility for this one. I don't doubt for one second that if we were expecting or (heaven forbid) already had a baby that it would have been so exciting and so important for everyone to spend time together. We all would have been dreaming of when we could get together again, instead of knowing that we really don't meet up that often. We would have been passing the baby around or voting for name choices. I can just imagine.

Instead, I was having water instead of wine (of course I could have had a bottle to myself, I found out the day after when I started my period), and we were helping his parents put up closet doors instead of sitting around with everyone laughing and having a good time. Not that we don't like to help his parents, but it was just kind of a mundane chore for the day after Thanksgiving.

My family is coming to our house for Christmas this year, and the celebrating will be very different. It will be reverent, and merry, and bright, and LOUD, and filled with lots of cherished people and good things to eat, excitedly planned and prepared. I can't even imagine how much more merry and bright it would be if we were parents, because it is already to the max of family togetherness and cheesiness.

I hope if (when) we are parents, we will be able to strike a good balance of the laid-back and the type-A family celebrations. It would be nice for there to be an emphasis and priority on time spent together, without making you feel like you can't go to the bathroom in peace.

So unfortunately, this season has gotten off to kind of a ho-hum start for me. I did order our Christmas cards yesterday, though, so that is a start. And I'm thinking of getting some blue lights to put up outside this year. My grandfather always put up blue lights at Christmas, and I think it would be a fitting tribute to him, as it's our first Christmas without him.

What are you doing to get in the Christmas mood? Are you having difficulty or is your house already the scene of Christmas perfection?